Benny Hill (21 January 1924 – 20 April 1992) was an English actor and comedian, notable for his long-running television programme The Benny Hill Show.

Beginnings

Alfred Hill was born in Southampton, Hampshire and grew up in Wilton Road in the city's Upper Shirley district, where he and his brother attended Taunton's School. During World War II, Hill was one of the students evacuated with the school to Bournemouth School, East Way, Bournemouth, (then Hampshire, since 1974 Dorset). After leaving Bournemouth School, Hill worked variously as a milkman in Eastleigh, Hampshire, a bridge operator, a driver and a drummer before he finally got a foot in the door of the entertainment industry by becoming an assistant stage manager. Inspired by the 'star comedians' of British music hall shows, Hill set out to make his mark in show business. For the stage, he changed his first name to 'Benny', in homage to his favourite comedian, Jack Benny. Hill began appearing at working men's clubs and Masonic dinners before moving on to nightclub and theatre jobs. Hill auditioned for Soho's famed Windmill Theatre (home of Revudeville, a popular show of singers, comedians and nude girls), but he was not hired. Hill's first job in professional theatre as a performer was as Reg Varney's straight man, beating a then unknown Peter Sellers for the role.

Private life

Hill had few friends, although colleagues have insisted that he was never lonely but content with his own company. He never married, although he did propose to three women—one the daughter of a British writer—but was turned down by all three. Although he owned the family home in Southampton, he never owned his own home in London, nor a car. Hill preferred to rent a place to live rather than buy one, first a large double apartment in Queensgate, London for 26 years until 1986, and then a small flat in Teddington, Middlesex, within walking distance of the studios of Thames Television where he recorded his shows. His mother died in 1976 at age 82, and Hill kept the family house at 22 Westrow Gardens in Southampton as a shrine to her, not changing a thing. Before his move to Teddington, whilst looking for somewhere else to live in the Richmond area of London, he lived at 22 Westrow Gardens. Travelling was the one luxury Hill permitted himself; he became a francophile, enjoying frequent visits to France, and in particular Marseille, where until the 1980s he could enjoy anonymity in outdoor cafés, on public transport, and socialising with local women. Besides mastering French, Hill also spoke enough German, Dutch and Italian to get by when travelling. Such holidays were often gathering missions for comedy material, some inspired by foreign surroundings, or borrowed from regional acts.

Early career

Between the end of World War II and the dawn of television, Hill worked as a radio performer. His first appearance on television was in 1951 on a show called Hi There. He continued to work intermittently until his career took off with The Benny Hill Show in 1955 on BBC Television. Recurring players on his show during the BBC years included Patricia Hayes, Jeremy Hawk, Peter Vernon, Ronnie Brody, and his co-writer from the mid-1950s to early 1960s, Dave Freeman. He remained mostly with the BBC through to 1968, except for a few sojourns with ITV station ATV between 1957 and 1960 and again in 1967. He also had a short-lived radio programme, Benny Hill Time, on BBC Radio's Light Programme from 1964 to 1966. In addition, he attempted a sitcom anthology, Benny Hill, which ran from 1962 to 1963, in which he played a different character in each episode. In 1964, he played Nick Bottom in an all-star TV film production of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Films and recordings

Benny Hill's film credits include parts in nine films including Who Done It? (1956); Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965); Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), in which he played the relatively straight role of the Toymaker; The Italian Job (1969); and, finally, a clip-show film spin-off of his early Thames shows (1969–73), called The Best of Benny Hill (1974). Hill's audio recordings include Gather in the Mushrooms, (1961), "Pepys Diary", (1961), "Transistor Radio" (1961), "Harvest of Love" (1963), and "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)" (1971). He also appeared in the 1986 video of the song "Anything She Does" by the band Genesis. Hill's song, "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)", on the Best of Benny Hill album made the UK chart as Christmas number one single in 1971.

The Benny Hill Show

Hill had struggled on stage and had uneven success in radio. But in television he found a form that played to his strengths, allowing him a format that included live comedy and filmed segments, with him at the focus of almost every segment. It was to prove one of the great success stories of television comedy, keeping Hill a star for nearly four decades, generating impressive revenues for Thames TV, and remaining a cult series in much of the world long after Hill's death. The show had a music hall-derived format and its humour relied on slapstick, innuendo, parody. In 1969, his show moved from the BBC to Thames Television, where it remained until cancellation in 1989, with an erratic schedule of one-hour specials. The series showcased Hill's talents as an imaginative writer, comic performer and impressionist. The show had a music hall-derived format and its humour relied on slapstick, innuendo, parody.

The most common running gag in Benny Hill's shows was the closing sequence, which was literally a "running gag" in that it featured various members of the cast chasing Hill and usually featured scantily-clad women as part of the chase, along with other stock comedy characters, such as policemen, vicars, old ladies, and so on. This was commonly filmed using stop motion and time-lapse techniques for comic effect, and included other comic devices such as characters running off one side of the screen and reappearing running on from the other. The tune used in all the chases, "Yakety Sax", is commonly referred to as "The Benny Hill Theme". It has been used as a form of parody in many ways by television shows and a small number of films. The Wachowskis used the same style (and musical theme) in a scene in the film V for Vendetta (2006). It also appears in the cult movie The Gods Must Be Crazy.

The show featured a troupe of attractive young women, known collectively as 'Hills Angels' . They would appear either on their own in a dance sequence, or in character as foils against Hill. Sue Upton, one of the longest serving members of the Angels, said of Hill, "He was one of the nicest, kindest, most gentle of men to work with". But the sexual content of the routines contributed in the 1980s to feminist accusations of sexism.

Reflecting such changing currents of opinions, the 1980s alternative comedian Ben Elton denounced Hill as a "dirty old man, tearing the clothes off nubile girls".^[1] '. But a writer in 'The Independent' newspaper opined that Elton's assault was "like watching an elderly uncle being kicked to death by young thugs".^[2] Elton later claimed his comment was taken out of context, and he appeared in an affectionate parody for Harry Enfield and Chums, The Benny Elton Show, where Elton ends up being chased by angry women, accompanied by the Yakety Sax theme, after trying to force them to be more feminist rather than letting them make their own decisions.

In response to the accusations of sexism, defenders of Hill have said the show used traditional comic stereotypes to reflect universal human truths in a way that was unmalicious and fundamentally harmless. Hill's close friend and producer Dennis Kirkland pointed out said it was the women who chased Hill in anger for undressing them, all of which was done accidentally by some ridiculous means. An article on 27 May 2006 in The Independent quoted Hill and Dennis Kirkland as saying they believed this misrepresentation demonstrated critics could not have watched his programmes.

In a documentary on Benny Hill, the former head of entertainment at Thames Television, who had cancelled the show, John Howard Davies, stated there were three reasons why he did so: "...the audiences were going down, the programme was costing a vast amount of money, and he (Hill) was looking tired." The loss of his show totally devastated Hill (or, as one former supporting player put it, "He started to die from there") which followed from a self-inflicted decline in his health. In February 1992 Thames Television, which received a steady stream of requests from viewers for 'The Benny Hill Show' repeats, finally gave in and put together a number of re-edited shows. They tore straight into the TV top twenty. Hill died on 20 April 1992, the same day that a new contract arrived in the post from Central Independent Television, for which he was to have started making a series of specials.^[3] Hill had turned down competing offers from Carlton and Thames (Dennis Kirkland Hill's friend and Producer was furious about the Thames offer due to them having axed Hill's show and persuaded Hill to accept the deal from Central)

Celebrity fans

Charlie Chaplin, who died in 1977, was a fan of Hill's work: Hill had discovered that Chaplin, his childhood idol, was a fan when he was invited to Chaplin's home in Switzerland by Chaplin's family and discovered that Chaplin had a collection of Hill's work on video. Hill and Dennis Kirkland were the first outside the family to be invited into Chaplin's private study. Hill was awarded the Charlie Chaplin International Award for Comedy at the 1991 Festival of Comedy in Vevey, Switzerland.^[4]

Radio and TV show host Adam Carolla claimed that he was a fan of Benny Hill and that he considered Hill "as American as the Beatles." Indeed, during an episode of The Man Show, Carolla performed in what was billed as a tribute to "our favourite Englishman, Sir Benny Hill" in a more risqué takeoff of the sketches that Hill popularised. Carolla played a rude and lecherous waiter; a role Hill essayed numerous times in his shows—and the sketch featured many of the staples of Hill's shows, including a Jackie Wright-esque bald man, as well as the usual scantily-clad women.

Michael Jackson was a big Benny Hill fan "I just love your Benny Hill!" the young Michael Jackson told a bemused English music-press critic during a 1970s tour. "He's so funny!". During Benny Hill's decline in health he was visited by Michael Jackson who was in the UK at the time.

In Benny Hill: The World's Favourite Clown, filmed shortly before his death, celebrities such as Burt Reynolds, Michael Caine, John Mortimer, Mickey Rooney, and Walter Cronkite, among others, expressed their appreciation of and admiration for Hill and his humour (and in Reynolds' case, the appreciation extended to the Hill's Angels as well). More surprisingly, perhaps, the cerebral novelist Anthony Burgess made no secret of his admiration for Hill. Burgess, whose novels were often comic, relished language, wordplay and dialect, and admired the verbal and comedic skill that underlay Hill's success. Reviewing a biography of Hill, Saucy Boy, in the Guardian in 1990, Burgess described Hill as "a comic genius steeped in the British music-hall tradition" and "one of the great artists of our age". A meeting between the two men was described in a newspaper article by Burgess and recalled in the Telegraph newspaper by the satirist Craig Brown.^[5]

In 2006, broadcaster and critic Garry Bushell launched a campaign to erect a statue of Hill in Southampton, with the support of Barbara Windsor, Brian Conley and other British comedy favourites. Those taking part in the first fundraising concert included Neville Staple, Right Said Fred and Rick Wakeman.

Death

Hill's health began to decline in the early 80s. He suffered from heart problems since the late 80s, and on 24 February 1992, doctors told him he needed to lose weight and recommended a heart bypass. He declined and a week later was found to have renal failure. Benny Hill died at the age of 68 on 20 April 1992.^[6] On 22 April, neighbours called the police, who then found Hill, dead, sitting in his armchair in front of the television. Ironically, on the day Hill died, a new contract arrived in the post from Central Independent Television. Hill's cause of death was officially called coronary thrombosis.

Hill was buried at Hollybrook Cemetery near his birthplace in Southampton on 26 April 1992. In October 1992, following rumours that he was buried with large amounts of gold jewellery, an attempt was made by thieves to exhume his body. However, when authorities looked into his open coffin the following morning, there was no treasure. Consequently, it is not generally known whether anything valuable was inside. Hill was reburied with a new coffin lid and a solid slab across the top of the grave.

Hill left his estimated £10 million estate to his late parents, who had already died as the only will was from 1961. Next in line were his brother Leonard and sister Diana, both of whom were also dead. This left his seven nieces and nephews, among whom the money was divided.

Posthumous reception

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Although still shown worldwide, The Benny Hill Show has not been shown on UK terrestrial, networked television since a tribute season on Channel 4 in 1992, and not on satellite or cable since a run on the now defunct channel Granada Plus (now ITV3) in 1999. To quote his biographer Mark Lewisohn, "In Britain, Benny Hill is taboo." The show has recently been aired on the BBC America cable channel. An Australian channel, Seven Network, showed some episodes as part of a "Great Comedy Classics" slot. On the new Australian channel 7TWO they currently show The Benny Hill Show frequently.

In 1998 Channel 4 featured Hill in one of its "Heroes Of Comedy" programmes.

On 28 December 2006, Channel 4 broadcast the documentary Is Benny Hill Still Funny?. The programme featured an audience that comprised a cross-section of young adults who had little or no knowledge of Hill's comedy style, to discover whether or not the alternative comedians' criticism of Hill was valid to a generation that enjoyed the likes of Little Britain, The Catherine Tate Show and Borat. The participants were asked to watch a 30-minute compilation that included examples of Hill's humour from both his BBC and ITV shows. The responses and results demonstrated that none of the sample of viewers took offence at any of the sketches shown.

Hill's silent "Wishing Well" sketch was discovered to be the most popular. The alternative comedian Ben Elton, who had criticised Hill for sexism, was interviewed in the programme. Elton said he still had reservations about certain aspects of Hill's sketches, but claimed to be an admirer of Hill's talent and abilities as a comic performer.

References

• Funny, Peculiar – The True Story of Benny Hill by Mark Lewisohn
• GRO – Alfred H. Hill born MAR qtr 1924 2c 52 SOUTHAMPTON, mmn = Cave
• GRO – Alfred Hawthorne Hill died: APR 1992 14 1352 Richmond-upon-Thames, aged 68, his date of birth was 21 January 1924
• "Benny Hill Story" by John Smith (with a foreword by Bob Hope!). St. Martin's Press. 1989

External links

• Benny Hill - Daily Telegraph obituary
• Benny Hill page at the Museum of Broadcast Communications
• The Benny Hill Show page at the Museum of Broadcast Communications
• Benny Hill at the Internet Movie Database
• The Eastleigh Photograph Archive Photos of the dairy and streets where Benny worked as a milkman, inspiring the song Ernie (The fastest milkman in the west)
• The Benny Hill Songbook Lyrics, guitar chords and transcripts
• Benny's Place featuring Louise English & Hill's Angels A tribute to Benny Hill and his beautiful ladies known as Hill's Angels
• Laughterlog.com Article with complete list of appearances on television, radio and record
• BBC Hampshire BBC article on Benny Hill's Hampshire connections
• Benny Hill at Find a Grave

Alfred Hawthorne "Benny" Hill (21 January, 1924 – 19 April, 1992) was an English comedian, actor and singer, notable for his long-running television programme The Benny Hill Show.