Benny Hill: yay or nay?
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Ynay. I'm ambivalent.
Nay. But have you ever seen "Father Ted"? Yay.
Yay! Benny Hill is the ultimate comedian and philosopher. Many don't appreciate Hill's droll and ironic comments on life, they tend to misinterpret it as simple scatalogical and sexist humour. Hill takes the essence of a man's experience in the world and distills it down to its lowest common denominator.
Pluss the running around in fast motion is just so darn funny.
This might be too nerdy, but there's so much commonality between Yiddish theater and Cockney theater that, at one point, I was about 1/3 convinced that Benny Hill was Jewish. Even with all that, though, I loved half of his stuff, and disliked a bunch – enough so that I'd have to say "nay." I loved him in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, though.
that's a NAY big time. But my father, inexplicably, LOVED him.
A big old yay! Bawdy humor is sadly unappreciated these days, too often misinterpreted as sexist or "perverted," but I love it, and Benny was a master of it. To his detractors who call him a chauvinist, I would point out that the men in the show never, ever had the upper hand. Sure, the ladies were objectified, but the guys were the ones losing the arguments and looking idiotic.
And on a personal note, Benny Hill was one of the few shows I and my father could both enjoy when I was growing up — it was a genuine bonding thing for us — so it gets a sentimental "yay" from me on that alone.