Joe Titmarsh

## Bio

**Joe Titmarsh** is a fictional character in an unidentified British TV show who discovers and lives through his reality being altered by the film editors altering his footage. He is unhappily married and has a brother Archibald with whom he shares a sign painting service.

In the footage, Joe is taking a bath as the editors comment on his weight, and he rises to catch a glimpse of the two lovely ladies (Liz Jobling and Sharon Kiel) living next door. He is so distracted he gets his foot stuck in the toilet and walks out with it around his ankle. The editors cut to the kitchen where Joe finds a leaky faucet and tries to fix it, but his homely wife {Bob Todd) just twists it around to stop the leaking.

Joe's wife soon sends him out to water the back yard, but he insteads heads to the fence with the water hose wrapped around his arm to flirt with the young ladies hanging out their underwear on the clothes line. His wife gets so upset that she turns the water on to spray them with water.

In the kitchen, the editors cut out Joe making himself a big sandwich, and he argues with them that he's starving. They cut to him going off to work down the street on his repair bike out of town. On the way, Joe passes four guys (Bob Todd, Henry McGee, Jon Jon Keefe and Mike Mulloy) having drinks who are supposed to invite him for a drink, but again, the editors put the kibosh on the event and send Joe on his way instead. The four drinkers turn out to be pall-bearers on their way to a funeral.

Off to work, Joe starts taking a route that will allow him to meet a Duchess, but the editors remove the scene entirely. He instead goes on to work touching up a sign where the editors in a moment of blind cruelty debate over letting him get a paint bucket dumped over his head. Unsure of the scene, they let him get dunked anyway, just to play and reverse it several times, terrorizing Joe in the process before letting him get dunked anyway and omitting the scene entirely.

Down the road, Joe gets clipped by a truck and knocked off the road. He staggers around in a daze before going off script meeting a sexy young bride (Lorraine Doyle) who takes him in to take care of him. The editors are shocked to watch as she reveals her nightgown and entices him to her bedroom as they try to unsuccessfully stop the film. They finally freeze it just as Joe is about to receive the greatest ecstasy of his life, but he gets upset as they keep him trapped in freeze frame to debate the ethics of keeping the scene in the footage. They finally decide to find out what happens as the beauty's husband (Mike Mulloy?) shows up and shoots him.

## Trivia

* Joe Titmarsh is played by Benny Hill; the editors are Henry McGee and Jon Jon Keefe.
* In the morning of the sketch, there are two brunettes living next door, possibly Liz Jobling and Emma Bryant, but this can't be confirmed. By the back yard, one of the girls is now blonde and may be played by Zoe Bryant, who was definitely in the series by 1989. However, it's unrevealed if there's three girls in the house or if it was always only two.
* The server and two ladies in the pub scene are unidentified.
* The pall bearers at the pub might have been inspired from a similar gag Dave Allen did in "The Racing Pallbearers" on March 20, 1975.
* When Benny gets hit by the truck, the mansion used in the mansion photo for The Herd can be seen in the background.
* One wonders if the inspiration for this sketch came from Benny watching the censors editing his own sketches.
* The neighborhood in this sketch reappears in Rembrandt, The Bucket and Little Dimpton Hospital.

## Gallery

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