Tony Hendra, who shrunk ‘Spinal Tap’s’ Stonehenge, dead at 79

Tony Hendra — the British humorist finest often called the “This is Spinal Tap” supervisor who blunderingly shrunk Stonehenge — died Thursday of Lou Gehrig’s illness in Yonkers, NY.

He was 79, and had battled the sickness, also referred to as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, since 2019.

“A superb satirist,” the enduring 1984 mockumentary’s director, Rob Reiner, tweeted in memorializing Hendra’s death.

Hendra acquired his begin within the early Sixties as a member of the Cambridge University Footlights assessment, showing on stage with future Monty Python stars John Cleese and Graham Chapman.

He moved to the U.S. in 1964 and — along with his comedy associate Nick Ullett — opened for the legendary (*79*) Bruce in Greenwich Village.

Hendra was most prolific as a comedy author. He penned skits for the favored U.Okay. comedy sequence “That Was The Week That Was,” and for Hugh Hefner’s “Playboy After Dark,” then began working at National Lampoon journal.

There he turned a member of an underground satire scene that included John Belushi and Christopher Guest — who cast him as Ian Faith in “This is Spinal Tap.”

Hendra’s ridiculously small Stonehenge stage set earned a few of the film’s finest laughs — as did this entendre-laden line, delivered whereas holding a cricket bat:

“Certainly, within the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a very good stable piece of wooden in your hand is usually helpful.”

Another massive giggle got here when the cricket bat-wielding Hendra disregarded a cancelled Boston gig, Reiner famous.

“A superb satirist who when studying that the band’s Boston gig had been canceled, advised them to not fear [because] Boston wasn’t an enormous school city,” Reiner’s tweet learn.

Hendra printed a non secular memoir in 2004, titled “Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul,” which prompted his estranged daughter, Jessica, to accuse him of molesting her. He denied the accusations.

With Post wires