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Aging & Wisdom Quote by Spike Milligan

"I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge"

About this Quote

A joke like this works because it opens with the oldest, vainest boast in the book - and then gleefully commits a small act of social vandalism. "I have the body of an eighteen year old" invites the listener to picture denial dressed up as confidence: the middle-aged man insisting he has somehow outsmarted time. Milligan lets that expectation hang for half a beat, long enough for the ego-flex to feel plausible. Then he snaps the image in half: "I keep it in the fridge". Suddenly the line isn't about fitness at all; it's about possession, hoarding, and the grotesque logic of wanting youth as an object.

The subtext is a skewering of our culture's bargaining with mortality. Everyone wants the benefits of youth without the cost of being young. Milligan pushes that to a literal, macabre extreme: if youth is something you can "have", why not store it next to the leftovers? The fridge detail is crucial because it's domestic, banal, almost cozy. It makes the horror funny by staging it in the everyday, turning a potentially grisly implication into a deadpan punchline.

Context matters: Milligan, a founding force behind British postwar absurdism, made a career out of puncturing polite realism. This is that sensibility distilled: a neat one-liner that mocks vanity, commodification, and the fantasy of preservation, all while pretending it's just a silly gag. The laugh arrives with a shiver.

Quote Details

TopicWitty One-Liners
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Milligan, Spike. (2026, January 14). I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-have-the-body-of-an-eighteen-year-old-i-keep-it-1820/

Chicago Style
Milligan, Spike. "I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge." FixQuotes. January 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-have-the-body-of-an-eighteen-year-old-i-keep-it-1820/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge." FixQuotes, 14 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-have-the-body-of-an-eighteen-year-old-i-keep-it-1820/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge
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About the Author

Spike Milligan

Spike Milligan (April 16, 1918 - February 27, 2002) was a Comedian from Ireland.

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