Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan KBE was an Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor. The son of an English mother and Irish father, he was born in British Colonial India, where he spent his childhood before relocating in 1931 to England, where he lived and worked for the majority of his life. Disliking his first name, he began to call himself "Spike" after hearing the band Spike Jones and his City Slickers on Radio Luxembourg.

Terence Alan Milligan was born in Ahmednagar, India on 16 April 1918 during the British Raj, the son of an Irish father, Leo Alphonso Milligan, MSM, RA (1890–1969), a regimental sergeant-major in the British Indian Army, and English mother, Florence Mary Winifred (née Kettleband; 1893–1990). He spent his childhood in Poona and later in Rangoon, capital of British Burma. He was educated at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Poona, and later at St Paul's High School, Rangoon. His father remained in the Indian Army after the end of the First World War, steadily promoted till "the family's lifestyle became almost lavish"; Milligan considered that "My old man lived the life of a gentleman on sergeant's pay".

Milligan married his first wife, June (Marchinie) Marlow, in 1952; Peter Sellers was best man. They had three children, Laura, Seán and Síle, and divorced in 1960.

Even late in life, Milligan's black humour had not deserted him. After the death of Harry Secombe from cancer, he said, "I'm glad he died before me, because I didn't want him to sing at my funeral." (A recording of Secombe singing was played at Milligan's memorial service.) In 1990, he also wrote his own obituary, in which he stated repeatedly that he "wrote the Goon Show and died".