BBC comedy legend Benny Hill – how star found success again even after tragic death

His shows were regularly watched by more than 20 million people. (Image: Getty)

Benny Hill’s colourful creations included the useless inventor Fred Scuttle and drunken TV newsreader Reginald Boozenquet.

His shows were regularly watched by more than 20 million people who adored his mix of surreal wordplay and slapstick visuals gags.

The Benny Hill Show was the second-highest ratings comedy of the 1970s after To The Manor Born. Only World Cup Finals, Princess Anne’s wedding and Miss World attracted more viewers during that decade.

The British Film Institute’s league table of the greatest British comedians of the 20th century puts Hill third behind Charlie Chaplin and Cumbrian-born Stan Laurel – and ahead of Eric Morecambe and Tony Hancock.

Yet for more than two decades Hill was effectively “cancelled” after younger “alternative” comedians branded his show sexist – some even blaming him for a statistical rise in rapes.

He was also accused of racism for mocking foreigners – a long-standing feature of all British comedy. (“Sirry irriots!”)

Some of his sketches do indeed make uncomfortable viewing today, yet Hill is enjoying a posthumous revival.

Author DJ Thomas wrote that the comedy “was without malice, and inclusive rather than exclusionist… Hill wanted you to laugh with him, not at somebody else”.

It’s inventive weirdness – describing a Persian epic poem as “The Rubber Yacht of Hymie Cohen” – matched anything by Monty Python.

He was born Alfred Hawthorne Hill in Southampton, the son of a surgical appliances salesman and the grandson of a circus clown. You couldn’t make it up.

He worked as a Woolworths sales assistant, a milkman, a band drummer and a swing bridge operator before he was called up to serve in he Second World War as a mechanic and truck driver.

Hill saw action after the Normandy landings and by the end of the war was performing in the Combined Services Entertainment division, where he got the stage bug and then changed his name to Benny, in homage to the American stand-up Jack Benny.

Success came fast – his radio debut in 1947 was followed three years later by TV and cameo parts in movies including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the original The Italian Job.

The Benny Hill Show was the second-highest ratings comedy of the 1970s after To The Manor Born. (Image: Getty)

He spoofed The Beatles and his comic song Ernie – The Fastest Milkman in the West was a chart-topper that David Cameron would later choose as one of his Desert Island Discs.

But it was his variety sketch show which made him a huge star. Its format was music hall for the TV age – cheeky spoofs of pop hits, blatant innuendos, slapstick, well-written comic monologues, tongue-in-cheek adverts, Hollywood parodies and a cast of bizarre characters of both sexes, usually played by himself.

Each episode normally ended with his character chasing a bevy of semi-clad women, speeded up and to his well-known signature tune, until they turned on him.

Hill remained with the BBC for most of the 1960s before moving to ITV stations which had less of an “Auntie” mentality. He wrote most of the sketches himself with occasional help from non-credited scriptwriters.

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By 1977 his one-hour specials were laden with industry awards and Thames TV sold it to more than 70 countries across the globe.

His celebrity fans included film stars Michael Caine, Mickey Rooney and Burt Reynolds.

Hill never owned his own home, preferring to rent in London’s Queen’s Gate, Teddington and, briefly, his home city of Southampton.

He bought cheap food in supermarkets, walked miles instead of taking taxis and patched his own clothes. Not trusting banks, he insisted on cash payments which he stored in plastic bags.

He was a millionaire who never enjoyed spending his own money except on holidays in France, which he adored.

He never married or had a long-term girlfriend, but was linked romantically to at least one of the Hill’s Angels, the troupe of women who appeared regularly on his shows.

Then in 1987 the Left-wing comedian and Blackadder creator Ben Elton launched a savage attack, linking The Benny Hill Show to crime which ensured that “women can’t even walk safe in a park anymore”. One newspaper columnist likened Elton’s assault to “watching an elderly uncle being kicked to death by young thugs” and Elton later recanted his view.

But the damage was done.

Thames TV executives seemed to forget that Benny’s shows had earned them £26million over 21 years and pulled back from commissioning the planned next series. Benny quit Thames TV to take a year off but never returned after its light entertainment head John Howard Davies said he was “past his sell-by date”.

By the end of 2021 The Benny Hill Show was finding an even younger audience on streaming channels. (Image: Getty)

In 1992 Thames gave in to a tsunami of viewer requests and put together a compilation of re-edited shows.

Central TV then put a contract in the post for a new series of specials. Benny died on the day that contract arrived of a thrombosis while watching TV in his favourite armchair. His body was not found for two days. He was 68.

In 2006, Channel 4 broadcast evidence that Benny’s comedy was being enjoyed by young people born after his death – the Little Britain and Borat TV generation.

And by the end of 2021 The Benny Hill Show was finding an even younger audience on streaming channels and it was again given Freeview nationwide slots for the first time in 20 years.