The time Mean Streets opened with Benny Hill’s ‘Ernie’ rather than The Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’

The old red Warner Brothers logo fills the screen, Martin Scorsese’s voice cuts through the silence – ‘You don’t make up for your sins in church, you do it in the streets.’

Charlie wakes suddenly and, to the symphony of car horns and traffic from the street outside, gets out of bed and stares in the mirror.

As he returns, troubled, to his bed we hear an orchestral flourish and the familiar gallop of Benny Hill’s 1971 classic Ernie (The Fastest Milkfloat in the West) begins.

“In my head, it was the only song that could open the picture,” said the legendary director in a 1989 Wogan interview.

“I mean, Charlie? His friends? They’re all low-level guys, just kids, punks, hanging out together on the streets.

“Ernie, it would have been their lives. They’d have heard it in the bars, the pool halls, from car windows.

“Benny Hill was just the sound of New York in the seventies.”

Scorsese’s Movie Brat friends loved it.

“Oh gee, yeah. Opening that picture with Ernie? That was just fantastic,” said Star Wars: The Phantom Menace director George Lucas.

“It really inspired me and for a while, my first Star Wars picture – A New Hope, had the Benny Hill theme tune in place of the Imperial March and Ernie actually soundtracking Luke’s final assault on the Death Star.”

However, there was a problem.

“Benny wanted the role of Johnny-Boy,” revealed the director.

“He was happy for us to let us use the song, and would have even given it for free, but Benny Hill wanted the supporting role in Mean Streets.

“I gave the guy a shot and he was good. He was really good. He had an explosive, manic energy that really worked for Johnny Boy.

“Thing was, he was also had this innate saucy, double-entendre, end-of-the-pier postcard thing going on. He kept pinching the girl’s asses and running away.

“It came down to Benny Hill or Bobby DeNiro? I had to go with Bobby in the end.”

Sadly, this meant replacing Ernie (The Fastest Milkfloat in the West) with The Ronettes’ Be My Baby.

“You know, it’s fine. It’s a great start to the picture,” said Scorsese, wistfully.

“But, in my head, whenever I see that? When I see Harvey’s head hit that pillow? All I can think of is that opening verse of Ernie.”

You could hear the hoof beats pound as they raced across the ground,

And the clatter of the wheels as they spun ’round and ’round.

And he galloped into market street, his badge upon his chest,

His name was Ernie, and he drove the fastest milk cart in the west.