Michael Bentine (born Michael James Bentin; 26 January 1922 – 26 November 1996) was a British comedian, comic actor and founding member of the Goons.

Biography

Bentine was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, to a Peruvian father, Adam Bentin, and a British mother, Florence Dawkins, and grew up in Folkestone, Kent. He was educated at Eton College. With the help of speech trainer, Harry Burgess, he learned to manage a stammer and subsequently developed an interest in amateur theatricals, along with the Tomlinson family, including the young David Tomlinson. He spoke fluent Spanish and French.

His father was an early aeronautical engineer for the Sopwith Aviation Company during and after World War I and invented a tension meter for setting the tension on aircraft rigging wires.

In World War II, Bentine volunteered for all services when the war broke out (the RAF was his first choice owing to the influence of his father's experience), but was initially rejected because of his father's nationality. The show featured the "olde English sport of drats, later known as nurdling". Some of the sketches were adapted into a stage revue at the Cambridge Theatre, Don't Shoot, We're English. He also appeared in the film comedy Raising a Riot, starring Kenneth More, which featured his five-year-old daughter "Fusty". He joked that she got better billing.

From 1960 to 1964, he had a television series, It's a Square World, which won a BAFTA award in 1962 and Grand Prix de la Presse at Montreux in 1963. A prominent feature of the series was the imaginary flea circus where plays were enacted on tiny sets using nothing but special effects to show the movement of things too small to see and sounds with Bentine's commentary. One, titled The Beast of the Black Bog Tarn, was set in a (miniature) haunted house.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in April 1963 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre.

He co wrote and starred in a film The Sandwich Man (1966) but it was not a success.

In 1969–70 he was presenter of The Golden Silents on BBC TV, which attempted authentic showings of silent films, without the commentaries with which they were usually shown on television before then.

From 1974 to 1980 he wrote, designed, narrated and presented the children's television programme Michael Bentine's Potty Time and made one-off comedy specials.

From January to May 1984 Bentine put out 11 half-hour episodes, in two series, of The Michael Bentine Show on Radio 4. These have subsequently been repeated, several times, on the BBC's archive radio station BBC7 (now BBC Radio 4 Extra).

He was the writer of 16 best-selling novels, comedies and non-fiction books. Four of his books, The Long Banana Skin (1975), The Door Marked Summer (1981), Doors of the Mind and The Reluctant Jester (1992) are autobiographical.

Other interests

In 1968, travelling on the British Hovercraft Corporation (BHC) SR.N6, GH–2012, Bentine took part in the first hovercraft expedition up the River Amazon.

In the 1995 New Year Honours, Bentine received a CBE from Queen Elizabeth II "for services to entertainment". In 1971, Bentine received the Order of Merit of Peru following his fund-raising work for the 1970 Great Peruvian earthquake.

Bentine was a crack pistol shot and helped to start the idea of a counter-terrorist wing within 22 SAS Regiment. In doing so, he became the first non-SAS person to fire a gun inside the close-quarters battle training house at Hereford.

His interests included parapsychology. This was as a result of his and his family's extensive research into the paranormal, which resulted in his writing The Door Marked Summer and Doors of the Mind. He was, for the final years of his life, president of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena.

On 14 December 1977, he appeared with Arthur C. Clarke on Patrick Moore's BBC The Sky at Night programme.

Family and health

Bentine was married twice. With his first wife Marie Barradell, married 1941–1947, he had a daughter, Elaine (1942–1983).

In 1949, he married his second wife, Clementina Stuart, a Royal Ballet dancer. They had four children.

His two eldest daughters died from cancer in the 1980s. His elder son was killed with a pilot friend when a Piper PA-18 Super Cub crashed into a hillside at Ditcham Park Woods near Petersfield, Hampshire, on 28 August 1971. Their bodies and the aircraft were not found until October 1971. The AAIB after an 11-month investigation found that the aircraft went into clouds when taking action to avoid power cables while flying low in poor visibility, and subsequently, went out of control. Bentine's subsequent investigation into regulations governing private airfields resulted in his writing a report for Special Branch into the use of personal aircraft in smuggling operations. He fictionalised much of the material in his novel Lords of the Levels.

From 1975 until his death in 1996, he and his wife spent their winters at a second home in Palm Springs, California, US.

Shortly before his death from prostate cancer at the age of 74, he was visited in hospital by the future King Charles III.

Programmes

Some of the programmes Bentine appeared in were:

  • The Goon Show (1951–1952) as himself
  • Goonreel (1952, TV movie)
  • The Bumblies (1954) as Prof. Michael Bentine / voices of the Bumblies
  • Yes, It's the Cathode-Ray Tube Show! (1957) (voice)
  • After Hours (1958–1959)
  • Round the Bend in Thirty Minutes (1959)
  • It's a Square World (1960–1964)
  • All Square (1966)
  • The Golden Silents (1969–1970)
  • Michael Bentine's Potty Time (1972) as Prof. Bentine / voices of Pottys
  • The Sky at Night (1977–1979, Documentary) as himself
  • Creek Crawling (aka Creek Crawler Extraordinary) (1980)
  • The Michael Bentine Show (1984, BBC Radio 2)
  • Terry Teo (1985) as Ray Vegas
  • The Great Bong (1993)

Film

  • Cookery Nook (1951, Short) as the friend
  • London Entertains (1951, documentary) as himself
  • Down Among the Z Men (aka The Goon Movie) (1952) as Prof. Osrick Purehart
  • Forces' Sweetheart (1953) as Flt-Lieut. John Robinson R.A.F.
  • Raising a Riot (1955) as the professor
  • John and Julie (1955) as paper tearing entertainer (uncredited)
  • I Only Arsked! (1958) as Fred
  • The Do-It-Yourself Cartoon Kit (1961, short) (voice)
  • We Joined the Navy (1962) as psychologist (uncredited)
  • The Sandwich Man (1966) as the Sandwich Man
  • Bachelor of Arts (1971, short) as Miklos Durti
  • Rentadick (1972) as Hussein

Books

Nonfiction

  • Doors of The Mind – Granada – 1984 –
  • The Shy Person's Guide To Life – Grafton – 1984 –
  • Open Your Mind: The Quest for Creative Thinking – Bantam Press – 1990 –

Autobiographical

  • The Long Banana Skin – New English Library – 1976 –
  • The Door Marked Summer – Granada – 1981 –
  • The Reluctant Jester – Bantam Press – 1992 –

Fiction and humour

  • Square Games (1966) Wolfe SBN
  • The Potty Treasure Island (1973)
  • The Potty Khyber Pass (1974)
  • The Best of Bentine (1984) Panther
  • The Potty Encyclopedia (1985)
  • Madame's Girls and other stories (1980)
  • Smith & Son Removers – Corgi – 1981 –
  • Lords of The Levels – Grafton – 1986 –
  • The Condor and The Cross sub-title An Adventure Novel of the Conquistadors – Bantam Press – 1987 –
  • Templar – Bantam Press – 1988 –

With John Ennis

  • Michael Bentine's Book of Square Holidays M. Bentine & J. Ennis (1968) Wolfe SBN
  • Fifty Years on the Streets Michael Bentine & John Ennis (1964) New English Library, A Four Square Book

References

Sources

  • Michael Bentine biography and credits at BFI Screenonline
  • The Spike Milligan Appreciation Society
  • Michael Bentine @ FashionState.com
  • The Bumblies Whirligig TV webpage