"And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, but the Electricity Board said He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected"
About this Quote
Creation happens in a snap; bureaucracy takes a number.
Spike Milligan’s joke works because it drags the most mythic moment in Western storytelling down to the level of a customer-service hold line. Genesis is the ultimate flex: a single sentence and the universe obeys. Milligan punctures that grandeur with a perfectly petty antagonist, the “Electricity Board,” a phrase that instantly conjures postwar Britain: public utilities, rationed patience, forms in triplicate, and a national familiarity with waiting. The punchline isn’t just that God gets delayed, it’s that the delay is scheduled. Not “later,” not “soon,” but “Thursday,” the deadpan specificity that makes the absurd feel bureaucratically plausible.
The subtext is sharper than the gag admits. Milligan is not mocking faith so much as mocking the modern state’s capacity to domesticate everything, even miracles, into procedures and timetables. Divine omnipotence meets the kind of institutional power that doesn’t need to be dramatic to be absolute: the power to stall, defer, and “process.” That’s why the Electricity Board lands as a villain without malice. It’s not evil; it’s policy.
Milligan, a comedian shaped by wartime service and the drab machinery of British life afterward, uses anachronism as a weapon. By forcing God to become a customer, he flatters the audience with recognition: we’ve all been there, bargaining with a system that treats urgency as irrelevant. The laugh is a release, but it’s also a diagnosis of a society where the sacred can be reduced to a service connection slot.
Spike Milligan’s joke works because it drags the most mythic moment in Western storytelling down to the level of a customer-service hold line. Genesis is the ultimate flex: a single sentence and the universe obeys. Milligan punctures that grandeur with a perfectly petty antagonist, the “Electricity Board,” a phrase that instantly conjures postwar Britain: public utilities, rationed patience, forms in triplicate, and a national familiarity with waiting. The punchline isn’t just that God gets delayed, it’s that the delay is scheduled. Not “later,” not “soon,” but “Thursday,” the deadpan specificity that makes the absurd feel bureaucratically plausible.
The subtext is sharper than the gag admits. Milligan is not mocking faith so much as mocking the modern state’s capacity to domesticate everything, even miracles, into procedures and timetables. Divine omnipotence meets the kind of institutional power that doesn’t need to be dramatic to be absolute: the power to stall, defer, and “process.” That’s why the Electricity Board lands as a villain without malice. It’s not evil; it’s policy.
Milligan, a comedian shaped by wartime service and the drab machinery of British life afterward, uses anachronism as a weapon. By forcing God to become a customer, he flatters the audience with recognition: we’ve all been there, bargaining with a system that treats urgency as irrelevant. The laugh is a release, but it’s also a diagnosis of a society where the sacred can be reduced to a service connection slot.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Spike
Add to List
