Film

The Great McGonagall

Age rating

15

Director

Joseph McGrath

Year

1975

"I am Queen Victoria, and I am very Big in England."

In this high-camp farce, Goons legend Spike Milligan stars as William Topaz McGonagall, an unemployed Scottish weaver and aspiring poet laureate who falls in love with Queen Victoria - a brilliant cameo by Peter Sellers - and thereafter devotes his banal poetry to her. Though McGonagall's solicitations are rejected by the Queen, it doesn't stop the turgid prose, and pathos, from overflowing as McGonagall hilariously attempts to become the greatest poet in the land. The image of the bad poet, trapped by his romanticism and inspired by a muse with a tin ear, appealed mightily to Spike Milligan, and this cult British spoof features the Goons show maestro at his ridiculous, genre-defying best.