He was appearing in a Shakespearean play in doublet and hose in the open-air theatre in London's Hyde Park when two RAF Police NCOs marched on stage and arrested him for desertion.
Since he was no longer physically qualified for flying, he was transferred to RAF Intelligence and seconded to MI9, a unit that was dedicated to supporting resistance movements and helping prisoners escape.
This act led to his engagement by Val Parnell to appear in the Starlight Roof revues starring Vic Oliver, where he met and married his second wife Clementina, with whom he had four children.
On his return he parted amicably from his partners and continued touring in variety, remaining close to Secombe and Sellers for the rest of his life.
His first appearances on television were as presenter on a 13-part children's series featuring remote controlled puppets, The Bumblies, which he also devised, designed and wrote.
These were three small creatures from outer space who slept on "Professor Bentine's" ceiling and who had come to Earth to learn the ways of Earthling children.
Angelo de Calferta modelled the puppets from Bentine's designs and Richard Dendy moulded them in latex rubber.
On his return to Britain in 1954, he worked as a scriptwriter for Peter Sellers and then on 39 episodes of his own radio show Round the Bend in 30 Minutes, which has also been wiped from the BBC archive.
This led to a 13-programme series called After Hours in which he appeared alongside Dick Emery, Clive Dunn, David Lodge, Joe Gibbons and Benny Lee.
From 1960 to 1964, he had a television series, It's a Square World, which won a BAFTA award in 1962 and Grand Prix de la Presse at Montreux in 1963.
[5] A prominent feature of the series was the imaginary flea circus where plays were enacted on tiny sets using nothing but special effects to show the movement of things too small to see and sounds with Bentine's commentary.
From 1974 to 1980 he wrote, designed, narrated and presented the children's television programme Michael Bentine's Potty Time and made one-off comedy specials.
[dubious – discuss] Bentine was a crack pistol shot and helped to start the idea of a counter-terrorist wing within 22 SAS Regiment.
Following the death of Arthur C. Clarke, BBC Sky at Night magazine released a copy of the 1977 archive programme on the cover of their May 2008 edition.
His elder son, Stuart, was killed with a pilot friend when a Piper PA-18 Super Cub crashed into a hillside at Ditcham Park Woods near Petersfield, Hampshire, on 28 August 1971.
The AAIB after an 11-month investigation found that the aircraft went into clouds when taking action to avoid power cables while flying low in poor visibility, and subsequently, went out of control.
[12][13] Bentine's subsequent investigation into regulations governing private airfields resulted in his writing a report for Special Branch into the use of personal aircraft in smuggling operations.