In the late eighties I was a support guy working from a narrow closet. It was just wide enough for a desk and chair and long enough for the desk and 4 or 5 floor standing computer systems which kept the room very warm. The building did have high ceilings and at one end of support room was a slender but tall, window that looked out over Teddington High Street. Teddington is an average, small suburban London town, ten miles west of the city along the River Thames. The High street had the usual assortment of pubs, small supermarkets, fast food shops and banks. Our building was next to the Barclays Bank
The sun arced from morning through noon and onto dusk. People, buses and cars all passed by the tall window and the changing leaves on the trees across the road marked the seasons passing. Not much happened day to day in Teddington but there were little distractions. Sometimes the ‘shouting’ man would appear. He’d stand on the corner with a big placard and yell at startled passers by to repent; at least until the local policeman turned up to move him along. Sometimes, though, I would see a different man. A gentlemen in his sixties and dressed in a rather scruffy raincoat, no matter the weather. The old man was about 5ft 10in high (I know because that’s the same height as me) and generally he’d be carrying his groceries in plastic supermarket bags. Some people said hello as they passed him but most ignored or didn’t recognize him. I myself bought him a glass of red wine one Christmas (and got ridiculed for it by my mates). The man in the raincoat was Benny Hill.
Here he was ignored by the people in the very town where he wrote his most famous comedy sketches. A man who less than ten years earlier was voted as ‘The Funniest Man in The World’ by Britain’s TV Times readers.
And yet few years later, in 1992, Benny Hill died aged 68, alone and unnoticed. We don’t even know the exact day he died we just know he was last seen the Thursday before Easter and he was found the following week. He was in a chair in front of his TV. After his death there was no resurgence of love for him or his art. His passing was not even accompanied by the tabloids every-ready buckets of crocodile tears. He just warranted a short obit’ on an inside page.
So how did Benny, lovable buffoon with the funny side kicks and very tall women, become such a non-entity in his home country?
Put simply two things: The fickle nature of the British and a top class assassination job by a handful of new, aggressive young comics.
In the UK in the early to mid-eighties comedy was undergoing it’s version of the punk rock revolution. An aggressive breed of comics often pictured as led by a man called Ben Elton burst onto the scene; arriving with the fourth British TV station, Channel 4. These new comics blew a breath of fresh air through a comedy scene that honestly, had become rather stale. The new comics were irreverent, coarse and trendy. Responsible for great new comedy (Black Adder, The Comic Strip) and some terrible crap (so bad I’ve blanked it out) they took the establishment to task. A lot of us had long been uneasy with the clumsy and sexist nature of some of Benny Hill’s material and the new comics picked up on that sentiment. Although other established comedians were picked on too, Benny was an easy target and he bore the brunt of their attack. Barrage after barrage of anti Benny Hill material exploded around him. The tabloid newspapers picked up on the theme and suddenly there were enough people calling him sexist (as well drawing criticism of his treatment and portrayal of old people) that the country pretty quickly turned away from him. Some even felt the comedian was an embarrassment to Britain. Soon after the uproar started Teddington based Thames TV canceled Benny's show and his contract. Benny Hill had gone from loved to loathed virtually overnight.
That was nearly 25 years ago and one could reasonably expect perspective and time to soften our views but in my narrow poll of British friends I discovered that not much has changed in the way people think of Benny. I was surprised at this but then even I still have no desire to watch him chased across a garden by 10 bikini clad woman. I don’t think that any of the major UK stations ever re-run any of his series and when I asked my sons (13 & 15) only one had actually heard of him but he had never seen any of his comedy.
Is it fair? The more I think about it the less I’m not sure either way. Truth be told, if you take out the childish slapstick, and the semi naked ladies, a lot of if what is left was very clever and funny. Was it sexist? Well yeah, clearly it was and long after attitudes had started changing. Someone should have explained it to Benny. But then again, if the Americans and Germans are still laughing with him, shouldn’t the British re-visit too?
He seemed a nice enough old bloke, in the pub that Christmas. My mates might have given me shit when I bought him that glass of wine but even then I just felt bad for him. He’d been a superstar and now he was hated and he hadn’t changed, everyone else did. Perhaps my country does owe him a bit more than a glass of red wine, maybe we should clean up his act, issue some DVDs without the slapstick and Alfred ‘Benny’ Hill should get some respect.
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Bazza
