This is the first in a series of occasional posts that will highlight the influences of my life. Today’s episode: YES! It’s
I truly hope all of you youngsters have been able to, at some point in your lives, watch a sketch or an episode of The Benny Hill Show. It originally aired in the UK, but was shown here in the US in a variety of places. I remember the first time I saw it was on PBS. For me, it was as groundbreaking and awesome as today’s Sherlock must be to a lot of people.
Benny’s show combined various elements into a delicious stew that left you wanting for more after each episode: double entendres, sexual innuendo, clever song lyrics, misdirection, dirty limericks, and, of course, sexy sexy ladies in revealing outfits.
My words are not good enough to describe how great this show was. So, let me show you some of my favorite clips/bits. In this first one, Benny plays a recurring character, the lusty bumbling news anchor:
Oh, the outfits:
The Lady Godiva sketch:
The Swedish sketch:
The metaphors are perfect.
Occasionally, you caught a glimpse of actual boobies! (1:15 mark)
Finally, the ending credits that predicted Ben Roethlisberger and the song that everyone knows by heart and associates with Benny:
You can see Benny’s influence everywhere with Top Gear and Flight of the Conchords just a couple of examples. If you want to spend a few hours down the rabbithole with me, here is a good place to start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrCc8UUF-DY
Thank you, Benny Hill, wherever you are. You truly shaped Lil’ Balls of Steel into the perverted dirty-minded occasionally-funny BoS here today!
When I was able to watch this I was in my mid-teens; it was fantastic stoned viewing. The best sideways camera glance in the business.
My dad liked it too; very important to me.
Same with mine. Loved watching it with him.
I confess that I may not be the greatest fan of this show, but I most definitely hear that infamous theme song running through my head ~80% of the time I ask my employees to get things done.
I loved Benny Hill so much I got my mom to order me a six-VHS tape set of the show from some catalogue. Not sure if I still have it, but, damn, I loved that show. Plus, I could play Yakety Sax from memory by high school.
This is the very first thing I recall my mother disapproving of me watching. I believe I was in kindergarten or 1st grade. Always was more than a little weird. Thanks for the childhood memories.
Benny Hill was about 7th-8th grade for me. It was one of those shows you claimed you watched before you did, because everyone was talking about it, then went home and set your alarm for 3:45 so you could watch from 4-6 and not look like an asshole during the next day’s lunch.
Of course then you’d fall asleep face first into your PB&J and still look like an asshole, but at least you got to see a lot of cleavage first.
PBS was pretty awesome in the 70s. We also got SCTV and Dave Allen. And every now and then we’d get a run of Fawlty Towers. Not sure who was doing the programming, but they deserve a Nobel. For a 12 year old piglet, that made for quite a Saturday night. Top it off with SNL and finally Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. Woo!
http://38.media.tumblr.com/c08aa11c8ceff867653088bd517419f7/tumblr_n2l6v0UMyh1ttn3lzo1_500.gif
PBS was also the place where I discovered Monty Python. It was a glorious era. For some reason I never wanted to watch Benny Hill with anyone else in the room.
Weird.
Monty Python is another influence. Possible other post.
One of my very first introductions to Monty Python was a panning camera that showed a bunch of women in bikinis and then Cleese say, ‘And now for something completely different’. That got my attention awfully quick.