Bio[]
The Love Ship was the opening number on March 12, 1986 featuring Captain Benny (Benny Hill) incorporating songs into a longer Twenties-style sketch format set on a ship.
In the sketch, a passenger {Henry McGee) praises Captain Benny's social life and lifestyle which opens into a song, A Girl In Every Port. (Not the one from the 1952 movie "A Wonderful Life.") However, after the ship turns hard to starboard, another passenger falls off, and Benny goes to save him, but the lifesavers are tangled in each other. His First Officer (Bob Todd) tells him it was just a Second Class passenger so they just decide to write him off. Upon hearing that, another passenger named Kiki (Anna Dawson) tries to recue him anyway, bouncing the lifesaver off his head. Even with passengers speculating she must also be a Second Class passenger, Benny is so enchanted by her that he falls for her and sings a song (You Made Me Love You) to her (with off-screen trumpets, horns and other noises obscuring several words).
Captain Benny soon says he loves her despite being a Second Class passenger, but his First Officer comes over and tells him that Kiki is the daughter of Jack Martlin, the ship's owner. He asks her to marry him and the whole cast joins in to sing to him with a song.
Trivia[]
- This sketch is a remake of Passengers Of Love from March 24, 1971. It was also possibly inspired by the American Seventies TV series "The Love Boat."
- It's kind of ironic that Benny parodies "The Love Boat." At the time of this episode, the American TV series had added "The Mermaids" to the series, an Angels-styled troupe of female dancers that included a then-struggling actress named Teri Hatcher.
- According to "Benny's Place," this sketch marks Anna Dawson's return to the show eleven years to the day of her first appearance on March 12, 1975.
- Katie Randall, Tracy Smith, Claire Fairgood, Emma Bryant, Samantha Spencer-Lane, Alison Thomas, Lorraine Doyle, Fiona Baker and Faye Mertens play the Angels doing back-up in the sketch.
