Benny's All-Star Finale

Benny Hill and Paula Wilcox in "Lonely Boy"

Production

Episode: 12
Date: February 23, 1972
Time: 50:31
Musical Director: Ronnie Aldrich
Vocals: The Ladybirds
Choreography:
Producer: John Robins
Director: John Robins
Writer: Benny Hill

Episode

• Quickie: Sweet Chess
• Ballad: Oh, Zandoona
• Fred Scuttle: Fat Farm
  • Keep Fit Brigade
• Poem: Fam and Fufan
• Interview with Pierre de Terre
• Lonely Boy
• Guest: Sylvia McNeil - I Don't Know How to Love Him
• Interview with Amos Thripp
• Quickies - 7
• Chow Mein: Customs and Immigration
• Benny All-Star Finale
• Tag: Hill Department Store

Highlights

• Fred Scuttle's Fat Farm
• Lonely Boy
• Benny All-Star Finale filled with his takes on British singers
• A visit to Hill Department Store

Cast

• Benny Hill
• Paula Wilcox
• Bob Todd
• Percy Thrower
• The Ladybirds
• Jenny Lee-Wright
• Jack Wright
• Carol Mills
• Bettine LeBeau
• Penny Meredith
• Mia Martin
• Pamela Cundell
• Roy Scammell
• Malcolm Weaver
• Jim Tyson
• Geraldine Burnett
• Kevin O'Leary - Hill's Spaghetti Boy (uncredited)

Quotes

• Henry McGee - "Three hundred guineas! That's hardly a popular price!"
  Fred Scuttle - "I like it."

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• Fred Scuttle - "That's only the diet, sir.... The meal, sir... Suet and dumplings, Yorkshire and pudding, Treacle and custard..."
  Henry McGee - "Doesn't all that make you put on weight?"
  Fred Scuttle - "Only if you swallow it."

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• Fred Scuttle - "She needed a girdle just to fit into a phone box."

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• Henri de Gee - "You looked all over France for a girl with a lisp...."
  Pierre de Terre - "No, no... She was discovered by the producer.... who was living with her at the time."

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• Carol Potts - "No, you swine... That's it. get out!"
  Cyril Goody - "But I live here!"

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• Director - "Open the gates... Shell be up in a minute."

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• Customs Agent - "I'd hardly call that overseas."
  Chow Mein - "You try walking there."

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• Chow Mein - "Why you no risten!"

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• Mamood Ramsun - "Don't you get contraceptive with me!"

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• Mamood Ramsun - "I have never been so humiliated in all my life!"
  Chow Mein - "That's your problem... You don't get out enough!"

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• Chow Mein - "There are two things I can't stand, and you're both of them!"

Trivia

• This episode was recorded on January 27, 1972.
• The opening quickie is a commercial parody with Henry McGee and Benny Hill playing chess with pieces of chocolate. This might be a spoof of an actual commerical that aired in England in the late 60s to early 70s.
• This was the first episode where Henry McGee interviewed Fred Scuttle.
• Both Paula Wilcox and Paul Eddington wanted their episodes on "The Benny Hill Show" pulled from syndication because of what they perceived as the sexist nature of the series.
• The mid-episode quickies feature:
  • A cowboy sharpshooter (Benny Hill) offers to help his guest (Pamela Cundell) shoot a gun. (Mia Martin is the chaperone.}
  • A boy (Kevin O'Leary) is upset about not getting to go to a birthday party; his mother (Benny) makes him Hill's Spaghetti
  • A woman (Carol Mills) with Geraldine Burnett thinks there's a head in the road; The director (Benny) helps her along.
  • The cowboy (Benny) helps Jenny Lee Wright shoot at balloons
  • An actress in a romantic scene (Bettine Le Beau) with an actor (Henry McGee) flubs her line; the director (Benny) helps her out
    • This scene was filmed in the same gym as the Keep Fit Brigade sketch.
  • Benny and Miss Jenny again
  • An actress (Mia Martin) in a Benvril commercial is consoled by her emotional mother (Benny); Henry McGee is the theater usher)
  • Benny and Miss Jenny yet again; the knife guy is Bob Todd
• A poster for the 1965 movie, "The Sound of Music," with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer appears on the wall behind Mia Martin in her commercial spoof.
• This was Mia Martin's last appearance on the show.
• In the Chow Mein sketch, Bettine Le Beau and Jenny Lee Wright play passengers entering before him. The immigration agent is Bob Todd. The disembarking Chinese tourists are unidentified.
• Benny's All-Star Finale includes impressions of Shirley Bassey, Nana Mouskouri, David Kossoff (father of the late Free guitarist Paul Kossoff), The Beverley Sisters, Gilbert O'Sullivan and Dorothy Squires. According to an urban legend, O'Sullivan quickly changed his look and attire after seeing Benny's take him in this episode.
• Selected clips from this episode appeared in The Best of Benny Hill.
• The Production Number for this episode is VTR 5482.

Sequence

• Last Episode: News At Ten
• Next Episode: Down Memory Lane

Gallery

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