Actors - Michael Bentine

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	Actors - Michael Bentine

Michael Bentine (26 January, 1922 - 26 November, 1996) was a comedian, comic actor, and member of the Goons.

Bentine was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, of Anglo-Peruvian parentage and grew up in Folkestone, Kent. He was educated at Eton College.

In World War II he served as an RAF Intelligence officer, and took part in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He had acted before the war, and afterwards he decided to become a comedian, specialising in off-the-wall humour, often involving cartoons and other types of animation. For example, a prominent feature of his series, It's a Square World, was the imaginary flea circus.

He was also a television presenter and writer. He appeared in the Goon Show film Down Among the Z Men, and at the time seemed perhaps the most comfortable of the cast in working in a visual medium.

During the 1960s he also took part in the first hovercraft expedition up the Amazon river.

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 ever to fire a gun inside the close-quarters battle training house at Hereford.

His interests included parapsychology. This is a result of his and his family's extensive research into the paranormal which resulted in him writing The Door Marked Summer and The Doors of the Mind.

Appeared in:

The Goon Show (1950-52)
Round the Bend in Thirty Minutes (1959)
It's a Square World (1960-64)
The Golden Silents (1965)
Michael Bentine's Potty Time (1973-80)
...and many other programmes

In 1995, Michael Bentine received a CBE from Queen Elizabeth II "for services to entertainment".

He was a holder of the Peruvian Order of Merit, as was his grandfather Don Antonio Bentin Palamero.

He was married to Clementina, a Royal Ballet dancer, for over fifty years; their two surviving children, Richard and Serena, both work in marketing.

He died from prostate cancer, at the age of 74, at his home in England.

Books

The Long Banana Skin - New English Library - 1976 - ISBN 0-450-02882-8
The Condor and The Cross sub-title An Adventure Novel of the Conquistadors - Bantam Press - 1987 - ISBN 0-593-01265-8
Madame's Girls"

The Door Marked Summer

Smith & Son Removers

The Best of Bentine

Doors of The Mind

The Shy Person's Guide To Life

The Potty Encyclopedia

Lords of The Levels''

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Michael Bentine ]

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