| Benny Hill His was not a simple gift, but a multitude of them That no one else I’ve ever seen could claim Impossible to summarize in any one attempt To make a list of all of them by name An inborn sense of what we are, reserves all stripped away Revealing a marvelous vulnerability Using every skill a well-trained actor could employ And proving, further still, what man can be When blessed with something inborn, far beyond what can be taught Broad, unlimited imagination Able so to characterize in a way the Lon Chaney might, If comedy had been his occupation Before he even said a word, the humor was clearly there He seemed to want to lift you off your chair With the same anticipation of a child on Christmas Eve His enthusiasm quickly filled the air It seemed to be infectious and I did not want a cure For laughter is what makes life more worthwhile What he wrote, as no one else could, translated onto film And is priceless as the ability to smile When the man was “naughty”, you could see the boy in man Wherever there’s a void in life to fill Succeeding generations will find a legacy of laughter in the name of Benny Hill. |
| Mel (Written for Mel Brooks) He’s the high-jinx and the belly laughs The daring and the broad He’ll play the jester for the world And joyously applaud He’s the mirror of our folly The outrageous and insane But no one in the world but he Could live up to his name Filled with well-earned confidence He’s prolific, and that’s rate A sense of what he knows he loves to do Is clearly there The freedom of an artist who Can laugh at life, and yet Satirically recreate it in A way hard to forget A director who is teacher for Great protégés he’s weaned Seemingly the heart of humor And much of what we’ve dreamed If we’re lucky, he’ll touch all of us But only time will tell How much we’ll see before he’s through For, oh, how much is Mel! |
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