How awesome is Benny Hill? I reckon that if he were alive today, he’d still be making the funniest show on TV. The Benny Hill show is still showing on Foxtel here in Australia and I relish when it comes on each night so I can get my fill.
Here in Australia, we’ve always had a better connection with British humour than American. Not that there’s anything wrong with American comics, but when you belong to an Empire where the King denounced the Pope so he could get a divorce and cut off his wife’s head, you can’t help but laugh can you?
But Benny takes the cake. His style of bawdy humour never fails to bring a smile to my face. Whether it’s the girls getting around in stockings after having their skirt ripped off, or his naughty poems, it’s 30 minutes of pure joy. Here’s a sample of one of his poems, titled “The birds and bees”:
I’d reached the age of fourteen and I hadn’t started courting,
And my mum was getting worried about me.
She said, “Dad, it’s time you told him all about the birds and bees,”
He said, “The birds and bees,” and sat me on his knee.
He said, “Now, remember Uncle Joe and that picnic a while ago,
How he went off into the woods with Auntie Pat?
And how I chased O’Reily’s daughter and what happened when I caught her?”
I said, “Yeah,” he said, “Well birds and bees does that.”
Dad works very hard indeed, well he got ten kids to feed,
Well ten and seven ninths to be precise.
And we all wear hand-me-downs, and as I am the youngest,
And the others are all girls, it ain’t very nice.
Dad said, “It’s time that you got wed,” I said, “I’d rather drop down dead,”
He said, “Now how about old Maude from Ikely down?”
I said, “Maude? Not bloody likely, she’s been out by half the chaps in Ikely,”
He said, “Well Ikely’s really quite a little town.”
This poem was provided by The Music Archive and you can read the whole poem here.
I think that with all the do-gooders out there, a show like The Benny Hill Show probably wouldn’t air these days. Benny was never afraid to poke fun at anyone. He might be called racist these days, considering he would make light of women, arabs, chinese, “African Americans”, and even Australians. If you ask me, you can’t get more diverse and equal-rights than that.
I grew up watching shows like this and Love Thy Neighbour. If you never got to see it, you’d be hard pressed to find a show that is more inappropriate or more racist. But the funny thing is, because of that show, I have always thought of the term “Nig Nog” as a term of endearment for black people. Not that I say it to them of course. Even I know how incorrect that would be these days.
The show centred around two neighbours. Eddie Booth who is white and Bill Reynolds, his black neighbour. Eddie would always refer to Bill as Sambo or Nig Nog, while Bill would retaliate with Honky, Snowflake or Paleface. While most of the humour was relatively benign, it would occasionally boil over and Eddie and Bill would come inches from punching each others lights out.
What we need is more shows like this back on TV. Screw political correctness. Where has it gotten us? It has led us to ban Christmas decorations in shopping centres in case we offend someone. It has led schools to not celebrate major holildays in case someone gets upset. Everyone needs to step the f**k back and be themselves again.
But I digress. Hats off to you, Benny. I think I might start my own tradition at home – raising a glass on the anniversary of Benny’s death. Or his birthday. Or maybe both. I know Benny would appreciate it.
