Benny Hill in Retrospect

Everybody seems to think the most offensive thing about The Benny Hill Show for modern audiences is the sexism and it is true that the programme is guilty of the objectification of women, most of them are present only to flash lots of cleavage and wear short skirts.  There are also a lot of sketches and musical numbers featuring Benny Hill and associates in drag, parodying both specific female celebrities of the time and women in general, in unflattering terms.  But the thing I'd forgotten about it was the sheer amount of black face and yellow face involved in sketches.  Hardly a show goes by without Benny Hill or Bob Todd blacking up, (the latter often portraying the old Southern family retainer in the various Tennessee Williams parodies, or, sporting an Afro wig, as Mark, one of the assistants of  'A Man Called Backside', an Ironside parody).  The level of racism stereotyping involved is relatively mild compared to contemporary TV shows, although the sketches where Benny pretends to be a Chinaman that no-one can understand, often joined by Bob Todd blacked up as a generic Indian/Pakistani, (the two nationalities being interchangeable in seventies TV), are utterly cringe worthy. (Although, I cannot deny that back in those more innocent times, as a child, I laughed at these sketches, seeing them now, though, it is hard to understand why).  To be fair, as time went on, such sketches became less prominent, as attitudes to race on TV gradually changed.

But in between all the sexism and racism you can see glimmers of some genuine satire - one of the very last shows features a parody of the then popular consumer affairs programme, The Cook Report, focusing on allegations that presenter Roger Cook deliberately provoked the often violent confrontations that were a 'highlight' of the show.  Even in the earlier shows you can find some attempts to satirise such things as the hypocrisy of TV commissioning policies.  one sketch features Hill as a supposedly liberal-minded TV producer for Thames TV having a telephone conversation with 'William Shakespeare' who is trying to get his new drama Othello commissioned.  While the producer likes the plot, he begins to baulk at the idea of both leading male parts being black - 'Not that it bothers me, of course, but the network just isn't too keen on that sort of thing' - and finally put off when he finds that the lead female character is white - 'Just too controversial for the network'.  Moreover, many of Benny hill's impersonations are very good - his Orson Welles (in 'Great Mysteries With Orson Buggy') is surprisingly effective, as were his Roger cook, Dickie Davis and various parodies of seventies newsreaders.  Although, I have to say that possibly the most disturbing thing for a modern audience I've seen was an impersonation: of Rolf Harris, who nowadays, of course, is considered so disgraced that his name cannot be mentioned on TV, let alone any of his TV shows screened.