Had Sue Upton on the brain for some reason, which got me thinking about Benny Hill and watching some old clips. I was never a huge fan of his work, but never quite got the level of anger & condemnation it inspired.either. I mean is it really true that to this day, no UK terrestrial station has broadcast his show since 1992 ?
Benny was a teddybear compared to many in the industry, and there's far more sexist programmes still being aired today on the BBC. Granted, much of that is from the sixties and seventies, and I think part of both why Benny's humour never appealed all that much to me, and part of why there was so much disgust at the show may be generational. If Benny had stopped the show sometime earlier in the eighties, perhaps he'd be remembered as fondly as others of his same generation, who also came out of that same sort of music-hall tradition. (The ones sadly, that haven't since been found to have been pedophiles, that is.) But as is, he kept going till he was driven off the air, despite cutting hugely down on the sexist tropes towards the end. Same question of timing as perhaps with Clarkson.
Anyway, some clips... First the satirical. Then a brief bit of the real thing. And then Benny on Australian TV in 1960, with some singing...and some innuendo.
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