Early Benny Hill

This is probably my all time favorite special, from start to finish it's fantastic:

 

Certainly that rendition of the "Lower Tidmarsh Fire Brigade" sketch slays his 1981 remake of same, and makes that later version all the more pathetic. Note at both the beginning and near the end of this B&W version, Liz Fraser amongst the cast.

 

I notice the audiences seem to enjoy the earlier ones too. The live audience throughout that 1970 edition are in fits of laughter throughout, while the 1981 version you sort of hear more standard normal average laughs.

 

Dennis Kirkland appears in this with Eric Sykes:

 

@W.B.

Would you have any idea if the original audio tapes exist for this? As he is of course miming to a pre-recorded track, and It's much better than the released version on the album.

 

I doubt that the pre-made musical tracks for use on the show would have existed today (especially within the BBC). Rarely was there the preservationist attitude in Britain then that we are seeing today.

Also, am I alone in thinking that Dennis Kirkland looked almost like a live-action version of Jon Arbuckle from the Garfield comic strip?

 

Some behind the scenes photographs, some are from dress rehearsals, and some never came to be in a show.

This one's interesting, Hugh Paddock in place of Nicolas Parsons and a completely different set to the final sketch (pictured underneath this one).

 

Interesting to note that the monitor in the corner appears to be black and white, which would indicate that if this was how they showed the filmed sequences to the audience, they saw them in Black and White.

This is of course Benny singing "The Dustbins of Your Mind" in late 1972.

 

A sketch or when things go wrong quickie from 1970 which never came to being, although other ones which did appear used the same set.

 

My colorization of an old photo:

 

Great thread idea.

 

Here we have a very young 24 year old Benny in 1948!

 

And a few months before the first Benny Hill Show in January 1955 and he's already TV personality of the year for 1954!

 

Photo of the Thames canteen and parking lot which Benny used as the end chase for December 1970. The camera was most likely sitting on that stairway.




You can see him run out in this video:

 

A rare piece of Footage, the original Paris By Night 'Tourist' sketch.

 

Upon going through some old Hard Drives, I found this radio doco from 2009, here it is. I also have another one somewhere, and I'll upload that too eventually.

 

Have been playing around with AVIsynth. Here's a restoration attempt. Nothing special, just me playing around with various things. I'm working a few things out. This contains both before & after and switched between the two:

 

@W.B. Would you know where this location was? It looks like a fun park place, It seemed to appear first in 1983, and was also a part of quite a few of the latter run-offs:

 

Oh, I can answer that one. From the 1983 series to the end, many outdoor shots were filmed at Thorpe Park in Surrey, England. Whenever filming was made, essentially the entire park was closed to the public.

 

I saw the former Thames complex in Teddington when I went to London in 2004.

 

Digitally restored, there's still quite a bit of film dirt, but it's miles better than how it originally looked:

 

And this is more or less how it originally looked:

 

@W.B. Has the piece of music at the start of this ever been identified? it seemed to be used whenever he walk out throughout most of 1975 to 1977 and then in 1985 before he performed 'What A World'.

 

I've been trying to find the titles of music used on Benny Hill for pantomime, chase skits,etc. I cannot figure out the title of one
of the music numbers. It is the same music used in this Volkswagen ad from 2014 at around :15 seconds in:


does anyone know the title of that music, and the original artist that recorded it?

 

It's literally called 'Do-be-do-be do" I think, It plays in a medly with "Für Elise," "Mah-Na, Mah-Na" and "Gimme Dat Ding,"

Info on music here:
Benny's Place • Essay on The Stock Music of The Benny Hill Show »

Of course it would've been sped up on TBHS as most music was.