Benny Hill
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50 free Benny Hill trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Almost everyone can hum the music that plays while Benny Hill is chased across a field at double speed. Far fewer can name it, or say who recorded it. That gap is where this quiz starts. The questions cover the tune and its afterlife in films, sport and politics, then move through Hill's own story: his family background, the comedy song that topped the charts at Christmas, the regulars of The Benny Hill Show, his film roles beside some of Britain's biggest stars, and the admirers he won on both sides of the Atlantic. It is pitched for anyone who grew up with the show or knows it from reruns and internet memes. Most questions are gettable with a little thought, and a few are saved for the true fans.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1963 instrumental became famous worldwide as the closing chase music of The Benny Hill Show?
Yakety Sax
Yakety Sax was voted the nation's favourite theme tune in a 2015 ITV special. The show first used it in 1969, in its first episode for Thames Television.
Q 02Benny Hill's 1971 UK Christmas number one, 'Ernie', is a comic ballad about a man in which job?
Milkman
Milkman was a job Hill had held himself, for a dairy in Eastleigh, Hampshire. He wrote the song in 1955 as the opening of a screenplay that was never filmed.
Q 03In which 1969 Michael Caine film does Benny Hill play the computer expert Professor Simon Peach?
The Italian Job
The Italian Job has Hill's professor sabotage Turin's traffic computers so that a gang can steal gold in the jam. It was also Noël Coward's last film.
Q 04Which character does Benny Hill play in the 1968 musical film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?
The Toymaker
The Toymaker hides the Potts family in his Vulgarian shop, then smuggles the heroes into the castle disguised as dolls. Roald Dahl co-wrote the screenplay.
Q 05Jane Leeves, a Hill's Angels dancer on The Benny Hill Show, later played Daphne Moon in which sitcom?
Frasier
Frasier ran from 1993 to 2004 and brought Leeves an Emmy nomination. Her screen debut had been a small role on Hill's show in 1983.
Q 06The Benny Hill Show's chase tune was played outside Parliament in 2022 as Boris Johnson announced what?
His resignation
His resignation as prime minister, on 7 July 2022, showed how the tune has become shorthand for political chaos, decades after the show itself ended.
Q 07Benny Hill was born and, in 1992, buried in which town or city on England's south coast?
Southampton
Southampton's Hollybrook Cemetery holds his grave, which robbers broke open months later amid rumours of buried gold. It now lies under a concrete slab.
Q 08Which future British prime minister picked Benny Hill's 'Ernie' on Desert Island Discs in 2006?
David Cameron
David Cameron was Conservative Party leader, not yet in Downing Street, when he named it among his eight favourite records on the BBC radio show.
Q 09Which American pop superstar, a Benny Hill fan since a 1970s British tour, met the comedian in 1992?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson was far from Hill's only famous American fan: Burt Reynolds, Mickey Rooney and Walter Cronkite all praised him in a BBC documentary.
Q 10Which Nashville session musician recorded the 1963 hit that became The Benny Hill Show's chase theme?
Boots Randolph
Boots Randolph also played on Elvis Presley sessions and on Roy Orbison's Oh, Pretty Woman. His tune only charted when he re-recorded it for Monument Records.
Q 11Benny Hill, who took his stage name from American comedian Jack Benny, was born with which first name?
Alfred
Alfred Hawthorne Hill shared the name with his father, who managed a surgical appliance shop. The son picked Benny because Jack Benny was his favourite comedian.
Q 12Benny Hill's father and grandfather had both worked in which branch of show business?
Circus clowns
Circus clowns ran in the family for two generations before Hill. He chose a newer stage: the BFI calls him the first British comedian to find fame through television.
Q 13Which American talk-show host tried several times to bring Benny Hill to Los Angeles as a guest?
Johnny Carson
Q 21Benny Hill played Nick Bottom in a 1964 all-star television production of which Shakespeare comedy?
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream gave Hill a rare classical role as Bottom, the weaver who is magically given a donkey's head and adored by the fairy queen.
Q 22The Benny Hill Show's closing chases sent up which silent-era troupe from Mack Sennett's studio?
Keystone Cops
Keystone Cops chases were the model for the show's sped-up finales, though Hill usually ended up as the one being pursued, thanks to trouble he had caused himself.
Q 23Which novelist, the author of A Clockwork Orange, admired Benny Hill and reviewed his biography?
Anthony Burgess
Johnny Carson and his Tonight Show sidekick Ed McMahon were both fans, part of an American following that grew after the show entered US syndication in the late 1970s.
Q 14In a spoof of a 1966 film drama, Benny Hill played both Richard Burton and which actress?
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor co-starred with Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the film being spoofed. Hill's other impressions ranged from Marlon Brando to Shirley Bassey.
Q 15Benny Hill beat which future star of The Goon Show to a stage job as Reg Varney's straight man?
Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers was still unknown when he lost the part to Hill. Varney, their would-be partner, later found fame as the bus driver Stan Butler in On the Buses.
Q 16Benny Hill plays a bumbling security guard in the video for 'Anything She Does' by which band?
Genesis
Genesis used the six-minute clip, essentially a Benny Hill sketch set to music, to introduce the band on stage during their Invisible Touch tour.
Q 17Which Benny Hill character from his 1960s radio series later resurfaced as a bumbling security guard?
Fred Scuttle
Fred Scuttle was one of Hill's longest-running characters, lasting from BBC radio's Benny Hill Time to a 1980s rock video in which he lets hordes of fans slip backstage.
Q 18Which Benny Hill Show straight man and announcer played Mummy in the Sugar Puffs adverts?
Henry McGee
Henry McGee was the Honey Monster's companion in the 1970s cereal adverts, and played the hero's love rival in the promotional film for Hill's Christmas number one.
Q 19Jackie Wright, the bald Benny Hill Show regular whose head Hill slapped, came from which city?
Belfast
Belfast was home again by the 1930s, after Wright had worked on Cadillac car bodies in America. He stood just 4 feet 11 and was Hill's sidekick for fifteen years.
Q 20Nicholas Parsons, a former Benny Hill Show straight man, hosted which radio panel game for decades?
Just a Minute
Just a Minute had Parsons in the chair from 1967 until 2019. Hill later spoofed his other famous job, hosting the quiz Sale of the Century, with himself as Parsons.
Anthony Burgess relished wordplay and dialect, and admired the verbal skill beneath Hill's slapstick. The two men met, and Burgess wrote up the encounter for a newspaper.
Q 24In a 1976 Benny Hill sketch, Hill played Kojak, Ironside, McCloud, Cannon and which other sleuth?
Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot fitted the sketch's title, Murder on the Oregon Express, a play on the Agatha Christie train mystery. Editing let Hill appear as all five detectives.
Q 25Benny Hill's chart-topping comic ballad 'Ernie' won him which music industry honour in 1972?
Ivor Novello Award
Ivor Novello Award recognition capped a surprise hit: the single spent four weeks at number one over Christmas 1971, a year after Hill first sang it on television.
Q 26Besides Britain, Benny Hill's comic ballad 'Ernie' also reached number one in which country in 1972?
Australia
Australia sent it to number one in February 1972, while in New Zealand it stalled at number three. Hill also taped a one-off Australian special, Down Under, in 1977.
Q 27Why was Benny Hill's first television performance of 'Ernie', in 1970, recorded in black and white?
A technicians' strike
A technicians' strike forced three of Hill's colour-era shows into black and white. The song was re-recorded the next year and became a surprise chart-topper.
Q 28Benny Hill made his film debut as an ice-rink sweeper in which 1956 Ealing comedy?
Who Done It?
Who Done It? was written by T. E. B. Clarke, who spent months studying Hill's stage and TV act to show off his mimicry. It was among the last films shot at Ealing.
Q 29In the 1960 film Light Up the Sky!, Benny Hill starred alongside which British rock and roll singer?
Tommy Steele
Tommy Steele and Hill play members of a searchlight unit in 1942, a job Hill knew at first hand: he had operated searchlights in Normandy during the war.
Q 30The sped-up look of The Benny Hill Show's chases came from which silent-film camera technique?
Undercranking
Undercranking means filming at a slower rate so that the action races on playback. Hill called the effect live animation and paired it with sight gags and mime.