The Benny Hill Show
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9 5 5 - 1 9 5 7 (UK)
1 9 6 1 - 1 9 8 9 (UK)
British TV's saucy comedian with a flair for smutty jokes and
slapstick routines. Old Fred Scuttle himself . . .
While many British comedians of the 1950s and 1960s simply
transferred their talents to TV, Alfred Hawthorne
"Benny" Hill was the first comic to
be purely a product of television He went on to become a British
institution.
The Benny Hill Show has been screened by every major
channel in the world, it has won a British Academy Best Comedy
Show Award and television's top entertainment prize, the Golden
Rose of Montreux.
Common themes in the show were the husband-beating wife, buxom
women, and silent, high-speed chase scenes between Hill and the
other characters.
Sketches, zany monologues and cheeky songs blended with fast
moving comic sequences. His songs and rhymes were rendered with
the cheeky look of a happy idiot that constantly broke into a
leer.
Benny was aided by his regular ensemble - hardly an episode went
by without Henry McGee and Jack Wright (the small bald 'slaphead')
- and the famous Hills
Angels. He was always at his best when sending up television
itself, particularly commercials for soap powder and washing-up
liquid.
During the Sixties, Benny also appeared in a number of
successful films: In 1965 he featured as the Fire Chief in Those
Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, in 1968 he
played the Toymaker in Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang . In 1969 Benny played the computer
expert in the classic The
Italian Job.
In 1970 he joined Thames TV for a series of one hour specials.
As usual he wrote all the material, songs and sketches along with
his now regular cast of 'extras' . His top TV show was mirrored by
a number one in the pop charts with Ernie (The Fastest Milkman
in the West) which was the Christmas hit that year, and stayed
in the charts for 17 weeks.
 In 1979, he finally conquered America. His fame in the US was
such that a 1988 survey of Florida schoolchildren revealed that,
although many of them did not know London was the capital of
England, they all associated one person with Britain: Benny Hill.
A riot once broke out in a California jail when prisoners were
prevented from watching his show, and a US Mafia boss only agreed
to do a documentary interview with Thames Television on condition
that they arranged for Benny to do a stint at the mobster's Las
Vegas casino!
The Benny Hill Show was always a late night treat for me
and it did my little 12 year old heart good! If the truth be
known, I watched the show primarily for the scantily clad young
lovelies and (hopefully) a crafty glimpse of boob (but then
probably at least 80% of his viewing audience did too)
The forces of political correctness finally had their way in
1989 when Thames Television cancelled the program due to
complaints about its smuttiness and because its old-fashioned
sexism had become increasingly intolerable. Although there was no
sign of his popularity waning, Thames refused to renew his
contract and after 34 years his show came to an end.
Although over the next three years he often talked in
interviews about a comeback, it was to be the end of his career.
He died alone in his frugal London apartment of a heart attack on
20 April 1992, aged 67.
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