Back in the early eighties one of our local stations showed Benny Hill late Saturday night. There was one time they showed an episode with a fair amount of nudity. I thought that I might have dozed off before it came on and dreamed the whole thing, but when I consulted with friends at church the next morning they confirmed that they had indeed shown us nekkid women. Did anyone else experience this?
Yeah, back in the 80s. It was a topless dance number, as I recall. DC area PBS affiliate. PBS had a fair amount of high-minded nudity in those days, esp. I, CLAUDIUS and other MASTERPIECE THEATER-type shows, but this Benny Hill one really stood out.
I remember one episode with flashes of actual nudity too. It didn’t seem deliberate so much as slightly more cavalier, like they were quietly attempting to push boundaries.
Was it one with Jane Leves? :o
Here it is. About 3.30 minutes in.
I watched Benny Hill for the babes. 
i remeber benny hill having "uncut /uncensored "specisls"on hbo
Tastefully done! :o
This footage comes from a Benny Hill Down Under special, filmed in Australia in 1977. Australian TV was trying to be a bit daring with nudity at the time. And, most importantly this particular bit was filmed at Smoky Dawson’s Ranch, a horse riding school run by former radio and tv cowboy str, right next door to my place!!!*
According to Wikipediathis was cannibalised for American TV half-hour specials.
- I am available as a special guest for 70s TV conventions and outlet mall ribbon cuttings.
Not Benny Hill, but I remember when I was a kid there was one Sunday when my family was watching the movie “Carry On Dick” (on CBC) before going to church. There’s one scene where a woman is pulling on a bell rope and her boobs pop out of her top. At that moment, I realised that nudity can suddenly appear on TV anywhere, at any time, even on Sunday morning before church.
Benny Hil nudity on PBD wouldn’t be “by mistake” – Public TV, as noted, was more liberal toward nudity*. I’m a bit surprised that public TV ran Benny Hill – in my experience, it mostly ran on independent TV stations that, in the 1970s, 1980sm, and 1990s wouldn’t have allowed nudity. Back then, you could only get uncensored Benny Hill on videos or on premium cable television.
*As I’ve remarked before, when I lived in Salt Lake City in the 1980s, there was a profound difference between the Public TV station hosted by Brigham Young University (KBYU), a Church school, and that hosted by the University of Utah (KUED), a state school. KUED would run anything, even if it had any nudity. KBYU would censor it. KBYU actually censored the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes episodes, along with a showing of the film Diva. Neither channel showed Benny Hill, although that ran (censored, of course) on the independent station. One of KBYU’s saving graces is that it ran Rocky and Bullwinkle. Uncensored.
When I was a kid, my friends and I only watched this show in the hopes we might get to see some nudity.
And it wasn’t a mistake either.
It was funny, we had to keep our eyes glued to the TV, because, if you blinked, you might miss it.
That’s more-or-less my experience (here it ran on WFLD, Channel 32, which went on to become a Fox affiliate.) But googling around, it does seem a number of PBS stations around the country did run it. I, too, could swear I remember seeing a bit o’ boobie watching Benny Hill occasionally, but I may be having a Mandela effect moment. (Of course, Mandela effect requires more than one person, so here’s another person who has a similar memory: “Late 1970s or early 1980s, WFLD in Chicago showed Benny Hill every night at 10:30. One night one of those filmed sketches showed a young lady in front of an open window, she whips her bra off and for a brief moment I’m seeing a topless woman on tv! It took seemingly forever for that episode to be rerun, and when it was, the bit was edited.”)
Did you praise the Lord for that wonderful event? 
I don’t remember seeing BH on PBS, but on a local DC-area UHF, WDCA. For an early teen boy in the 80’s, it was as good as you could really hope for since dad was not into any kind of pay TV channels. I have vague memories of seeing some actual nudity, but am not sure if I’m remembering it correctly.
I can confirm that the PBS station in St.Louis played Benny Hill shows with boobs in the 80s.
This is a Monty Python story, not Benny Hill, but kinda fits in with the theme of the thread. My brother and sister and I used to watch Monty Python on the local PBS station every Sunday night. One Sunday night my aunt and uncle were visiting (dad’s older sister and her husband). The three of us kids gather at the appointed time to watch MPFC, our parents are explaining to my aunt and uncle how much us kids love the show (even though they don’t really understand it)… and that night’s episode just happened to be the Full Frontal Nudity episode. :eek:
Needless to say my parents were horrified and embarrassed, while the three of us sat there laughing our asses off.
It’s all harmless fun right? 
AFAIK, that’s the only time the program deliberately had any nudity.
They did the right thing! :o