Yakety sax

Benny Hill's legacy is more relevant now than it ever was before

Alfred Hawthorne Hill was to TV entertainment what the saucy postcard was to literature. No one ever took saucy postcards that seriously, but, boy, did they laugh at them. And Benny Hill was the same.

Hill was ultimately himself to be subjected to mockery, by comedian colleague Ben Elton, and later he was taken all too seriously, when his contract was cancelled by Thames Television in 1991.

Elton’s attack of Hill’s humour was scathing, and was viewed by one newspaper at least as “like watching an elderly uncle being kicked to death by young thugs.” GQ magazine rallied to Hill’s defence by stating that “blaming Hill for rape statistics is like pointing a finger at concert pianists for causing elephant poaching.” To be honest, I think Seven Brides for Seven Brothers might have contributed more to rape statistics than Benny Hill ever did. The Broadcasting Standards Authority hammered home the nails in Hill’s coffin long before he was even out of this life, saying “It’s not as funny as it was to have half-naked girls chased across the screen by a dirty old man.” It’s precisely because it wasn’t that funny any more that Hill should have carried on depicting the despicable. Perhaps then, the BSA would have got the point.

Benny Hill was dead for several days before his absence was noticed. When the door to his ordinary, hum-drum Teddington flat was breached by police, they found Benny dead, on 20 April 1992. Four days later, he was buried in Hampshire, the county where he had come into the world 68 years previously. The gutter press dug and rooted for dirt on this “quiet homosexual”, and they found nothing. Not one shred. Benny Hill was as upstanding in his ways as the next man; no, was more so than most, in fact.

I always enjoyed Mr Hill. I laughed at his jokes and I laughed at his antics and, yes, I laughed at him as a dirty old man chasing half-naked girls across my screen. But he never caught one. He never molested one. All he ever did was point a finger, as Oscar Wilde had so often before him pointed fingers, at how ludicrous dirty old men are, and he had the skill to do it and make those very same dirty old men laugh at themselves for their ludicrousness. He played Chinamen, Irishmen and Germans who always had more sense than the British, the oh, so British counterparts opposite whom he was playing, and the Brit was always the butt of the joke, never the foreigner.

He used close-shave parody that incited indignation among people who had the wit to attack his humour, but lacked the wit to attack the problem he highlighted so forcibly.

He died a broken, lonely, ordinary, unassuming, unpretentious man who had devoted his life to making people laugh, and laugh at themselves, at that. He ended all his shows by profusely saying “Thank you” and bowing deferentially - I believe with all sincerity - to the people who’d already thanked him so profusely in return - by laughing at his nigh-on inimitable humour. And it never will be imitated. No one could do it as well as Benny Hill, and nowadays no one could do it anyway. “Dirty old men of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your titters.”

He lectured nothing and he taught very little to those who needed so much to be taught. But, Alfred Hawthorne Hill, you taught me so very much: that humour can be as much a source of the truth as truth itself. Your name is lit in limelights for me, and you’re not only honoured in Hampshire, but also in Herent.

Image: By publicity kit, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59114395