The Short and Unhappy Romance of Ted Tingle

## Bio

**The Short and Unhappy Romance of Ted Tingle** is a British pantomime about the life of an unlucky hapless dock worker named Ted Tingle, who falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy Baron and his plight trying to woo for her hand in marriage.

One day while heading home from the dock, Ted (Benny Hill) discovers the beautiful but distraught daughter (Jo Peters?) from taking her life at a scenic spot on the Thames. When Ted wrestles her down off the bridge, her valet (unknown) and maid (Bella Emberg) think he's attacking her and come to her rescue. A British police officer (Brian Nolan) raps him a few times on the head to punish him.

When Ted realizes the girl dropped her handkerchief, he searches the town for her, but the staff won't let him meet her. He tries to meet her at the park, hitting a gardener (Jackie Wright) with his bicycle. Losing the angry gardener, he tries plucking a flower for her which is from the hat of the maid sitting nearby, who gets up hitting him with her umbrella. After reviling him a bit on his clothes, she takes the daughter away.

In order to look more presentable to the servants, Ted heads to the local Turkish Bath and steals a suit. Duly cleaned up and carrying flowers, Ted returns to the estate, but the maid still won't let him past the door. As he's standing outside, the daughter accidentally knocks off the exterior balcony a potted plant that hits him in the head.

The next morning, Ted is back at the mansion trying to get into the house. When the love of his life opens the windows of her second story bedroom, he tries pole-vaulting through it, but the maid closes it at the last second, and he crashes into it, falling to the ground before.

Left with a broken arm, broken leg and concussion, he's in the park a few days later when the daughter and the maid and passing through it. When she drops her handkerchief, he rushes to return it, but when the maid can't injure him through his casts, she knocks out his crutches and he goes down.

After recuperating and losing his casts, Ted rushes back to the mansion with champagne and a ladder, but in his haste, he enters the maid's room by accident and she chases him around the room. When she catches him, it is the same time the family shows up to investigate. The daughter, her father (Jerold Wells), her brother (Jon Jon Keefe), another maid (Jeannie Collings) and the police officer (Brian Nolan) (possibly the daughter's other brother) are in the room when the old man orders Ted and the maid to be married. At the wedding, the photographer (Jackie Wright) is briefly distracted and walks away. In his absence, a monk (Jim Tyson) in a robe tries taking the photo as the photographer returns, thinks he's whipping up the cover on the camera and gets a brief view of the monk's posterior.

Several months later, Ted is unhappily married with a young child, and the maid has become an over-bearing wife. Passing by the dam again one day, he passes by the daughter with her sailor boyfriend (unidentified), and as she is waving him goodbye from the railing from which she once nearly jumped, Ted pushes her off.

## Trivia

* The exterior location at the bridge is unidentified. The mansion interiors/exteriors were filmed at the Foxhills Mansion also seen in Bionic Boy and Scouts and Guides Annual Fete.
* Benny's running scene with the handkerchief looks as if it was shot on the exterior grounds of Teddington Studios.
* The men at the Turkish Bath are Bob Todd and Jackie Wright. Bob Nolan is the police officer.
* Bob Todd is the man in the bedroom with the rifle. He's possibly the maid's father.
* The photographer gag recurs often in the series, particularly in Benny Hill: Down Under with Barry Otto in the beach tag.
* This sketch has several unidentified extras who are unidentified but yet might be Bob Bauld, Kenny Moran and Stephen Kane, who are as yet unidentified.

## Gallery

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