1971 Benny Hill: Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)

Benny Hill's comedy legacy has been tarnished somewhat, not so much by the PC lynch mob who hounded him out of the business in the eighties, but by his own over reliance in that decade on age old routines, tired jokes and copious amounts of T&A to fill in the gaps. So much so that his shows became little more than a vehicle for 'Hills Angels' to provide some cheap, pre-watershed, pre-internet thrills for the jaded. But it wasn't always this way.

While never possessing the cutting edge, razor sharp wit of a Peter Cook or the groundbreaking weirdness of Monty Python, Hill in the sixties and seventies pedalled a comfortable comedic hybrid that enjoyed a mass appeal the former acts could never hope to have attained while they were still a going concern. 'Ernie' was a case in point. Steeped in the British music hall tradition, Hill's tale of the speedy milkman managed to combine pure seventies sauce:

"They said she was too good for him
She was haughty, proud and chic
But Ernie got his cocoa there
Three times every week"

with an aura of surrealism that appealed on many levels (The Goodies were to 'borrow' the fighting with cakes scenario in their 1975 episode 'Gunfight At The OK Tearooms').

The characters and antics of milkman Ernie and Two Ton Ted the baker fighting over the widow Sue might be seventies sit-com clichés to a name, but they are drawn with a keen and affectionate eye as Hill gallops with glee through the verses ever faster, and it comes as a moment of genuine pathos when it all slows down to describe Ernie's demise at the hands of a stray meat pie ("Ernie was only fifty-two, he didn't want to die") - surely comedy records shouldn't end with the death of the hero (though John Wayne was shortly to 'die' himself at the end of 1972's 'The Cowboys'; see what I mean - Benny Hill the innovator in action!)

Comedy records can be hit or miss and rather humourless affairs all told, but 'Ernie' is a playful construction that combines a rollicking tune with a smart lyric to create that rarest of beasts - a comedy record that you care to listen to and laugh at more than once. All good fun for Christmas.