In the ten years since the tragic death of saucy comedian Benny Hill, one question has continued to perplex his family and friends - just what did happen to Benny’s porn stash? According to close friends and colleagues the comedian - best known for his innuendo filled TV show in which scantily clad young women would be chased around parks by the chubby bespectacled comic - possessed one of the world’s most extensive collections of pornography and erotica. Encompassing everything from books, videos, magazines, obscene postcards and novelty sex aids, experts believe that only former US President Bill Clinton has a collection of pornography to rival it. Hill invested the entire fortune he had earned from his TV show- estimated to be millions of pounds - in his collection, and consequently lived in a modest flat in Southampton. “It was all he needed,” says Hill’s former TV producer Jim Pillicock. “He came up with many of his best ideas for smut-filled sketches after an afternoon poring over his amazing collection of jazz mags. Sometimes Benny would use the sex aids as props in the show - the inflatable dolls Fed Scuttle mistakes for novelty balloons and uses as decorations at a kiddies birthday party in an hilarious 1973 sketch, for instance, were taken from his collection. They were actually quite rare and worth several thousand pounds!” Indeed, it was the use of one his novelty sex aids as a prop which led to Hill’s downfall - TV chiefs banned his show in 1989, labelling it unsuitable for family viewing, after a sketch featured Hill assaulting a policeman with a huge purple penis, actually an antique African dildo. However, following Benny’s death, friends and family were shocked to find that his stash had completely vanished. “There was absolutely no trace of it - we searched his flat from top to bottom. We even took up the floorboards, but it had all gone. There wasn’t even novelty vibrator left in the place,” says a despondent Pillicock. Even more disturbing, no mention of the porn was made in Hill’s will. “The fact is that he promised his porn collection to me,” Pillicock insists. “It was only right that after ten years of producing his shows and stroking his ego, I should be able to look forward to spending my old age drooling over a huge stack of high-class smut!”

Several of the comic’s associates dispute Pillicock’s claim to the porn. “I spent fifteen years having that fat bastard slap my head for comic effect,” says actor Bob Todger, who appeared as the butt of Hill’s lewd jokes in many TV shows. “I went completely bald, lost two inches in height and suffered enduring psychological problems. Have you any idea what being regularly portrayed as a cuckolded husband unable to sexually satisfy his wife can do to a man’s self esteem? I’ve been completely impotent for over twenty years - it was my last hope that Benny’s porn could help me get it up again!” Former ‘Hill’s Angel’ Maddie Thrape - who frequently appeared in Benny’s shows variously dressed as a schoolgirl, nurse, traffic warden or policewoman, only to lose her clothes in an ‘hilarious’ encounter with a rose bush, vacuum cleaner or industrial fan, before being chased around a park in her underwear by the rotund comic, also believes she has a claim to Hill’s legacy of porn. “Not only did I demean myself for five years by allowing myself to become an object of crude male sexual fantasies - I also befriended Benny off-screen,” the still busty forty-five year old blonde told us. “I’d frequently call round to his flat, where we’d often indulge in harmless games, enacting scenes from one of his magazines or films. He’d often grope my breasts like a naughty schoolboy or chase me around the living room, usually whilst a saxophonist he’d hire for the night played that bloody tune from his show. It was always my understanding that he was going to leave me the porn collection in his will in return for these favours!” Several theories have been advanced as to the fate of Benny Hill’s porn stash. Many believe that Benny secretly gifted it to a fellow comic before his death - although no stand-up comedians appear to have become significantly smuttier since Hill’s demise. It has also been suggested that the porn was sold by Benny in his last days to finance the Australian Communist Party, which had, at one time, been headed by his brother-in-law. “Benny was an ardent Marxist,” says Bob Todger. “As a working-class man he keenly believed in the principle of redistributing sexual gratification away from the middle and ruling classes and back to the workers, who were being deprived of their fair share. He saw his show as helping to fulfil the historic mission of the proletariat by taking smut back to the masses.” Others fear that Benny’s smut collection was seized by an evil sex magnate (possibly as payment for a gambling debt) and could be released onto an unsuspecting British porn market at any time. “I shudder to think of the consequences,” says Britain’s Anti-Porn Commissar, Keith Heltmetdale. “The market would be flooded, bringing the price of porn down to affordable levels for under-sixteens. Innocent children could be corrupted by being exposed to hard core porn peddled in school playgrounds! Furthermore, the proceeds would most likely be used to finance international terrorism!”

At least one of Benny’s former associates is dismayed by the grasping attitudes of his so-called friends. “They should be ashamed of themselves - Benny was hardly cold in his grave before they started tearing his flat apart searching for his porn,” says Suzie Upham, another former ‘Hill’s Angel’. “Poor Benny was totally lost after they cancelled his show - his porn collection became his only solace. He’d spend whole days alone in his flat masturbating over it, often in rhythm to ‘Yakety Sax’. Sometimes he’d go out to local parks and chase women around, often with his trousers around his ankles and his old man in his hand. The local police were very understanding about it - he made very generous contributions to their benevolent fund.” She believes Hill expired whilst enjoying his collection. “They found him on his sofa, his stiffening lamb cannon in his hand and a huge wank stain on the opposite wall. I’m only glad he obviously died happy. As for the fate of his porn collection, I neither know nor care,” Upham told us, as she masturbated herself with a huge purple dildo.