In Praise of Benny Hill

"To this day, The Benny Hill Show, as watched by 21.1 million people in 1977, and which over the years won its star a BAFTA, the Golden Rose of Montreux, and a Variety Club Of Great Britain ITV Personality Of The Year award, remains the sole programme that spoke directly to the dream experience of the hot-blooded adolescent. This was perhaps why Thames could sell the show to so many foreign markets, from France, Spain and West Germany to the remotest jungle clearing in Brazil – deep up the Amazon River, photos of Hill were to be found in mud huts."

"My father was mad about Benny Hill, Monty Python and The Avengers, Bond movies and the Peter Sellers films, so that's what I grew up watching. Those clearly had a big influence on me."

During the year of 1992, while in England, Michael and his young friend Brett Barnes visit comedian Benny Hill at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London for a reported 35 minutes.

The 67-year-old comic has been convalescing from a heart attack, but refused to undergo a heart bypass. Jackson hands him a bouquet of flowers and enthusiastically tells him: "Great to see you at long last", and keeps repeating "You’re my hero".

Jackson then confesses to Hill that he watches his shows every day and that he has hundreds of his videos.

"I just love your Benny Hill (impression)!" the young Michael Jackson told a bemused English music-press critic during a 1970’s tour. "He's so funny!". In a ‘New Musical Express’ 1981 interview with The Jacksons, the entertainer reveals that Benny Hill makes him laugh: “Uh! Are you kidding? Every day! I love Benny Hill. I like him better than Monty Python. […] He just cracks me up. A genius.”

"In recent years my favourite comedian above all was Benny Hill, who was a master in his field."

"Most comedians deliver a barrage of powder puffs; Benny gave you a cannon shot."

"I'm blown away by his lyrics, the music, and I think he has very good choices of ladies, and garter belts which we all love a lot."

"When I first went to the Actor's Studio, there were a hundred and twelve Marlon Brandos, six hundred and eighty-two Jimmy Deans, and twenty-seven Carroll Bakers. If you go to England, there's only one Benny Hill."

"What I think the feminists (of the time) don't have is a sense of humour. I mean, they don't realise that everything serious is sent up. They think they're the only ones who are being sent up. Everything is being sent up."

"My impression of him was someone who's an extremely good workman. A good artist. But someone, who I've worked with for a long time, and I know exactly the same about him as before, which is purely a public persona. I know nothing personally about him at all."

"I had admired him like so many other people in the United States when he was syndicating his show here. By saying: 'This is the funniest man.' And his half hour is absolutely hilarious."

"He's a very gentle man. You'll find most of it is much like tough guys. The real tough guys are very quiet and the very funny men are very gentlemanly."

"His kind of comedy I think is universal. I think it would've sold anywhere even in the Far East because of the human foibles that he portrayed. He of course leaped the language barrier because it wasn't really necessary for the most part."

"That kind of physical, visual comedy which I dearly love. And we both had a mutual respect for people like Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and all those greats. We talked a lot about silent movies."

"I loved his impishness, his cute naughtiness. Some of the things he did, if the same things were done by a more adult-seeming comedian bordered on the objectionable. But I never objected to anything he did because he seemed like a naughty little boy doing them."

"And he was at heart, always a child. He was also an adult, a very accomplished professional one. But he worked chiefly out of his childish self."

"I adored Benny Hill. Funny, silly, outrageous, nonsensical..."

"I used to laugh out loud because I live alone. When you can laugh out loud at a television show, you've got great art."

"I was at the same hotel as he was at Australia at one time and I thought: "Aha! I've got him! I'll get to meet him." And I called him on the phone and we spoke but he wouldn't come out of his shell. I'm so sorry that I never got to know him personally. I think if we had ever broken the ice and shaken hands, or kissed and hugged, why not go all the way? Ha! But I never had that opportunity."

"He was a total comic. Truly. Every cell in his body was a comedy cell. And he was a comedy heart and a comedy soul. Very few people could be that funny."

"I started the show when I was 21 and I had 14 years of absolute glorious fun."

"It was like one big happy family there. Everybody knew one another really well and you build up a rapport over the years. Even down to the people that bring in the tea, all the caterers, all the floor assistants, all the makeup, all the hair artists. We were all just so very friendly with one another, it was a lovely family atmosphere."

"How many other TV Personalities can have these tributes that people are still interested twelve or thirteen years after his death? I think it's an absolute tribute to Benny and I think he would be over the moon."

"He loved us women. He really did. He idolised us. He put us on a pedestal."

"A lot of girls wanted to be on the show, I mean, it was a good show to be on."

What she and the other girls got up to after the show was finished:

"We just diversified and went off into different fields. But we always thought about him. Happy days. Reminisce it that sort of thing."

""You can't really find a show where you get hilarious comedy, beautiful girls singing and dancing. You don't often get all of those things together anymore, which is a shame."

"I think Benny brought a lot of laughter, a lot of fun, into this world and I wish he was around now. I think, sadly missed, is all I can say".

"I love Benny Hill. He’s one of my favourites of all time. Like, the way Benny did it, he was just amazing. Just seeing how he put songs together and comedy and the timing and the sketches. He was way ahead of his time.”

“I would like to play Benny Hill in the Benny Hill movie. I’ll even paint my face white.”

“Benny was Britain’s biggest ever TV comedy export. He was shown in more than 100 countries and adored the world over.

“His comedy was marinated in the honest vulgarity of English popular humour. This shy, modest man was genuinely a people’s comic, loved by millions.

“He was the first comedian of the television age, and the first to use the medium as a target.”

“Lisping Fred Scuttle and Ernie the Milkman are remembered with affection to this day."

"And it is his Englishness of comedy which I think finds such favour abroad. I mean, you know, it's cream teas and changing the guards, and Benny Hill."

"To the politically correct, of course, everything matters now. But I found his love of women, was for my generation, very attractive. Because that's what it was. It was an adoration of women."