In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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Benny Hill’s saucy smirks and lascivious glances at underdressed women are relished across all continents by all creeds. Yet he cut an unlikely figure of global admiration: he was a deeply private individual, a loner, uninterested in money and the trappings of success. With the circus and sex in his background (his father sold condoms worldwide from a Southampton backstreet shop) Benny combined the two in a career that, after many struggles, took off in the earliest days of television. Acclaimed in the 1950s as the first British TV comedy superstar, loved for his pioneering ideas and mild ‘seaside-postcard’ humour, Hill’s popularity remained undimmed for decades. But in the 1980s, just as he became a hit in more than 100 countries, he was reviled in Britain. His innuendo-strewn humour was branded sexist, a charge he could not comprehend.

Unmarried and emotionally enfeebled in his few meaningful relationships, Benny’s primary aim was to be seen in the company of scantily clad women. His TV show enabled this, but it’s sudden end in 1989 was followed by a self-inflicted decline in his health. Benny died in 1992, his body lay undiscovered for two days and the destiny of his £7m estate was controversial.

Alfred Hawthorne “Benny” Hill (21 January 1924 – 20 April 1992) was an English comedian, actor, singer and writer. He is remembered for his television programme The Benny Hill Show, an amalgam of slapstick, burlesque and double entendre in a format that included live comedy and filmed segments, with Hill at the focus of almost every segment.

Hill was a prominent figure in British television for several decades. His show was among the most-watched programmes in the UK, and his audience was more than 21 million in 1971. The Benny Hill Show was also exported to many countries around the world. He received a BAFTA Television Award for Best Writer and a Rose d’Or, and was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance and two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Variety. In 2006, Hill was voted by the British public number 17 in ITV’s poll of TV’s 50 Greatest Stars.

Outside television, Hill starred in films including the Ealing comedy Who Done It? (1956), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and The Italian Job (1969). His comedy song “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)” was 1971’s Christmas number one on the UK Singles Chart and earned Hill an Ivor Novello Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors in 1972.