29
Jan 07
BENNY HILL – “Ernie, The Fastest Milkman In The West”
Comedy hits come in many varieties. Some are parodies, many rely on the incongruity of a comedian singing a well-known song, others are simply desperate reels of catchphrases slapped over any track the producers had lying around. “Ernie” is none of these – it’s a bona fide comic song, such as might have been sung in 1871 – minus most of its bluer jokes. It gives Benny Hill – best known as a boob-obsessed physical comedian – an opportunity to show off his comic timing as a singer, and he seizes it with chortling relish.
“Ernie” is more than just a rollicking music-hall throwback, though – it’s a canny snapshot of early-seventies comedy trends. The song is as soaked in sauce as a Carry On film, though most of the fun is in Benny’s delivery: the laugh in “seen the size of his hot meat pies” is in our expectation of smut, rather than in ‘meat pies’ resembling, well, anything really. More unexpectedly, this High-Noon duel of milkman and baker has the cheerfully surreal aspect of a Goodies episode or Monty Python sketch – in fact, the death-dealing pies are a close relative of the Goodies’ black-pudding Kung Fu.
“Ernie”‘s mix of traditional form and contemporary style was memorable enough for David Cameron to pick it on Desert Island Discs – a selection which earned him a certain amount of mockery. But the Tory leader is on to something – and not just because “Ernie” is a portrait of competitive entrepreneurialism. This is a superbly arranged and performed record that plays far better than any other 70s comedy piece.
6
Sorry about the self-follow-up, but just to answer a question upthread:
Klaxons are at 195 this week on 650 sales (with their version of ‘Not Over Yet’ for some reason).
This was the first pop record I heard because the video was shown at least twice through one of the windows on “Play School” and made an impression over the deadly-dull instructive films that normally lurked there. Clearly as with The Magic Roundabout the BBC decided (correctly in my case) that the innuendo would go over the kids’ heads and might provide some relief for the long-suffering parents watching.
It isn’t the first pop song I became aware of though as the family next door were endlessly trilling Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep earlier that year but being in a strictly Radio 4 household I had no idea where it had come from. Strange that my mum did like music (including a bizarre love for Meatloaf and Michael Bolton) but always wanted speech on the radio. Even when the old Radio Five used to punctuate sports commentary with the odd record when nothing much was happening it used to annoy her to the point of switching off.
Upthread, Erithian magnificently coughs that he and a little pal renacted the duel between Ernie and Ted, ending with our hero being mortally wounded by “the concrete-hardened crust of a stale pork pie”. Waldo’s crime, shared by so many of my fellow street urchins, was to be able to quote the entire song verbatim with certain modifications (I don’t think I ever got “hot blood through his veins did course”). Perhaps surprisingly therefore, I never owned the record, although I remember the accompanying film clip very clearly indeed even to this day. Obviously, society has moved on since 1971 and the sight of an old perv running after swim-suited lovelies (or they after him) would not make it onto any network TV schedule today. “Ernie”, however, did not go down this path. It was and is a brilliantly daft and clever little tale with the hero of the piece (like Lily The Pink) dying before the last chorus. A High Noon fight to the death between a Milkman and a baker, with youghurts and buns as weapons is something only the British could have come up with and the whole daftness of the fable easily glosses over any negative feelings I could have of it even if it did keep “Jeepster” (which I did own) off the top. I think that this record is an absolute treasure.
Listening to this now, it really strikes me that this really is the (somewhat unlikely) precursor to “Funky Cold Medina” – even down to the rhythm. Specifically, the lines “When she got undressed, it was a big old mess, Sheena was a man (Sheena!)”, while a little too unambiguous for Benny and the time, could have fitted into this song perfectly well.
Has anyone else noticed the similarity between “Ernie” and Scott Walker’s “Jackie” ?
Dear God, you’re right. “Ted went for his bun, in a stupid ass way.”
Not like everyone else: http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/being-bold-t-rex-jeepster.html Thanks for reading, everybody!
Whole lorra love: http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/i-have-hunch-cilla-black-something.html Ta for reading, everyone!
This very day sees the Swede reach exactly the same age as Ernie was when he met his fate. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Yes I do. I’m laughing!
Mucky Happy Returns Swede!
I have a vision now of Jimmy re-enacting the ‘Ernie’ video with Mucky Sue …
… well, the name matches. And the horse is Freaky Trigger!
Cheers, pilgrim!
Lazarus – I have to say that it only just occured to me that Ernie and Ted fought to the death in order to win a lady called Sue. Had the prize have been Mucky Sue, there’s no way on God’s green earth I (being Ernie) would have lost, I can promise you that! And the horse indeed is Freaky Trigger. Brilliant!
But who would be Two Ton Ted? Own up, who’s from Teddington ’round here?
He’s going down, whoever he is…
I always reckoned that “Ernie” and Scott Walker’s “Jackie” would make one hell of a mix/bootmash. Now I have sussed out why: Wally Stott orchestrated both!
Also, I have just passed Ernie’s age! I didn’t wanna die, either!
Not exactly a stork sign, but this was the first record I ever owned, bought for me by my great grandmother… who was a notorious tea leaf so maybe she didn’t buy it.
I’ve just got hold of a Noel Edmonds Radio 1 show (don’t run!) during Ernie’s stint at no.1 in Jan ’72. As a time capsule it’s terrific (Strawbs, Cher, Yes, Newbeats, Middle of the Road), and Noel at least played on a Kenny Everett-lite humour back then.
Here’s what’s interesting, though. The first record he plays is Jeepster, with a Donald Duck noise covering up “I’m gonna suck ya!”. Two records later, Isaac Hayes’s Theme From Shaft has “he’s a bad mother” reduced to “he’s a bad…”.
Morals, prissiness, hypocrisy, et cet…
And here’s me thinking it was rude because the backing singers had told him to “shut yr mouth”. Mnd you, from what I remember, it was rare that Jeepster ever got played right to the end. Still, I do love those “time capsule” tapes, it’s sometimes worth it buying a random unmarked cassette at a boot sale if it looks like an early seventies vintage and isn’t marked up with “Peters and Lee – Welcome Home” or some such.
#45, btw, completely wrong. It would probably make a decent bootmash (sigh), but Wally Stott didn’t orchestrate the Benny Hill record. Sorry about that.
I still have an enduring love for this which its singer probably doesn’t deserve but, as D.H. Lawrence said ‘Trust the tale, not the teller’. It’s a wonderfully crafted lyric which BH delivers with relish. The deadpan arrangement including the ‘Trigger’ chorus adds to the fun. As much as I love ‘Jeepster’ I don’t resent this being at number 1
Just out of curiosity, does anyone recall what was on the B side? It was always a slightly tricky issue with comedy discs; it preferably had to be funny, but not too funny to show up the A side. And proper “straight” material often seemed out of kilter.
According to google it was this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysFrt3V7nvI
(From memory) “Stick yr finger in yr ear and go “Tinga linga loo””
With contemporaneous references to Prince Philip, Jenkins, Heath and Wilson. OK, I owned one as well!
@49: A test that Spitting Image failed with “I’ve Never Met a Nice South African”, which was markedly more amusing than its A-side.
I quite like Benny, but this goes on a bit for me. 3/10.