Mark Carey’s play questions why Benny Hill was expunged from comedy

Mark Carey has written a 100-minute play with songs that asks why Benny Hill has been so thoroughly expunged from the comedy pantheon. The piece flashes back through Hill’s life from his last days as a “mad recluse” talking to a visiting solicitor about his will. All other roles are played by Georgie Taylor, who portrays Hill’s father “the Captain” (who sold “rubber johnnies”), and various figures from Hill’s life; we also see Benny writing letters to his auntie from cafes in France.

Between scenes a babble of online voices debates his vexed legacy, and Taylor occasionally narrates as a Ben Elton‑alike 1980s comic whose generation is accused here of cruelly and hypocritically casting Hill beyond the entertainment pale. The play rehearses familiar reasons for Hill’s fall from favour — a humour many modern viewers find sexist, racist and sad — and, for all its pleasures, the production doesn’t add a great deal of new insight.

In its closing moments it seems to concur that Hill’s comedy of old men perving on buxom beauties had had its day. There are gestures toward vindication, including a sketch that teases a racist east Asian caricature and a list of other now‑heralded acts who performed similar material, but the defence rarely goes beyond “a joke’s either funny or it’s not” and allegations of PC gone mad.

Key Topics

Culture, Benny Hill, Mark Carey, Georgie Taylor, Ben Elton, British Comedy