EyeSpy: Remembering Frankie Howerd and Benny Hill

It’s hard to believe but its 21-years since two of Britain’s funniest men passed away in 1992. On April 19th Frankie Howerd (pictured left at ATV) died aged 75 and a day later Benny Hill departed aged 68. Both became major television stars, and the odd dabble into music…

Frankie was born as Francis Alick Howerd on the 6th of March 1917 in York. Howerd is best known these days for beeb sitcom Up Pompeii!, however had a long career including his own comedy series for both ITV and the BBC and a successful run on radio and film.

Below we celebrate Frankie with a clip from Network Releasing and some highlights of his work at ITV which included programmes for ATV, Central and Thames Television.

Alfred Hawthorne Hill or as the world knew him, Benny Hill, was born in Southampton on the 21st of January 1924. Not a fan of doing ‘stand up’ the Benny Hill shows were end to end sketches with a host of memorable characters, lots of attractive girls and a old bald man who had his head slapped a lot. While some say the show was sexist to women, Thames said it was actually sexist to men – they always lost in the scenes, the girls always came out the winners.

Benny’s television career began with the BBC, first in radio then on TV. He also made a number of movie appearances and several times prior to jumping ship entirely to ITV and Thames Television, made specials for ATV (pictured at ATV Elstree, 1968), however due to the format requiring a ‘shy’ Benny to introduce the series as himself at the top of each programme they were short lived. After his Thames series he made an American special with Central Television, who he was to make a new series for later in 1992 which sadly never happened.

Below Benny is celebrated with a montage of moments from his classic Thames Television series, The Benny Hill Show, which ran from 1969 through to 1989.