We’d drive to the wholesale market in Middlesbrough, stock up, head back to Redcar and arrange the fruit and veg on the stall. I’d polish the apples while Marty would go off to the pie shop and buy us all a saveloy sandwich, a thing of beauty of which I’d have two for breakfast with a bottle of cold milk.
I loved being a barrow boy. It wasn’t so much about selling vegetables as the crack that could be had in the process. It would be so cold some mornings that I’d not be able to feel my toes, but that didn’t matter because I’d made a discovery that would change my life. I’d always been the class clown, but the market was where I first realised that I really had the gift of the gab and that I could use it to make people laugh.
I would make up little poems up about the fruit that went down a treat with the women. ‘It’s a wonderful thing, is a strawberry,’ I’d shout as a pretty woman walked past.
‘It’s so round and so red and so thick. If you’re out for a lark and you’re stood in the dark you can hold one and think it’s a … five pence a pound! Five pence a pound!’
When apples were in season, I’d bellow: ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away, that’s an old wives’ tale which is true. Eating two at a time, being a pig’s not a crime, but you’ll suffer when you’re on the loo!’
But my favourite ploy was to see how rude I could be and still get away with it. I’d hold up a cucumber and, in a typical barrow boy’s inaudible chant, shout out: ‘Fanny crackers! Fanny crackers! Two for a shilling! Fanny crackers!’ Women would come up to the stall and ask what I’d just said. ‘Cucumbers,’ I’d answer.
‘No, you said something else,’ they’d say.
‘Oh, I said Christmas crackers.’
‘Right, I see …’ And having made them stop, I’d usually get them to buy some vegetables.
The tricks of a barrow boy’s trade were never-ending. At Christmas, the profit was unbelievable. We would buy fifty sheets of wrapping paper for two shillings, then roll up ten sheets, put an elastic band around them and sell them as twelve for a shilling. We knew that no one would count them until they got home, by which time they would have forgotten whether they bought ten or twelve sheets and Marty’s big leather bag would be stuffed with our takings.
Marty paid me well. I was on around fifty pounds a week and then I’d work on the door of a pub a couple of evenings a week, earning two pounds an hour. Drumming didn’t earn me anything, but I was convinced that would come later and at last there was some stability in my life. It wasn’t entirely without incident – I ended up in hospital after coming off the motorbike given to me by Norman Trevethick – but on the whole I was managing to stick to the straight and narrow, a massive change for me. The biggest turning point, however, came when there was a knock on the door of my flat one evening. I opened the door to find my cousin Derek Vasey standing there.
‘Hiya, Roy,’ he said. ‘Can I come in?’ Derek entered my little bedsit. ‘Erm … somebody saw you playing the … erm … drums the other night in the … er … Station Hotel.’
‘That’s right, yeah,’ I said.
Derek was very awkward. We’d not spoken for ages and I’d hardly recognised him. He was acting like he had come to collect a debt. ‘Erm … our drummer … I’ve got a pop group …’
‘Oh, have ya?’
‘Yeah,’ Derek said, ‘we’re … er … called The Pipeline and our drummer, Geoff Briggs, is going on holiday for a week. Will you stand in?’
I immediately agreed. I didn’t know anything about Derek’s group and I didn’t know how to play drums beyond just accompanying a pianist, but this was too good a chance to turn down.
‘We’re at the Magnet Hotel at Grangetown. We play there every Saturday night,’ Derek said.
‘How am I going to get my kit there?’
‘Maybe come on the bus?’ Derek suggested. It wasn’t very rock ’n’ roll but it was a start. That Saturday I lined up with my drum kit beside all the shoppers at the bus stop, slipped my bass drum under the stairs when the double-decker arrived and sat with my tom-tom and my snare drum on my knee. I had no boxes for them or polythene bags to cover them. Just me and my drums on the way to a proper gig. I was thrilled.
There was no need for rehearsal before the gig. Every song was in a four-four beat. ‘Johnny B. Goode’, ‘Let’s Work Together’ – everything was tap, tap, tap, tap. In that week, I played four gigs with The Pipeline, the last one at the British Legion across the border in Middlesbrough. As soon as Geoff arrived back from holiday, Derek fired him. ‘We’re going to take our Roy on,’ he said.
‘No, you’re fucking not,’ Geoff said. ‘That’s my job.’
‘Yes, we fucking are. He’s a much better drummer than you.’
I’d never had a drum lesson in my life, now I’d landed myself a job in a rock-and-roll act. Already, prison and Borstal seemed a very long way away.
After Geoff was fired, we immediately changed our name to Four Man Band. Derek and his brother Lee, who was only sixteen years old, were the heart and soul of the group. Our Dec was a really great bass player and Lee was just as accomplished on the guitar. They were fanatical, listening to music all the time and watching music programmes on television. Living in the same house, they could bounce ideas off each other and work on the music night and day. Funky jazz was their passion. Then there was Tony Morris, a classy singer who was just as good at belting out rock ’n’ roll as barber-shop harmonies.
With Dec and Lee’s ambitions, and Tony’s talent, the Four Man Band was never going to be a comedy band, that was evident. They were serious musos and they saw the band as a stepping stone to greater things, but I was determined to exert my influence.
Within a few months, I’d bedded myself right into the band. It was the early 70s and we’d play all the songs we’d heard on the radio. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, mainly. Tony Christie was building up quite a following, so I suggested to the band that we have a go at some of his tunes. I looked nowt like him and our Tony sounded nowt like him, but I thought we could win over the audience by changing around some of the words to his songs. Because I’d written them, I used to sing them.
‘I Did What I Did For Maria’, Christie’s biggest hit at that time, I changed to: ‘Sunrise, this is the last day that I’ll ever see, Out in the yard her mother’s waiting for me, Hey I did what I did full of beer, That’s why I did what I did to Maria.’
When I heard the audience laugh at my lyrics, I got an even bigger thrill than when they applauded my drumming. From the first evening that I came off the drums, stood at the microphone and made people laugh, I wanted more. There was no feeling like it. I was hooked.
On a good night, we’d earn about twenty pounds for two sets. After we’d hired the van, bought a bottle of lemonade, some fags and fish and chips on the way home, it left about two quid each for a night’s work. Not a bad wage, but less than I could earn for a day on the market stall with Marty. Problem was, if I played all night I was too tired to work on the market all day. And if I worked for Marty all day, I was often too tired to play that evening. Something had to give, particularly as the debt collector was never far from my door.
We were playing the Magnet Hotel in Grangetown, a pub I’d watched being built while sitting outside the chip shop as a kid. As usual, we’d opened with ‘Let’s Work Together’ by Canned Heat, ‘Please Please Me’ and another Beatles number. Then we sneaked in a couple of less familiar songs before moving onto the comedy songs. I was tapping away on the drums when Lee came over. ‘Bloke on the door wants to speak to you,’ he said.
I looked over towards the entrance. A man standing there looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. After we’d finished the first set, I went over.
‘Mr Vasey?’ he said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Roy, is it?’
‘That’s me.’
‘I’m from Hamilton’s Music Store in Middlesbrough,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I’ve come for
the drums.’
‘They’re my drums,’ I said.
‘Not any more they aren’t. You haven’t paid for your drums for six months. I’ve come to repossess them.’
It was the last thing I had expected. My dad was supposed to be paying the instalments on my kit, but the bastard hadn’t kept up to date. ‘Could you not wait until we finish this second spot?’ I said.
‘’Fraid not,’ the bailiff said. ‘I can’t wait.’
‘I’ll give you a tenner,’ I said. I didn’t have ten quid, neither did the band, but I needed to buy time. The bailiff agreed.
‘You’re quite good, aren’t you, you and the lads,’ the bailiff said as we went on for our second set. I smiled weakly. Then, as soon as we finished our spot, I made a run for it, sneaking out the back door without giving the bailiff his ten pounds and waving the kit goodbye.
The loss of my drum kit made it obvious that we needed to find a way to earn more money. And, in the short term, I needed a new kit fast. Other drummers would lend me parts. I’d have one person’s bass drum, somebody’s else’s snare drum and another drummer’s tom-tom and cymbals.
We decided to play more evenings each week, but that made it even more difficult to keep up my job on the market stall. In desperation, I went to Marty and called it a day. Marty was upset, but he took it well. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘how’re you getting on?’
‘The band’s doing really well,’ I said, ‘although I could do with a better kit of drums. In fact, I’ve not got any drums at all. The ones I had before …’ And I told Marty the story about the bailiff from Hamilton’s Music Shop.
Marty listened. Then – and I’ll never forget this – he gave me more than two hundred pounds to buy a new set. I didn’t know what to say. It was incredibly generous, but more than that, since the day my mam left home, I’d not known anybody to put themselves out for me like that.
I bought a lovely set of second-hand silver-and-pearl Premier drums. It was a beautiful kit and I’ll always be deeply indebted to Marty for it. It took me years to pay the money back, but really I still owe him to this day for his wonderful generosity.
On my prompting, the Four Man Band gradually incorporated more comedy, soon discovering that it was a sure way to earn more money. We would walk on stage with a prop and crack a joke. Our first attempts were amateurish – and muggins on the kit was the daft-arse who had to try to get away with it – but in time we improved and the comedy started to take over from the music.
The more I moved to the front of the band, the more I was gripped by stage fright. Some performers need a drink to go on stage. Others throw up in the dressing-room sink. I always needed a good dump. I tried all sorts of things to get around it, but nothing worked. My bowels always had the last word.
I’d always take my shoes off to play the drums because I had more control of the pedals in my socks. One night, we were approaching the end of our set when our Dec looked down at my feet. ‘Where’s your sock?’ he said. One of them was missing.
I shrugged. ‘There was no toilet paper.’
Dec, who knew my stage-fright symptoms, started laughing. That set me off and the more we looked at each other, the more we laughed. We were in fits of laughter, the tears rolling down our cheeks as we tried to suppress our giggling in front of the audience. In the end, we had to come off. We couldn’t play any longer, we were laughing so much.
Derek, Lee, Tony and I had been playing together for nearly two years. We’d built up a good reputation and we were getting decent work. We’d backed local stars, but Dec and Lee were impatient. They wanted to play jazz. Their musical skills had outrun the band and they wanted us to change direction. ‘I’d love to play jazz,’ I said, ‘but there’s no money in it and we have to earn a living.’
But Dec and Lee were adamant. It was jazz or nothing for them. So the band split and we went our separate ways. I was disappointed but thought it might be for the best. After all, a lot had changed in the time I’d been playing with the Four Man Band. I’d started to settle down and, by my standards, I’d become respectable. I was a married man now. And I’d just started a family.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TROUBLE AND STRIFE
‘YOU’LL BE ALL RIGHT, pet,’ Helen said. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I’ve got faith in these people. You’ll be great.’ Sitting on our sofa at home, the night before my first cancer operation, I listened to Helen’s reassuring words, looked at her in that strange way you do when you don’t know if you’re going to see someone you love again, and thought: I hope you’re right. I really hope you’re right.
I’ve always believed the world is full of lucky people and unlucky sods. There’s little you can do about it. Some people attract bad fortune like flies to shit. I have friends who, try as they might, are just not lucky. Keith, my driver, is one. If he backs a horse, it always comes in second. If he buys a car, there’s always something wrong with it. If he gets a new television, the aerial will snap off his roof. Every time I ask Keith to put my lottery ticket in, I never get a single number right. If I do it myself, I’ll often get a tenner back, but never when Keith does it for me. Never.
Of course, we’d be lost without the unlucky sods. They make me laugh and without them, us lucky ones would never realise how good we’ve got it.
Now Helen’s always been lucky. When she says owt to me, I take it in. I pay attention and I believe it’s going to come true. And Helen kept saying I’d survive. ‘Don’t worry,’ she’d say. ‘I feel lucky for you. You’re going to be all right. They’re not going to get rid of you.’
And I just said: ‘I hope you’re right.’
Mr White told me very little before the operation. While I sat in his office, cursing my sweaty palms and churning stomach, he calmly explained what he was going to do. There was something in his ordinariness – a little man with spectacles and dark hair parted to one side – that was very reassuring. He held up an X-ray image and, pointing at a dark area of my throat, described the procedure. That was enough detail for me. I’m squeamish at the best of times – I once punched a bloke on the nose and when he started bleeding, I passed out – and I took in very little of what Mr White told me.
But as Mr White went on, I realised he was making the operation sound like an everyday thing, like he was talking me through a holiday brochure or the plans for some building work on my house. And then I realised that’s exactly what it was to him. Booking a holiday or having an extension built or having a cancer operation can all seem complicated, momentous things. But for the people who do it every day – travel agents or builders or surgeons – it’s just another day at the office. And when I realised that, I felt strangely calm and the nervousness seeped away.
‘When you came to see me about your throat,’ Mr White said, ‘what were you about to do?’
‘I was going to Australia for a six-week tour,’ I said.
‘If you’d done that, we might have been talking about a completely different operation. You came to me at just the right time. Any later and it would have been a lot more difficult.’
‘Right …’ I could see what Mr White was getting at. I just hoped it didn’t mean I’d used up all my luck.
‘Now you’ve already had two investigatory operations,’ Mr White said, ‘and we’re going to have to stop putting you to sleep for routine investigations because if we continue to do it, it will affect your brain.’
That put the shits right up me. Would it mean I wouldn’t be able to remember my own name when I woke up?
‘It means we’ll have to try something else the next time we put a camera down your throat,’ Mr White said. ‘And it might be a bit uncomfortable.’
I got used to investigations without sedatives, but when it came to the operation to remove the cancer I was allowed a general anaesthetic. The nurses in the hospital were like angels. While I lay on my bed on the morning of the operation, my mind wandering all over the place, they gave me hope. Their actions and comforting words mad
e me feel a million dollars. The problem was that I’d walked around the hospital and seen what could happen to me. There were cancer patients in the Royal Infirmary who’d had their throats removed. With big blue steam boxes beside their beds and tubes leading to their mouths, they were fighting to keep the germs at bay. I could see the fear in their eyes. They knew they’d have to learn to speak all over again. And I knew they were wondering if they could do it.
Judith Ann Armstrong first caught my eye in – where else? – a Redcar pub. It was shortly after I started drumming with the Four Man Band and I’d gone into the Clarendon. As was so often the case, a gang of lasses was sat near the jukebox. I recognised a couple of them – one was called Diana – but my attention was totally focused on Judith. Wearing a miniskirt and with short boyish hair, Judith looked a bit like Lulu. I heard her dirty laugh, saw the cheeky glint in her eye and immediately thought, ‘Eh up, that’s a pretty bewer!’
Supping my pint, I was keeping half an eye on Judith when a lad I knew only as China walked in. China was half-Italian and was said to be a bit of a bully, a reputation to which he immediately lived up by walking over to the group of lasses and giving Judith a clip across the top of her head.
‘Eh, eh, fucking pack it in,’ I interjected.
‘Shut ya fuckin’ mouth or I’ll tear off ya face,’ China replied. Thinking it best not to provoke any trouble, I turned my attention back to my pint and waited for China to go to the toilet. Then I followed him into the gents’.
‘You’ll rip my face off, will you?’ I snarled as China stood at the urinal. ‘Well, get on with it.’
Common As Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown Page 11