Bio[]
The Minstrel Boy is a short film about a shy and sensitive youth in 1453, who is groomed and developed to be a minstrel.
Usually sitting outside the the Halfway Inn with his friends, Harold Sickman (Benny Hill) loves drinking and singing with his friends (Bob Todd) and Jackie Wright) and ogling Meg, the local barmaid (Diana Darvey). When two ladies arrive (Cheryl Gilham and Bella Emberg) arrive, he presumes "the attractive one" will naturally gravitate to him, but Bob (thinking he's the attractive one) thinks she'll go for him instead. Harold goes up to him trying to convince them he came get them to meet the Duke, but while trying to talk the attractive one, the other one keeps interupting. When Bob mentions Harry can sing, they encourage him to sing to them. Resisting, he obliges only after they stop asking. He sings a song about a squire and his wife, but when he looks again, they have all walked away.
Harold is approached by Sir Lew (Henry McGee) from the Royal Court searching for a minstrel who heard him singing. He grooms and trains to be a minstrel, and although he is not liked at first, he's soon doing wild music venues and doing wild concerts eerily reminiscent of Twentieth Century concerts.
Trivia[]
- The Minstrel Boy is played by Benny Hill.
- Jim Tyson plays a sitting monk without lines at the inn.
- Henry McGee's character in the sketch is modeled and named after Sir Lew Grade, who owned ATV.
- The members of Design play extras and provide vocal back-up to the sketch.
- While auditioning for Sir Lew, Benny slips in a reference to a 1973 Mott the Hoople hit, "All the Way From Memphis," at the end of one of his numbers.
- In the Minstrel Concert, Benny's singing voice sounds as if he's imitating Elvis Presley. His exaggerated chest hair is reminiscent of Mike Myers in the 1990s "Austin Powers" movies.
- Design performs as his back-up in Medieval costumes.
- This sketch doesn't seem to have an ending to it, instead being used to lead up to a Medieval-style rock concert.
