Television funny man Benny Hill unforgiveably kept T. Rex off the top of the charts with his autobiographical novelty hit Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West).

Benny Hill first performed this song on his show in 1970 and, in the era of Carry On films, its smutty double entendres delivered in a ‘comedy’ West Country accent, proved so popular that it was released as a single – and topped the charts at Christmas in 1971.

Hill wrote the song himself, way back in 1955, when he was starting out in television, inspired by his real-life former job as a milkman. By the time he performed it his show was regularly drawing more than 20 million viewers.

Deny it if you will, but back then we all watched Benny and his infantile innuendos and that trademark end-credits scene where he gets chased by a bevy of girls whose clothes he has removed by some unlikely “accident.”

I don’t know if he really did do battle with a baker for the heart of a widow called Sue (from No.22) but I know he really did deliver to the ‘Market Street’ where she lives in the song.

Sue, you may remember, is “haughty proud and chic” and Ernie “gets his cocoa there” three times a week. Trouble arises when Two-Ton Ted from Teddington arrives in his baker’s van to tempt her with his treacle tarts and tasty wholemeal bread. “And when she sees the size of his hot meat pies it very near turns her head.” 

Ernie challenges him to a duel, with (spoiler alert!) fatal consequences for the milkman when he gets sucker punched in a manner described in a couplet of which Dylan would be proud: “He looked up in pained surprise and the concrete hardened crust / Of a stale pork pie caught him in the eye – and Ernie bit the dust.”

The Benny Hill Show ran for 34 years from 1955-1989 when it was killed off by the advent of alternative comedy. Three years later, Hill died on the very day a new contract arrived that would have brought him back to mainstream television.

Hill himself was an oddball who never married, never owned a car, never owned his own house, darned and patched his old clothes to save buying new ones and walked and took buses to the supermarket to save spending on taxi fares – despite being a multi-millionaire.

He died in the small rented flat where he lived alone in Teddington – home of his love rival in this song – sitting in front of the television.

Trivia postscript – In 2006 David Cameron chose ‘Ernie’ as one of his eight favourite songs on Desert Island Discs.