We’re backing plan to honour TV BENNY NEEDS A BUST
THE Daily Star Sunday is getting behind a campaign to honour Benny Hill with a statue in his hometown.
Our TV critic Garry Bushell has teamed up with sculptor Graham Ibbeson to put up a bronze of the comedian in Southampton.
Barbara Windsor, Vicki Michelle, Rick Wakeman and Joe Pasquale are among the stars backing the campaign which aims to raise £60,000.
Garry said: “Benny was Britain’s biggest ever TV comedy export. He was shown in more than 100 countries and adored the world over.
“His comedy was marinated in the honest vulgarity of English popular humour. This shy, modest man was genuinely a people’s comic, loved by millions.
“To his detractors Benny was downmarket and perhaps sexist. But there was far more to Hill’s comedy than the mild smut of seaside postcards – not that there’s anything wrong with that!”
Garry added: “He was the first comedian of the television age, and the first to JOE HINTON use the medium as a target.” A typical Benny Hill show mixed parodies of TV hits with visual comedy, clever mime work, comic songs and character comedy.
Garry went on: “Lisping Fred Scuttle and Ernie the Milkman are remembered with affection to this day.
“Benny was a comedy genius and it’s a national scandal that his legacy is unrecognised in his own country.
“That’s why I’m leading the campaign for a statue to be raised to honour his memory.”
Benny, whose real name was Alfred Hawthorne Hill, died in 1992 aged 68.
Graham Ibbeson, who made the Eric Morecambe bronze in Morecambe, has designed a saluting Fred Scuttle and showbiz stars are ready to help drum up cash via kickstarter.com.
Southampton Council is eager to display the statue in their town and bosses have promised to help find a prominent location for it. Garry added: “It only takes 6,000 of Benny’s fans worldwide to donate £10 and we’ll make the dream possible.”