Benny had gone along to see Louise English, an ex-Hill’s Angel who was appearing with Les Dennis. He had only been seen in public a few days before when he had sat in the audience of Me & My Girl at London’s Adelphi Theatre. The body was blue, bloated and distended and there was a dried trickle of blood that had seeped from one of his ears. Inside he saw his friend surrounded by dirty plates, glasses, videotapes and piles of papers, slumped on the sofa in front of the TV. The neighbour contacted Kirkland, who was a regular visitor to the Teddington apartment block, and it wasn’t long before the television producer was climbing a ladder and peering through the window of Hill’s second-floor flat. It wasn’t until the 20th, the day after Howerd had died, that a neighbour noticed an unpleasant smell coming from Flat 7 of Fairwater House on the Twickenham Road in Teddington.
The quote about Howerd had actually come from Hill’s friend, former producer and unofficial press agent Dennis Kirkland, who hadn’t been able to get in contact with Hill and was starting to worry. Benny Hill, seven years younger than Howerd, was quoted in the press as being ‘very upset’ and saying, ‘We were great, great friends.’ Indeed they had been friends, but Hill hadn’t given a quote about his fellow comedian, he hadn’t even been asked for one – he couldn’t have been – because he was already dead. On Easter Sunday morning in 1992, just two hours after he had been speaking to a television producer about yet another comeback, and five days after being released from hospital after a heart-scare, seventy-five- year-old Frankie Howerd collapsed and died.
Benny Hill in his flat in the kitchen on Queensgate, London, January 1969
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