Richard P. H. J. Benson
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About
Richard Benson is a British-Italian singer and guitarist. He is known for his shouts and lies he tells about himself and his career.
Background and origins
His early life is difficult to know for certain, since he enjoys telling lies and building up a character around himself.
According to what he says, his full name is Richard Philip Henry John Benson, he was born in Woking, Surrey, in 1955 and he moved to Rome when he was ten. He usually remarks having a Roman grandmother, who taught him everything about the Italian lifestyle.
It is also a popular opinion among his detractors that he was actually born in Rome, he is not English at all, and his real name would be Riccardo Bensoni or Benzoni. This hypothesis is enforced by Richard's accent, that sounds totally Roman and not English at all. He has always discouraged this hypotesis, and he referred to a supposed scan of his British passport.
He started career as a guitarist in 1970, when he entered the progressive rock band "Buon Vecchio Charlie", with which he published an album. The band broke up in 1972. A legend says that Benson was driven crazy by the fact that a finger infection prevented him from playing his beloved guitar.
Between the 80s and 90s he appeared as a presenter in many local TV and radio shows, where he talked about music (mainly rock and metal) and made cameo appearances in some movies.
Career twist and spread of the meme
In 2001 he had a severe accident, falling from Ponte Sisto footbridge in Rome. After this, he started showing up more rarely until 2004, when he started his own TV program with the local network "Televita", where he simply talks about music and answers phone calls.
In this period he started to perform live in some roman local, where his exhibition became a trash icon. His repertoire, aside from songs, was completed by weird and ludicrous scenes where he shows half-naked women, comments on the items the raging crowd threw on the stage, and tells dubious anecdotes. It's around this period that some people started recording his crazes and uploaded them on YouTube, making him known all around Italy. One of his most famous quotes is the extremely loud shout "Un pollo!" ("A chicken!") that he made when a member of the audience threw a rubber chicken.
One of the first Richard Benson videos uploaded on YouTube. The infamous quote "Un pollo!" is at 0:51
Since then, he started becoming famous among the Italian YouTube users and appeared in a lot of YouTube Poops.
Hoaxes
Richard Benson is also well known for the hoaxes and lies he makes up about himself. Some examples of this are his encounter with a younger Marilyn Manson (that he pronounces "Marlin Manson") after an unproven Benson's concert in Vancouver and his presence during the death of English musician Brian Jones. Another hoax is his economical contribution to the pop singer Lady Gaga. Benson claims that the song "Heavy metal lover" is dedicated to him, and that he himself appears three times with a blonde wig during the "Judas" music video. The most famous hoax is probably Benson's "infernal cane", a cane that hides a blade within, that Benson claims was built under his specific recommendation by some American artisans, but is actually a cheap product of Chinese manufacture, that can easily be bought in a lot of roman tobacconists.
Richard Benson shows the world his "infernal cane". The woman he talks to during the video is his long-time girlfriend Ester Esposito, whom he married in 2013.
Richard Benson vs. Francesco Boccia
One of the few appearances of Richard Benson on national Italian television was in 2006, at the program "Stile Libero Max", when he was teased by the presenter, the Italian comedic artist Max Giusti, who made him listen live to a rejected competitor from Italian music festival "Sanremo". The musician is Francesco Boccia, who provoked Benson by singing his cheesy song "Cucciolo".
Richard Benson's first encounter with Francesco Boccia.
Benson was then forced to listen to Boccia in the next three episodes of "Stile Libero Max". In the first one, he interrupted Boccia shouting that they were making fun of him; in the second one, Boccia came disguised as a metal singer called Francis Boch, making Richard's disappointment when he heard "Cucciolo" again much greater. At his last encounter with Boccia, he was disguised as a funky brazilian singer named Francisco Bocinho. Benson reaction is comical an contributed to his fame in Italy.
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