Why The Royal Mail Rejected Benny Hill
THE Royal Mail has rejected Benny Hill. Old Mr Anorak found Hill more depressing than funny, Although his comedy is evoked at our patron’s Thai ladies’ ping-pong team winter traning camp. Anorak’s Man in LA sees a legend spurned:Great Britain’s Royal Mail service has rejected a stamp honoring Benny Hill to commemorate the 50th anniversary of ITV.
The series ran on ITV for 20 years and featured classic and slapstick and burlesque sketches, blackouts, sight gags, song parody, pioneering use of “undercranking” sped-up footage and double entendre humour– always suitable for the entire family and always hilarious. The series was packaged and ran for decades in the United States, where it became a major influence on the development of tabloid television, not to mention generations of comedians to come (its importance is covered in the book Tabloid Baby, which this month is celebrating its tenth anniversary).
Despite its success, Thames Television dropped The Benny Hill Show in 1989, admittedly as part of the trend of political correctness that was prevalent at the time: some had accused the shows as being sexist and racist.
Twenty years later, the country that spewed out the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen and Russell Brand, continues to be imprisoned by political correctness. Even the Daily Telegraph, in reporting the stamp insult, says the Benny Hill Show “is best remembered for the closing credits in which Hill chased an assortment of scantily-clad women.”
Sad.
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Posted: 8th, November 2009 | In: The Consumer Comments (4) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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November 8th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
We grew out of the use of the swanee whistle to legitimise a hand up a nurse’s skirt, and used it for animals falling over instead.
Not much of an improvement, but at least no-one was slapping the need for a drink into the front of Bob Todd’s head.
November 8th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
How this country has evolved in thirty years since Benny Hill was removed from our screens for ’sexism’.
The ‘comedian’ Jonathon Ross, on average some upwards of £10M pa richer from the TV licence pot for his ‘humour’, and his smackhead friend ‘entertaining’ the great unwashed each time they tune into Big Brother.
November 8th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I never liked Benny Hill’s show.
November 8th, 2009 at 9:42 am
I liked Dave Allen