Line #9 Creator/BennyHill

Context Creator / BennyHill

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1	[[quoteright:260:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/benny_hill1.jpg]]
2	->''"If you can mix glamor and gags, then you can catch the audience twice over."''
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4	Benny Hill (real name Alfred Hawthorne Hill, 21 January 1924 -- 20 April 1992) was a prolific English comic, actor, and singer best known for his television programme ''Series/TheBennyHillShow''.
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6	His on-screen persona was as a skirt-chasing DirtyOldMan (or, sometimes, a skirt-chasing young man), and there was much {{Fanservice}}. Some of his humour today walks into the sexist, which has [[ValuesDissonance affected his reputation]], although the women involved with his shows have denied that they perceived the shows (or Hill himself) as sexist. His stock answer to the accusations was to point out it was always the men who looked like fools in the sketches.
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8	That said, when non-Britons are speaking of British comedy geniuses, Hill is often [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff mentioned in the same breath]] as, say, ''Creator/MontyPython''. This mystifies many Brits, who see him as a somewhat cheesy relic of a bygone age; for many years after his death his show was not repeated on TV in the UK, although it was always available on video and (later) DVD.
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10	That said, in 2006 there was a TV show entitled ''Is Benny Hill Still Funny?'' in which a cross-section of the British public, most of whom were too young to have seen his original broadcasts, were shown a selection of his sketches and asked the eponymous question. The general consensus was: "Yes".
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12	He also recorded several novelty records, of which the best-known is "Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West" [[note]] this was released in the early Seventies, a time when very few hit songs had accompanying "videos" — a trend bucked by Benny, who recorded a silent-movie style film to accompany the song; in releasing a promotional "video" at the same time, he was ahead of even Music/{{Queen\|Band}} who are usually thought of as the pioneers [[/note]] which was a number one hit [[note]] although since two of the others also got into the top twenty, he technically doesn't count as a OneHitWonder [[/note]].
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14	In recent years, it seems that Benny is being rehabilitated; ITV included repeats of ''The Benny Hill Show '' in its Christmas 2021 schedule, and the show now gets aired in Britain on nostalgia channels lower down the Freeview listings.
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16	Most of his comedy is visual, which typically leads to good video sales worldwide. No translation is needed for the most part, especially for the pretty girls in colorful dresses.
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18	!!Notable works:
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20	* ''Series/TheBennyHillShow''
21	* ''Film/ThoseMagnificentMenInTheirFlyingMachines''
22	* ''Film/ChittyChittyBangBang''
23	* ''Film/TheItalianJob1969''

Context Creator / BennyHill