On 22nd February 1992 King of Pop Michael Jackson met the King of Comedy, Benny Hill. Benny was seriously ill in a cardiac unit, and was to pass away on 20th April that year. While there were photographs, the meeting itself went unrecorded. Playwright Jonathan Morris thus set himself the imaginative task of considering just what the pair might have discussed.
With Phil Nice as Benny and Daniel Anthony as Michael, this half-hour mixture of classic Hill soundbites and Jackson fandom mixed with a little autobiographical history is the result.
Opening with some wonderfully hoary “get well soon” joke messages, Michael’s arrival has Benny first grasping the publicity opportunity then relaxing into the role of adored comedian as the photographer and entourage depart and the pair are left to chat.
Michael describes how Benny was his only opportunity to laugh as a child, and how he continues to enjoy Hill’s work on tape from a vast collection at his home.
In turn, Benny shares the history of his career and the pair find a mutual admiration in the classic comics of the silent era, Benny being particularly amazed to find that his beloved Charlie Chaplin himself was amongst Hill's greatest fans.
Talk turns to the end of the Benny Hill Shows. He cites Ben Elton, but, as Ben Elton pointed out in his Christmas 2021 West End Stand-Up show, "Benny Hill was on the nation’s TVs for over 30 years and is repeated still. Ben Elton himself hasn’t been on TV since the late 1990s, so who had the bigger TV career?"
More likely, the fault lay in the astute director Hal Roach’s assessment that the show had, by featuring the under-costumed “Hill’s Angels,” lost its family audience. Never Hill’s idea, he explains it as an attempt by a director to chase the ratings via the “Hot Gossip” vibe of Kenny Everett. Hill's attempts to 'clean up' the show floundered as he found his female audience had gone in protest at the girls – and the male audience followed when the girls left. Combined with the increasing cost and changing public tastes, it was the end.
The play finishes on the high note of Jackson feeling honoured to appear in a revival of “The Benny Hill Show,” sketching out the ideas until Hill's heart can take no more.
Nice and Anthony provide simple yet effective impressions of the pair, affectionate rather than caricature. Morris allows the authentic voice of Hill to dominate, “little heart” and other tokens of affection pepper the script, and while not really examining any evidence closely, packs in plenty of comment over the space of thirty minutes.
As the name of the production company somewhat underplays, this is more than an “Average Romp”, and can be heard for free at: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C6eI2DXdiBhTCYlPE6UA4?si=c5fc1f3bf92d4833