By Elliott West
“Just because nobody complains doesn’t mean all parachutes are perfect.”
Benny Hill
Introduction
Alfred Hawthorne Hill or Benny Hill as millions of television viewers knew him, was one of the most successful British comedians of all time. A radio star in his early career, he made his debut on Variety Bandbox in 1947. A man with a twinkle in his eye, a wry grin and a saucy postcard sense of humour. Quickly recognised as a person with natural talent, Benny had his own radio and television programmes on the BBC before moving into the phenomenal format of The Benny Hill Show that ran on the BBC between 1959 and 1969 and then moved to Thames Television until executives pulled the plug in 1989.
I loved Benny’s humour and vividly remember watching his show in the late 1970s and early 1980s on a Wednesday night. This was humour where Benny was actually always the underdog and the women the stronger sex but by the end, this once belly laugh, rib-tickler humour looked tired with an ageing man chasing half-clad women half his age. Hill became a victim of his success. His humour went out of fashion and became seen by some as lewd and crude, being forced to stand aside for a new breed of humour despite his shows being seen in 140 countries worldwide and dubbed into numerous languages.
The Lonely Figure
Yet behind this highly successful British comedian from Southampton who earned Thames Television £26 million and attracted an audience figure of up to 21 million viewers, was a shy recluse and a spendthrift whose success with the opposite sex on screen was far from the truth offscreen. Benny Hill like so many comedians of his time was far removed from the television clown. He lived in a rented flat in Teddington Lock, wore old clothes, glued the soles of his shoes and bought discounted food and dented cans. The man who had used Benny as his stage name as a homage to the American comedian Jack Benny and had based his humour on greats such as W.C. Fields and Charlie Chaplin spent very little in his frugal private life, having a phobia of spending money. He would rather walk to wherever he was going rather pay for a bus or taxi A man who never owned a car
The real Benny Hill confided in his closest friends that he felt lonely, depressed and ugly and despite proposing to two women in his life had a vacuous love life. His shyness prevented him from showing his emotions and he was always treated as a friend rather than a romantic connection. Some say he was impotent or gay, scared of intimate sexual intercourse and despite the numerous beautiful women that appeared with him, all would remain a figment of his comedy scripts.
The Final Blow
Benny Hill never got over his brutal sacking by Thames Television. Called into an executive office, he was dispatched faster out of the door than he had walked through it. A parting of ways that left a bitter taste and turned Hill into a broken man. He put on weight and looked ill but that didn’t stop him from making a fairly successful series in the USA with the same tried and tested format. The American shows are quite funny and this was one of several countries where his humour remained highly popular then and beyond his death. Yet he would never again appear on television in Britain and it would be years before his shows were again shown on lesser-known channels. A burst of canned laughter that remained in tightly sealed cans in a television vault, too risky to show again on a mainstream channel for risk of offence. Benny was an oversized child with a highly sophisticated pen. His scripts were created on scraps of note paper or restaurant napkins. Brave, bold, well thought out and brilliantly executed by a team of actors and actresses that he considered to be his adopted family.
Yet, in the end, dying the same Easter weekend as Frankie Howerd in 1992, Benny Hill died alone in his Middlesex flat. Numerous unanswered telephone calls and a smell coming from the flat reported by a neighbour had caused alarm bells to sound and his long-term friend and director Dennis Kirkland went round to Flat 7 of Fairwater House on Twickenham Road in Teddington. Despite continuous knocking on the door, no one answered and all that could be heard was a television blaring out at high volume. Dennis had broken open the door and found Benny, surrounded by dirty plates glasses, piles of papers and videotapes, slumped in an armchair, blue in appearance with blood running from his ear. The smell was atrocious and it is thought that Hill had died two days previously from coronary thrombosis. An undignified end to such a huge comedy great, in a flat that certainly didn’t reflect the man who lived there. Even a number of the cheques that he received as payment for his work remained untouched on the mantlepiece. Dying at 68, Benny left a will but it hadn’t been updated for several years, 1961 to be precise with all those included having already passed away with the vast share supposed to be going to his parents. Instead, his £7,548,192, equivalent to £16,600,000 in 2021 was shared between his seven nieces and nephews.
Afterthoughts
Benny Hill was one of the funniest comedians that Great Britain has ever produced. His sense of timing and comedic delivery was exemplary, penned by his hand and still preserved in a large collection of his work, especially the long-running Benny Hill Show. His brand of humour was unique but based on his comedy heroes. Yet he ultimately felt that his private persona was being laughed at. A loner, recluse, surrounded by deafening laughter but in private this was replaced by an eery silence. Hill was the Chaplin of his time but his saucy humour would in the end be his noose, bringing his reign in comedy to a sudden and emotional end. Benny Hill was laughter personified, a genius in his own right and a blueprint for how comedy can be perfectly orchestrated.
