I used to watch Benny Hill on American TV and recently I rediscovered it on BBC America and this last weekend I discovered something that had not been there before or at least I had not seen before - nipples (and full butt cracks too for that matter).
In the past I had seen hands over boobs, cleverly placed towels and such, but never nipples and butt cracks. Did Hill become risque as the programs went on or did American television edit the programs or what?
I don’t get BBC America, but would like an assurance that none of the above displayed body parts belonged to Benny. Please.
They used to run Benny Hill in syndication when I lived in Utah. No way would they have run a comedy with nipples* (KBYU, the public TV station out of Brigham Young U, censored bare nipples in an episode of “Sherlock Holmes”. KUED, the University of Utah PBS, didn’t).
Out of concern that their show would get censored or, more likely, not picked up in the first place by more conservative markets, I’m sure they were edited well in advance.
BBC America is a cable station, and has a lot more latitude in what it puts on TV.
Benny Hill started off on the BBC in the 1950s (in black & white) but the shows you see in America are likely to be those he made when working with Thames Television (part of Independent Television) from the 1970s onwards.
In the UK we are rather more tolerant of the human body and so nipples, arses and the odd full-frontal (male or female) have been part of our staple TV diet since the late 60s, but only after 9 o’clock, which is considered the “watershed” between general and adult viewing.
Despite his general sauciness, Benny Hill’s shows featured very few nipples. So you must be extremely observant, TV time!!
The ones in syndicatioon alwys has the “mirror-image” Thames TV logo.
You don’t need to be particularly sharp-eyed to see the nipples. I recall seeing a VHS tape of Benny Hill in which he removed a coat from a woman. You apparently saw breasts with nipples – but it was only a fake, on the coat itself. I saw the same bit on the syndicated show, and that shot had been edited out altogether. Can’t have fake nipples on TV!
When Benny Hill died, I heard a quote from him that went: ‘When you love someone, and she doesn’t love you back…’ What’s the rest of the quote?
There were rumours that Benny Hill died a virgin. He was coy about the issue. From IMDB:
Not post-Janet Jackson Nipplegate you can’t. There’s also this disconnect where it’s “okay” to show barebreasted Native Americans, Polynesian women and subSaharan African women on syndicated TV but almost never barebreasted European women. When I first saw Shaka Zulu in Atlanta in the late 80s they showed it during prime-time.
I watch BH quite a bit on BBC America and yes I’ve seen the nipples.
Unfortunately I work with a man who is shorter and balding and I have this incredible urge to slap the top of his head repeatedly.
Especially when you hear Fur Elise?
Even that seems to have ceased; I was watching National Geographic Explorer the other month, and the breasts of native women were pixelated.
Blame Janet Jackson and Nipplegate!
I’ve never touched or kissed pixelated breasts. How are they different from standard issue?
Pixelated… I usually refer to it as “computer dehanced”. 
I suspect it was mostly a matter of the timing. Benny HIll was syndicated in the US starting in the 70’s through the 80’s. There was a lot of saucieness, and the occasional nipple popped out. Given that the ratio of shows to nipples was very high, and the theme of the show was not blatant nudity but rather titilation, the syndicators probably just found the more blatant examples and edited them out. But with limited time and resources they missed quite a few boobies.
The FCC at the time wasn’t really able to be the bully it is now. There are a lot of business reasons that the FCC is cracking down these days.
There was an “exposé” of Benny Hill’s rather sad private life on TV over here a few years ago.
A number of young ladies, mostly dancers etc from his show, were wheeled out to tell of the times they went back to his modest flat and he asked them to “be nice to Uncle Benny”. This was code for a blow job.
One girl commented that he had applied liberal amounts of what, er, tasted like cheap aftershave to his knob beforehand.