Bio[]
Benny The Clown is a semi-recurring character on the series. Not as active as Fred Scuttle or Chow Mein, the character epiomizes Benny's true comedic personality as well as a flair for the surreal and the bizarre.
Benny first appears in "T.V. Romania Te Rose" in 1980, a silent operatic skit where he is dressed as a hobo, offending a gentlemen (Henry McGee) sitting with him on a park bench near a billboard. After dark, he falls asleep on the bench and dreams the brunette ingenue (Louise English) in the billboard comes to life and dances with him. However, the next morning, he is woken by a beat cop (Roger Finch) who drags him off, leaving doubt if the whole night was a dream.
Returning in his trademark plaid suit and white cap with over-sized shoes and suspenders, Benny returns as the star act of the circus with his trained turtle. Getting it to jump through a hoop, he then shows off his boomerang cap as a dancer (Louise English) wanders out and gets him so excited his tie rises and salutes her. Another dancer (Julie Kirk) knocks his hat completely off and he goes chasing after it, meeting the Princess of the Circus (Sue Upton). Blonde and beautiful with long flowing Godiva-like hair, she gets his heart beating faster. He invites her to dance so she goes off to prepare behind a screen which Benny accidentally knocks down, revealing her in a bath that conveniently travels with her.
Benny soon ends up at a faux nudist colony with a dancer (Samantha Spencer Lane) and (Roger Finch), who turns out to be a centaur. They do a dance together. Benny meanwhile sits on the sideline with a baby in a carriage (possibly Sue Upton) that takes his cigar and scotch before leaving him with the bottle. The Lady Ringmaster (Lee Gibson) comes out and chases them off and while screaming in German, tries to get Benny to perform for her. She wants him to lift her up on to his shoulders, but he drops her and she slides down into his trousers.
Two more performers, (Louise English and Roger Finch) appear in the ring and dance, joined by Benny and his partner, an invisible man seen only by his boots, but Benny soon gets the Ringmaster's whip and tries to get the Leopard Girl (Alison Thomas?) to perform, but she tries attacking him with the leopard head attached to the rear of her costume.
During the following dance scene, another clown (Clare Smalley) arrives spraying everyone with bug spray killing insects, and Benny takes her out by lightly tapping her head with a mallet. After struggling to get her off stage, he does surgery on her to revive her (joined by Henry McGee, Alison Bell, Sue Upton and Bob Todd), but his "operation" turns her into a skeleton that chases him along with everyone else around the ring.
On February 10, 1982, Benny followed the Hill's Angels with a Striptease act where he not only removes his clothes but his body parts down to his skeleton, upon which he starts shedding his limbs and (apparently) ends up in a spirit state.
On March 16, 1983, Benny returns whole once more and looking for new clothes in a store facade on stage. He opens the doors for Gillian Adams and Cheryl Mortimer before walking through the door and knocking over with his umbrella the display that a salesgirl (Sue Upton) is trying to put up. He then goes looking for a tie, accidentally grabbing the one a salesman (Jon Jon Keefe) is wearing on the other side of the rack. Another customer (Bob Todd) gets the tie, but no one can see it because of his beard. Meanwhile, Benny is finally waited on by another salesman (Henry McGee) who measures him, nearly choking him and fumbling with his umbrella, which accidentally lifts the skirt of a young lady (Cheryl Mortimer). However, when Benny ends up with the measuring tape, a female customer (Jenny Lee-Wright) asks him to measure her, and he ends up astounded by her bust size, unware he swung it around her and two nearby hat stands.
By now, Benny's original salesman returns and sends him to the changing rooms to try on a suit. While changing, he loses one of his suspenders and accidentally grabs the garter belt of the woman (Tracy Evans) in the changing room next to him.
As Benny pays and tries to leave, the hanger on his new suit catches and keeps ripping dresses off of several ladies (Tracy Evans, Jane Conaway, Jane Leeves and Elfrida Ashworth) and the pants off of a police officer (Henry McGee) as well as carting off the cash register. Not noticing it until he reaches the cafe next door, he hides in his coat to avoid getting beaten up or arrested.
Benny, however, does meet up with a young lady (Louise English), who fails to notice him, and he gets into a skirmish with a gangster (Bob Todd) and his partner (Jon Jon Keefe). Benny, however, calls in the invisible man from the circus as backup, and although the gangsters are terrified, they riddle him with bullets. A doctor (Jackie Wright) comes in to revive him, but Benny fights off the gangsters with a loaded banana, some exploding oranges and a coconut bomb, leaving him free to go off with the young lady.
Restored to health, the invisible man however gets a quick peek at the stockings of the doctor's nurse (Elfrida Ashworth) and follows after her.
On April 25, 1984, Benny returns with a chicken act featuring a chicken firing eggs at a target.
Trivia[]
- The actor in the centaur outfit with Roger Finch was possibly Ken Sedd, but there's really no way of confirming this.
- Although Alison Thomas possibly plays the leopard girl, it looks like a second unidentified actress playing the girl chasing him around the ring. It could be Julie Herveiu, who did the choreography of the episode, but there are no images of her to confirm or deny this.
- The Angels in the Striptease act on February 10, 1982 are Lisa Price, Trudy Miller, Samantha Spencer-Lane, Sue Upton, Cheryl Mortimer and Lesley Young.
- The actor playing the waiter in the March 16, 1983 cafe sketch is possibly Ken Sedd.
