‘Hang on there,’ I shouted from the stage. ‘The drink’s on us.’
Those were some of the most stupid words I’ve ever uttered on stage. The audience stood up as one and made for the bar. Every single one of them bought a drink at our expense and at the end of the evening we didn’t get paid a penny.
Another night and we were playing the Ranch House Social Club at Hutton Rudby. I’d devised a sketch where I’d leave the stage, put on a vicar’s costume, slip out of the stage door, leg it around the club and re-enter the concert room at the back, from where I’d make my way through the audience, taking a collection. Davy on stage would then pick an argument with me and the banter would flow from there. On this particular evening, I was stopped at the front door of the club by a doorman.
‘You can’t go in there, vicar,’ he said. ‘The Nuts are on. You won’t like them.’
‘I’m the drummer,’ I said.
‘But you won’t like it, vicar. They are very blue.’
‘You daft bugger. I’m the drummer.’
I couldn’t do anything for laughing. The lads on stage realised what had happened and also cracked up. And our act fell apart. Again, we didn’t get paid.
Like any band starting out, we owed everybody money. We learned to live on nothing and would steal whatever we could to get going. On many a Monday morning we’d take our instruments to Greenwood’s Pawnshop beside the turning circle for the trolleybus in North Ormesby. On Friday, we’d go down to the social security office at 1 Grange Road (we’d say we were ‘on the number one’ if we were claiming dole) and give them a sob story.
‘I haven’t eaten for three days and I’ve been sleeping rough on the beach,’ I’d say. ‘You couldn’t give me the price of a meat pie and a cup of tea?’ If the number one didn’t pay up, we’d borrow money from a mate to buy back our instruments.
In all this time, none of us thought of jacking it in. We’d never known the luxury of a wallet full of wads so there was nothing to miss. It was a way of life for most of the people we knew, but it hardened our attitudes. ‘So what if you’ve nowt,’ I’d think. ‘If you’ve nowt, you’ve nowt – but you can always look round for owt to steal.’ So if we couldn’t beg or borrow the money, we’d shoplift something and hock it at the local pub.
Like any decent band with aspirations, we wanted our own van. We found a cheap Thames van with sliding doors and the engine on the inside, between the driver and passenger seat. It was just after the heyday of flower power, so I painted big roses and tulips on the side. We thought we looked proper rock stars in it, like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.
On the way to a gig one weekend we picked up two birds. Before they got in, we made a pact. ‘Right, there’s no swearing in the van,’ George said. ‘Nobody says fuck. No cunts, twats, bastards, tits, nipples or arse. We’re not doing none of that. Right?’
It was all going well until, cruising on the Fishbourne Road just past Sedgefield, flames started coming out of the engine into the van. ‘What are we gonna do?’ George shouted as we pulled over on to the hard shoulder. All of our gear was in the back of the van and all of it was in hock or being paid for on the tick. My drums didn’t even have cases on them.
Emergencies call for improvisation and quick thinking, so we all pulled out our dicks and pissed on the engine. Fifteen minutes earlier, we’d vowed not to swear in front of the birds, now we were all standing around the engine with our dicks in our hands. But it worked, so we climbed back in the van and drove on to the club in a fug of piss fumes. The girls weren’t at all impressed.
On the way home from a gig a short while later, the van broke down. We parked it up on the A1 and called a mate to pick us up in his van and take our equipment back – after all, it had to be returned to the pawnshop by Monday morning. The van wasn’t insured or taxed and all the tyres were bald. A few days later there was a knock at my door. A copper was standing outside.
‘Mr Vasey?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Do you own a Thames van?’
‘I don’t, but my band does. There’s four of us.’
‘Ah … we thought it was a band’s van – all the flowers. You’re called The Nuts, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, sir, that’s right.’ I was trying to be as nice as ninepence.
The copper walked into my flat and shut the door behind him. ‘I know it’s not taxed, I know it’s not insured,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you fifteen quid for it’.
‘Whaddya mean? Fifteen quid?’ I looked at the copper. Cheeky bastard, I thought, that van’s got one good tyre on it.
‘Take it or leave it.’
‘Make it twenty,’ I said, cottoning on, ‘and you can have it.’ I never saw the van again and another bent copper crossed my path.
We bought another Thames van and it served us well until one day when we were driving along, telling stories and having a laugh on the way to a gig.
‘Eh, look there. Somebody’s lost a wheel,’ I said as a wheel went rolling past. And as I said it, the van tilted to one side, swung around and toppled over. The wheel had been ours. The worst part was we were meant to be picking up twenty-five quid that night when we were already pink-lint.
When it came to The Nuts’ act, I wrote most of the gags and the other lads orchestrated the songs. I’d be the first to admit that the jokes weren’t that good, but they were funny to us simply because we were excited to be in show business. We made up for the lack of good material by being utterly tasteless, telling jokes about sex and shit, and using a talking bucket that had a big pair of tits painted on the side.
We weren’t the only amateurish act. Most of the bands were made up of musicians who worked at ICI or Dorman, Long during the day, rushed home, had some tea and a bath, then turned up at a club at seven o’clock. They weren’t bothered by how well they could play their instruments and many of them didn’t even learn the words to their songs. We shared the bill one night with Alan Old, a fisherman from Redcar who played the guitar and sang solo. Alan was a right character with a very pragmatic approach to the business. When his van broke down, he’d drive his fishing tractor fifteen miles to a gig. When he forgot his bass drum, he’d use his suitcase instead. And Alan was well known for getting the words to songs wrong. Audiences had to endure ‘Elaine is in my ears and in my heart’ sung to the tune of the Beatles’ ‘Penny Lane’. Other songs in Alan’s repertoire included ‘My Boy Giddyup’ and ‘I’m Leaning On A Jet Plane’.
Standing at the bar of a club one evening, watching Alan belt out ‘Goodbye Ruby Wednesday’ as a heckler chided him that he was a day late, I decided to put him right.
‘It’s “Goodbye Ruby Tuesday”, Alan,’ I said as he came off stage, but he didn’t care.
‘Most of the time, the fuckers don’t even notice,’ he replied. ‘They’re too busy talking and buying bingo books. And as long as I get my money at the end of the evening, it doesn’t even matter. I’m not bothered – I’ve had a good day fishing.’
With an act that was often crude and rude, our reputation started to precede us and The Nuts stopped getting good work. The only clubs that would take us were so rough the piano legs had bandages and the arms on the chairs had tattoos.
At a nightclub in Billingham, a stag-night party sitting right in front of the stage got so rowdy and abusive that a fight broke out between us and them. We were heavily outnumbered and I was punched in the face, so I hit one of the stag-party lot over the head. He responded by putting his foot through the skin of my bass drum – a cardinal sin in any drummer’s book.
The police were called. When they arrived, they found us locked in the dressing room and escorted us from the building. Our speakers, amplifiers, instruments and drums were wrecked, we didn’t get paid and we were sent a large bill for damage to the club.
‘I saw your act two weeks ago,’ the policeman said. ‘No wonder they attacked you.’
‘Ha fucking ha,’ I said.
I could see we couldn’t go on like t
his. I’d been led to believe that show business was all sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, but the best I ever got in The Nuts was a wank, a paracetamol and a Sandie Shaw record. We were losing more money than we were making and I’d not seen any decent action in months. Since Judy had left Redcar my sex life had been a bit hit and miss. I’d had a few knee-tremblers with some right monsters while working the door at the Red Lion, but nothing permanent.
Fortunately, the Red Lion was the place to go in Redcar. There was a pub and restaurant at the front and a disco at the back that attracted every good-looking bit of skirt in the area. It was packed with pussy. If you were up for it, you could not help but get a fuck.
I was working one night with a lad called Enoch who like most bouncers had a reputation as a bit of a bruiser. ‘I’m up at court tomorrow,’ he said as we waved a couple of birds into the disco. I should have been rooting for him, but when he said that only one thought passed through my mind: that girl standing next to you is a bit bonny. Audrey was very attractive. With long dark hair and olive skin, she could have passed as a Spaniard. A fortnight later, she walked into the Red Lion with some friends.
‘Have you heard from Enoch?’ I said.
‘I went to see him in Durham jail. He got six months,’ she said. It was the first I’d known that Enoch had been sent down.
Later that evening she was hanging around the door, so I thought I’d chance my luck.
‘Can I take you home?’
‘Yeah, if you like.’
‘I’ll get you a taxi.’
‘It’s all right, I’ll get it myself. I’ll pay for it.’
‘Do you want a coffee?’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘I’ve a flat round the corner in Westbourne Grove, just near the Labour Club.’
‘Aye, I’ll come back, then.’
Bingo! Audrey was great. A fantastic shagger and a lovely woman. She’d bring me little presents and I’d always buy her a drink when she turned up at the Red Lion. It was nothing serious – for one thing, she had a four-year-old illegitimate daughter and after my experiences with Judy I wasn’t ready to take on another child – but it was good fun while it lasted.
After about three months, Audrey stopped coming around to my flat or turning up at the Red Lion. I made a few enquiries. At the garage where Audrey had worked, they said she’d called in one day to say she was ill, then never appeared for work again. Her brother, who worked on a mobile shop, said he didn’t know where she’d gone. Audrey’s friends warned me off going around to the house where her father, a Sicilian seaman, lived. ‘He’s a fucking killer,’ they said and gave the same explanation I heard from everyone I asked: ‘Audrey? She’s vanished into thin air.’
In the end, I assumed that Enoch had been let out early on parole and that Audrey had just upped her bags with him and left. I was a bit disappointed, but soon found solace in the arms of Lana, a woman I met at the pub.
Lana was gorgeous. Every bloke in Redcar was after her, but I’d been the lucky one who made his play just when she’d had enough of her boyfriend. I fell for Lana in a big way, having her name tattooed on my arm and buying her a second-hand engagement ring. Lana accepted my proposal – without her parents’ consent because they hated the sight of me – and we made plans to get married. A few days after we’d got engaged, Lana dropped the bombshell.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.
‘You what?’
‘I’m pregnant. What are we gonna do?’
‘We’ll have to tell your mam …’
‘No, I’m not doing that. I’m going to get it aborted.’
With Richard and Robert now living with Judy back in Redcar, I knew I didn’t want any more children. I was happy to get married – it was what most people did in those days, no matter how fleeting the relationship – but children meant a more serious commitment than wedding bells and I didn’t want that.
Although I was in love with Lana, I hadn’t stopped playing around. At the end of an evening out with Lana, I’d kiss her goodnight on her parents’ doorstep and catch a bus for the five-mile journey to Saltburn where, with a couple of mates, I’d rented a cold, damp flat. The bus ran along the coast road and was often empty late at night. I’d sit at the back with the entire top deck to myself. One night, the conductress came upstairs and sat down next to me. She was blonde, about thirty and her uniform clung tightly to her body in all the right places.
‘Hiya,’ she said. ‘I know you. Don’t you work at the Red Lion?’
‘You want to fasten that button, I can see your tits,’ I said. I told a few gags. By the time we’d left Redcar, the conductress had her hand down my trousers and was giving me a wank.
I never saw the conductress again and the wank had meant nothing to me more than a bit of fun, but such cheap thrills made me realise that, although I was happy to get married, I didn’t want to be tied down to a woman and another child. So when Lana suggested an abortion I was very happy to go along with it. The only problem was that legal abortions were still difficult to arrange away from the big cities so Lana fell back on one of the old wives’ methods of the day involving drinking a bottle of gin and sitting in a hot bath.
‘You think that’ll work?’ I said.
‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘But I really don’t want this child.’
A few nights later I turned up to meet Lana in our usual place, the corner down the road from her parents’ house, but she was not there. The next evening, I stood on the same corner at the same pre-arranged time but again Lana didn’t appear. I walked up the road to her parents’ house and knocked on the door. Her mother answered it.
‘What do you want?’
‘Is Lana in?’
‘She’s in hospital, no thanks to you.’
‘It’s got nothing to do with me.’
‘Just go away or I’ll call the police.’ Lana’s mother slammed the door in my face, so I rang her sister.
‘Angela, it’s Roy. What’s happened about Lana?’
‘She had a miscarriage. She was watching Coronation Street last night and she went up to the bathroom and started bleeding. Our mam and our dad are going to fucking kill you. They didn’t know Lana was pregnant.’
I never saw Lana again. I suspect her mother poisoned her mind against me after that because she would have nowt to do with me. Six months later I was around at my mother’s house. ‘Have a look at this,’ my mam said, thrusting a copy of the Evening Gazette across the kitchen table.
There was a picture of Lana on the front page beside a story saying that she had kicked a bus after getting drunk with some lad who was clearly her new boyfriend. It went on to say that she’d also hit the copper who’d locked her up. It didn’t sound like Lana at all. When I knew her, she was one of those girls who was sugar and spice and all things nice. I was really shocked.
‘And have you got a baby?’ my mam said.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Well, she’s been round here, holding a baby, saying it’s yours and asking if you want to see it.’
So Lana had kept the baby after all. ‘That’s all over now,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m not seeing her any more.’
‘Well, I think it’s disgusting. You have responsibilities.’
‘It’s not me, Mother,’ I said. ‘Lana doesn’t want to know.’
My mother didn’t understand. She couldn’t. Like most mothers, she was outraged at her son’s morals and behaviour. And I didn’t give it much thought. There was so much going on in my life then that I didn’t have the time to think it over. I just lived day to day. I cared about only two things – playing the drums and telling jokes. Whatever else went on didn’t matter. All the scams, escapades and misdemeanours never bothered me. It was like throwing a brick through a window and months later passing that window and seeing it had been repaired. I’d just be chuffed to have got away with it. Live for today, forget the past and fuck the future – that was my motto.
CHAP
TER NINE
CHUBBY IS BORN
I HELD UP THE SIGN. ‘Had throat operation,’ it said. ‘Please don’t ask questions. Leave a message below.’ And I asked Helen to tell my sons and anyone else who knew me: please don’t ring me up. I’m sorry I can’t talk to you.
For weeks I lived in a silent world, not talking, just pointing, grunting and scribbling messages on a notepad. And the strangest thing happened. Because I was silent, most people around me stopped talking as well. I’d gone dumb and they added deafness.
And when they did talk to me, it was always the same thing. ‘Are you all right, Dad?’ Or: ‘How’re you feeling, Roy? Are you okay, Chubby?’ If I had a pound for every time I was asked that question … well, let’s just say I appreciated the concern but was totally fed up with the limitations of my response – a smile, a shrug or a thumbs-up.
Even now I’ll be in the shops and somebody will shout: ‘Chubby! How’s your throat?’ I’ll pretend not to speak. I’ll point at my throat and silently mouth something and shrug apologetically. It makes them smile. And if the checkout girl’s pretty and she asks ‘How’s your throat Chubby?’ I’ll leap on the opportunity.
‘Why, do you wanna put your tongue down it?’ I’ll say. Or: ‘Don’t worry, I’m not shoplifting. I’m not hiding anything at the back behind my tongue.’
Back then, in the first weeks after the operation, I was desperate to be able to answer questions concerning my well-being with a quick quip. But I couldn’t. First I needed radiotherapy.
The treatment started a week after the operation. Five days a week for six weeks I trooped into the hospital, laid myself down on a trolley and waited for the radiotherapist and the nurse to strap me into a brace that kept my head and chest absolutely rigid.
Just to relieve the boredom of it, I would always have a bit of a crack with the nurse. ‘I’ve bought you some coffee creams, ladies, so treat me right today. Whose turn is it to get undressed?’
Common As Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown Page 14