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Dennis Kirkland, the seventh and final producer / director of The Benny Hill Show, under whose watch the Hill's Angels first came into being, died after a brief illness on February 16, 2006 in London. He was 63 years old.
Born in North Shields, Northumberland, Kirkland started out appearing in ITV adverts as a child. His behind-the-scenes career began as a props man for Tyne Tees Television, and he had spells with the Royal Opera House and the Windmill Theatre in London prior to becoming an assistant floor manager with ATV, where he was employed at the time a certain Benny Hill was hosting three shows for the company (two editions of an Anglo-American production called Spotlight which also ran in the U.S. on the CBS network in the summer of 1967, and one Benny Hill Show on which Nicholas Parsons, Rita Webb and Bettine Le Beau all made their Hill debuts). It is believed that it was there that Mr. Hill and Mr. Kirkland first met.
When Thames started up in 1968, Kirkland became floor manager for the new company, and served in that capacity for the programme in the early years of Benny's association with the firm. His first credit on the show was as "Programme Associate," on the Feb. 22, 1973 and March 29, 1973 editions, then he served as warm-up man for the show for the next five years. In the meantime, he had moved up the ranks, and was producing shows such as Rainbow, The Tomorrow People, and the sketch comedy show What's On Next? which featured some once and/or future Hill players in its cast.
Finally, with the March 14, 1979 edition Kirkland became the seventh producer/director of TBHS in its Thames run, producing every remaining edition of the show, ultimately serving as long as the first six producer/directors combined, and ending up also exceeding the run of Kenneth Carter who produced Mr. Hill on and off at both the BBC and ATV during the period 1955-1968. Hill's relationships with his prior producers had been often contentious and tumultuous, but he and Kirkland - described in one of the Hill books as "a Geordie with a bubbly sense of humor" - would hit it off right away (becoming one of the comedian's closest friends off the set as well), to the very end.
Under Kirkland's watch, the technical standards of the show improved steadily, and the programme began moving away from the verbal-based humor which was Benny's forte up to that time and more towards what Dennis liked to call "comedy without words." During his run with the Hill show, Kirkland also worked with the likes of Ken Dodd, Jim Davidson and, significantly, Eric Sykes, whose 1979 comedy The Plank won at Montreux; the two also collaborated on two other projects, It's Your Move and Mr. H Is Late, the latter of which also featured longtime Hill straight man Henry McGee.
The most controversial aspect of Kirkland's run as Hill's producer/director was the introduction, in 1980, of Hill's Angels. He had begun to move the show in that direction with the March 14, 1979 "Hot Gossamer" takeoff, but within a year of the Angels' introduction the entire show became a lightning rod for feminists, "alternative" comics and other special-interest groups that claimed Mr. Hill had promoted the objectification and degradation of women in his work. Efforts to tone down the sexual aspects of the show after 1984 ended up to no avail, and after years of declining ratings (and the further entrenchment of a climate of "political correctness") Thames cancelled TBHS in 1989. Forever after, Kirkland never forgave the company for what he called the "sacking" of Hill, and what he characterized as the "hypocrisy" of Thames still making millions off of foreign sales.
Kirkland's own career suffered afterwards (his association with Thames ended not long after the Hill show's demise), in no small part due to his blunt outspokenness, and also due to the "comedy without words" format he had expounded falling out of fashion in Britain. He did produce and direct Benny Hill's World Tour: New York which aired in the U.S. in 1991 and in Britain (in two parts) in 1994, and he was to direct a new series of Hill shows for Central TV at the time of Benny's death (in fact, it was he who discovered Benny's dead body at the latter's Teddington flat on April 20, 1992); after which, Dennis ended up directing a series of shows fronted by Freddie Starr which critics called "The Benny Hill Show without Benny." His most recent credit, three years ago, was of an Irish comedy show, Fear an Phoist.
After Benny's death in 1992, Kirkland wrote a book about his years producing and directing the Hill show, and his long friendship with the comedian, Benny: The True Story (co-written with Hilary Bonner; later republished as The Strange and Saucy World of Benny Hill). In the book, he claimed that Sue Bond (who was on the show from 1970 to 1973) was "the first Hill's Angel," and even listed Diana Darvey as an Angel, though both were long gone from the show by the time the Angels actually came into being.
But regardless of what one feels or thinks of his direction of the show, Dennis Kirkland's legacy in the long history of The Benny Hill Show will live on forever.
Special thanks to William Brown for supplying this tribute.