Benny Hill

Alfred Hawthorne "Benny" Hill was an English comedian, actor, writer and musician. He is best remembered for his television programme The Benny Hill Show, a comedy variety show merging slapstick, burlesque, double entendre and innuendo in live and filmed segments with Hill in almost every one. The BFI called Hill "the first British comedian to attain fame through television" and "a major star for over forty years". Making his television debut in 1949, he appeared on BBC variety shows where he developed his parodic sketches and, in 1954, was voted television personality of the year. The Benny Hill Show, which debuted in 1955, was among the most-watched programmes in the UK; his audience was more than 21 million in 1971. The show was also exported to over 100 countries, a global appeal which the BFI attributed to "Hill's emphasis on visual humour transcending language barriers". Hill received a BAFTA Television Award for Best Writer and a Rose d'Or, and he was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance and for two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Variety. In 1990 Anthony Burgess described Hill as "a comic genius steeped in the British music hall tradition". From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Hill) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)