The Benny Hill Show (1969)

Whether wokies like it or not, Benny Hill is our heritage

Alternative comedy has come and gone, but how has Hill - invariably being pursued into woods by young women who would lose their clothing on tree branches - sidestepped the more ferocious forces of wokeness? I think it's precisely because of cancel culture that he's made a comeback from beyond the grave. He's a giant raspberry to the current climate of fear and loathing.

Benny Hill's The Strolling Ones

The Strolling Ones never made it as part of the British invasion. Here, singing "Rose" as Mick Jagger, Benny is also the drummer, the guitar player, the rest of the band, a man in the audience and a screaming girl.

This very human tendency to love the lowest when he sees it may have prevented him watching Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. One sketch in the Benny Hill Show (Thames) was a remarkably close copy of Mrs Blixby and the Colonel's Coat, shown in this series a year ago.

In the Benny Hill Show (Thames) pretty girls kept lifting their skirts and shoving their bottoms at the camera. Benny's mistake is to suppose that his own face has as much to offer, even when he equips it with a smirk. His confidence in his own naughty charm seems to have reached the point where he favours worthless material over any other kind. Pee-pee, poo-poo, cock caught in an accordion.

the Benny Hill Show (Thames) showed no more signs than usual of being significantly different from the worst. The trailer was all I could stand.

Having poured scorn on Benny Hill's self-congratulatory slovenliness in the past, I'm bound to say that The Benny Hill Show (Thames) had its moments, with Hill convulsing himself less often than usual and putting some of the effort saved into diverting his audience. Hill's drag acts are amusing enough in a Dick Emery sort of way, but really his Elizabeth Taylor was a lot less interesting than his Richard Burton - a penetrating effort which showed just how deep Hill could strike if he had a mind to, or had a mind.

One of the endearing things about the Benny Hill Show (Thames repeat) is his relish for truly terrible TV, old jokes, awful old films, commercials, westerns, action replays, repeats. All this is a solace not to say poultice at a time like this, when there is nothing much on but truly terrible TV.

Over the Benny Hill Show (Thames) I prefer to draw a veil. Benny once paid me the compliment of parodying me on screen, a favour which precludes my pointing out at any length that his work is deteriorating to the merest self-regard and that if he radiates even an erg more complacency he'll go off like a pile of radioactive tapioca.

All comedians are thieves (so are writers - I should know). As a comedian who writes his own script, Benny Hill is bound to be a compulsive gag-snatcher. One could date the vintage of many of his jokes in The Benny Hill Show (Thames) like a conoisseur appreciating good old port.