The Common Market Square Dance

## Production

**Episode:** 15

**Date:** December 27, 1972

**Time:** 49:28

**Musical Director:**

**Vocals:** The Ladybirds

**Choreography:**

**Producer:** Keith Beckett

**Director:** Keith Beckett

**Writer:** Benny Hill

## Episode

* Quickie: Church Mission
* Ballad: When I Was a Lad
* Bloopers - 12
* Fred Scuttle: Fun Boy Club
* Ballad: Night After Christmas
* The Ladybirds: Don't Stop the Music
* Bloopers - 8
* Yackanory: Goldilocks
* Song: The Portable TV
* Ballad: An American In Britain
* Common Market Square Dance
* Tag: Langley Base Army Camouflage Unit

## Highlights

* Benny's Ballad: When I Was a Lad
* Portable TV
* Yackanory (Benny tells the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" in a strong overly-exaggerated German accent)
* Fred Scuttle: Striptease Cabaret
* Langley Base Army Camouflage Unit

## Cast

* Benny Hill
* Nicholas Parsons
* Bob Todd
* Jimmy Thompson
* Diana King
* Pat Ashton
* Jenny Lee-Wright
* The Ladybirds
* Jack Wright
* Walter Goodman
* Anthony Kenyon
* Bella Emburg
* Sue Bond
* Lillian Padmore
* Cheryl Gilham (credited as Cherry Gilliam)
* Dennie Bayliss
* Steve Ismay (uncredited)

## Trivia

* In the opening tag, Benny appears as a minister at a church mission with a secret word in his church message.
* Nicholas Parsons covers the show intro.
* Quickies feature a string of TV and movie bloopers, such as:
	+ An actor (Benny Hill) doing a scene with an actress (Jenny Lee Wright) missing her contact lens
	+ The voices on two singers (Benny Hill and Pat Ashton) get reversed
	+ An actor (Benny) jumps off a ship called the "QE TU" and tries unsuccessfully sneaking off-screen (His co-stars are Pat Ashton and Diana King)
	+ A performer (Benny) singing "Knock Three Times" has his set come down on top of him
	+ Horrible camera angles plague a movie scene with two actors (Benny Hill and Pat Ashton)
	+ A romantic musical scene between two actors (Benny and Pat) is marred when the actor forgets his lines
	+ An intence movie scene with two actors (Benny and Pat) is marred with quick cuts, clothes that don't match and flipped camera frames
	+ An actor (Benny) is thrown off by the musical key of his co-star (Pat Ashton)
	+ A dancer (Jenny Lee Wright) knocks over part of her stage (The figures back stage are Jackie Wright, Walter Goodman and Bob Todd)
	+ The QE Tu actor jumps off ship again and gets hit on the head by the fake life preserver
	+ A film scene between two actors (Benny and Pat) suffers with weird camera actors, a weird actor replacement (Jimmy Thompson) and the camera crew appearing in a mirror
* The "Harold and Enoch" poster in the Fred Scuttle sketch is probably a hidden jab at former British politicians Harold Wilson and Enoch Powell.
* The mid-episode quickies feature a string of commercial bloopers featuring:
	+ Dick Woodcock (Benny Hill, the Thames TV Head of Research, stumbling over a set of paint cans on a set
	+ A natural food commercial is turned askew by crew (Benny and Jackie Wright) misspelling the name of the company with large white letters on a field (Benny also does the screams of the director)
	+ Woodcock splashes a glass of grime on to a stage hand (Bob Todd) while trying to hit the wall
	+ An actress (Benny) can't blow the seeds off a dandelion for a hair spray commercial (Benny does the off-screen screams of the director again)
	+ Woodcock splashes the wall again, but the cleaner also takes off the wall pattern
	+ The actress (Benny) sneezes into the dandelion (their last one)
	+ A pirate (Benny) tries selling Jack Carter Rum; his co-star (Jimmy Thompson) accidentally sit on his hook (Jackie Wright also appears as a pirate)
	+ An actress (Benny) selling dog food is urinated on by the dog in her lap
* In The Portable TV, Benny plays Robert T. Ironsides from the American TV-Series, "Ironsides," which ran from 1967 to 1971. He also plays the character in Murder On The Orient Express

## Sequence

* **Last Episode:** Woodstick
* **Next Episode:** Jackie Wright: Holiday

## Gallery

1/16