Biography for
Michael Bentine More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

26 January 1922, Watford, Hertfordshire, England, UK

Date of Death

26 November 1996, London, England, UK (prostate cancer)

Spouse

?	(? - ?) (divorced) 1 child
Clementina Stuart	(? - 26 November 1996) (his death) 4 children

Trivia

Children include: Elaine with his first wife, and Stuart "Gus" Bentine, Fusty Bentine, Serena "Suki" Bentine and Richard Bentine with his second.

He was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1995 Queen's Honours List for his Services to Entertainment.

In 1971 he received the Peruvian Order of Merit for his work during the 1971 earthquake.

Founder of the Goons radio show with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe

He was offered the opportunity of playing the fourth Doctor in the BBC series "Doctor Who" (1963) and was enthusiastic about taking over from Jon Pertwee, but his insistence that he be involved in the scripting was not acceptable to the series' producer, Barry Letts. The role was given to Tom Baker.

Three of his five children died before he did. His two eldest daughters, Elaine & Marylla ('Fusty') died from cancer (breast cancer and lymphoma) and Stuart ('Gussie') died in a plane crash in southern England. Only Richard ('Peski') and Serena ('Suki') survived him. The circumstances surrounding Stuart's death - a private plane not filing a flight plan which caused enormous delay and difficulties in locating the downed aircraft - prompted him to successfully press for new regulations in registering flight plans for small private aircraft.

Bought the traditional train set for his second grandson, as his daughter-in-law refused to let him give his first grandchild a machine gun.

The ex-Goon awoke from a coma when Prince Charles visited him in hospital.

The RAF Red Arrows display team volunteered to make a fly past at his funeral to honour him, as their unofficial mascot.

He 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.

Both he and fellow Goon, Harry Secombe, died from prostate cancer.

The staff at BBC Television Centre became so used to him staging scenes of mayhem involving explosions and gun battles for "It's a Square World" (1960) that when a real-life bank robbery occurred at Television Centre, everyone waved the masked robbers through, thinking it was filming for the programme.

Son of a Peruvian immigrant.

Graduated from Eton.

Served with Bomber Command during World War II.

Was both an avid yachtsman and aircraft pilot.

Was a self-taught expert on the paranormal and for the last years of his life was president of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena. He also lectured on the subject.

Personal Quotes

Speaking of his experience of his part in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration camp: Millions of words have been written about these horror camps, many of them by inmates of those unbelievable places. I've tried, without success, to describe it from my own point of view, but the words won't come. To me Belsen was the ultimate blasphemy.