Common As Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown

by Roy Chubby Brown

  There were gasps and ooohs at the front of the room, but at the back of the room all the regular coppers fell about. It was obvious they’d set me up.

  ‘Obviously I’m pissing against the wind, ladies and gentlemen,’ I said. ‘And there’s only me getting wet.’ I walked off stage and went to the dressing room.

  I was all over the place. Some nights the audience loved me; other nights they hated me. There was no halfway house. My blue act went down a storm, but the success of my clean act depended on the prejudices of the audience. It was a constant battle, but I was learning that show business was like that. And I was ahead of my time. Nowadays the word ‘fuck’ doesn’t mean a thing. It’s on telly every night. Graham Norton talks about twats all the time. No one would have got away with that when I started.

  I felt in need of a holiday, so I offered to take big-breasted Pat to Majorca. We’d been together nearly two years. I also took my sons Richard and Robert, who were about nine and ten years old, but I didn’t tell Judith, their mum, about Pat. The boys made friends with her, but I told them to say nowt. Pat was just a friend of Daddy as far as they were concerned. She took them swimming and bought them ice creams. They thought she was great.

  But when the plane landed back at Middlesbrough and was taxiing to the terminal, the thought went through my head that Beryl or Judith might be waiting for me to arrive. Panicked by the prospect of being caught with Pat, I warned her that ‘just in case Judy’s here, I won’t be holding your hand going down the stairs.’

  Clambering down the stairs with the kids, pulling one and pushing the other as I lugged our hand luggage to the terminal, I left Pat struggling to lift her bag down from the luggage rack and leave the plane on her own. Inside the terminal, I whipped our cases off the conveyor belt and rushed through Customs to the arrivals lounge, where Beryl was waiting. The kids loved Beryl, but I didn’t give them any time to say hello as I rushed them out of the airport, terrified that Pat would catch up with us.

  I rang Pat the next day. She wouldn’t speak to me. A week later I rang her again. ‘You just fucking used me,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You did. You couldn’t wait to get off that plane. You could have taken me to the fish shop or had a drink before you went home, but no, all you wanted to do was get away. You must have somebody else.’

  ‘I haven’t. Honest. You’re talking rubbish.’

  But Pat was right. When you are seeing bits of pussy on the side, you’re ducking and diving all the time, and you always get caught in the end. No one is that clever.

  A few months later, Pat got a job at a Butlin’s camp. I went to visit her, but she refused to let me on the site. We’d always meet off the site – at a garage, maybe. We’d go for a bite to eat and then have a fuck in the back of the car. I found out that a bald white-jacketed piano player in the Butlin’s band was giving her one, but I didn’t really care that much. I wasn’t in love, just in lust, and much as I liked Pat, I knew she had a problem: she was too fond of dick. That problem, however, got a whole lot more complicated in 1979, by which time Pat had moved back to Redcar and we’d been seeing each other for about three years.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ Pat said. ‘And it’s yours.’

  For all Pat’s reassurances that the child was mine, I didn’t trust her. A couple of previous squeezes, who I’d casually knocked off on the side while seeing Beryl, had claimed they were pregnant with my child. One was a bird who worked on the tills at the local Tesco branch. She was engaged to another lad, so I had little reason to believe that the child was definitely mine. Pat, however, took deviousness to another level. I’d had too many experiences of turning up at nightclubs for a drink and finding Pat on the dance floor with another bloke on a night when she’d told me she was staying home to wash her hair. I was forever hearing tales from other blokes of Pat’s shenanigans. She’d tell me she was staying home, then I’d go round to visit her and discover she wasn’t in. A couple of days later, a mate would say he’d seen Pat in a club with another bloke. It happened so often that it got beyond a joke. And even after she told me she was pregnant and claimed there’d been no one else in her life for a while, there were stories that Pat was seeing a policeman and a footballer in Hartlepool. I felt I had no choice but to ask her for a blood test.

  ‘If you don’t want this baby to be yours,’ Pat replied to my demands for proof, ‘it’s not yours. I’m not bothered. I’ll just tell the social that I don’t know who the father is.’

  Some days I did want it to be mine, other days I didn’t, but most of the time I simply didn’t want the responsibility of fatherhood. I’d neglected Richard and Robert for the job, so it seemed wrong to take on another child when I couldn’t give the boys the attention they deserved.

  As if my sex life wasn’t already fraught enough, while Pat was pregnant and I was living with Beryl I met another woman. From the moment we met, Maureen was very clear about what she wanted. All Maureen wanted was a good old-fashioned fuck, plain and simple. She lived in Stockton-on-Tees and I would drop by after a gig for a leg-over before going back to Beryl or Pat. There were days when I’d sleep with all three of them in one night. I’d arrive at Maureen’s house. We’d share a glass of wine on the couch, I’d shag her and then I’d say ‘See ya.’ On the way home to Beryl, I’d remember that I’d promised Pat I’d drop around, so I would go through the whole spiel again with Pat before heading home to where Beryl was waiting in bed for me. It went on like that for about six weeks, by which time I felt like the walking wounded.

  Maureen was very discreet – she was separated from her husband and waiting for a divorce – but what I didn’t know was that a comedian friend of mine who was knocking off Pat lived opposite Maureen and that his son had spoken to Pat.

  ‘What was your car doing outside Maureen’s house?’ said Pat one night.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, turning red as a beetroot.

  ‘It was outside there on Tuesday and on Saturday.’

  ‘Oh … where’s that? Near the Malleable Club?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I broke down, didn’t I?’

  ‘You broke down for three nights?’

  I just couldn’t lie and I admitted it all to Pat. ‘She’s just a friend,’ I said. Pat and I got over it and I stopped seeing Maureen. Then one day, several months later, I bumped into Maureen at a carboot sale.

  ‘Why don’t you come round to mine?’ she said. So I did, but this time I left my car around the corner.

  A few weeks later, I was playing a club in Sunderland. I came off stage at nine-thirty, got in my car and drove around to Pat’s flat. We’d arranged to meet at ten o’clock. ‘Shall I bring some fish and chips round?’ I said.

  ‘No, just drop in,’ she said. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  I walked in. There on the sofa in the front room of Pat’s flat, sitting in a line like those see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-speak-no-evil monkeys, were Beryl, Pat and Maureen.

  ‘Whoops!’ I said. ‘I think I’ve dropped a bollock.’

  ‘I think you better sit down,’ said Beryl.

  ‘I can’t stop …’

  ‘You sit yourself down now. We need to talk to you about what’s going on here,’ Beryl said. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do.’

  ‘I’ve no explaining to do. Work it out yourselves.’ They looked at me. ‘Well, I’ve been caught …’

  I walked out of the house. I had no answers for them, so I thought I might as well let them get on with it. I went back to my flat, shut the door and didn’t answer it for several days.

  About a week later, Beryl came round. ‘So what have you got to say for yourself?’ she said.

  ‘Well … you know … a couple of drinks, you know …’

  ‘How long has it been going on?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’

  ‘Pat’s pregnant.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘Sh
e said it is.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well, I’ve asked her for a blood test and she told me to get lost.’

  ‘What you going to do?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I looked at Beryl. Out of all three of them, she was the one I loved, even if I had a funny way of showing it. ‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘I do love you and …’

  ‘Well, it’s up to you. Do you want to carry on or not?’

  ‘Do you want to carry on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  We drifted apart after that. All of us. When Pat’s baby was born, I made an effort to visit the two of them in hospital. Michelle was a bonny girl, but I didn’t feel anything for her because I wasn’t sure she was mine. As for Pat, I bought her clothes, I decorated her house, I bought her a washing machine and a television, and I gave her fifty quid a week. Then Pat moved away. We kept in touch by phone, but I rarely saw her or Michelle again.

  Beryl and I realised that, after ten years together, our romance had run its course. She made no effort to rekindle dying flames and neither did I.

  And Maureen? I never heard another word from her after that day in Pat’s front room when the three of them caught me with my pants around my ankles.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  GORGEOUS GEORGE

  WHEN THE RADIOTHERAPY was finished, they examined my throat. The verdict was good and my mood improved dramatically, but I still couldn’t speak. Again the question resurfaced of what I would do if I didn’t regain my voice. Having spent more than thirty-five years on stage, speaking for two hours a night, it felt as if I’d lost a limb. I’d spent half a lifetime being funny every day of my life and I couldn’t get used to not being funny. I needed to speak and to have something for which to write.

  So I wrote to Cancerbackup, an organisation that helps people with cancer and provides information. They sent pamphlets and books advising me to drink carrot juice and eat broccoli. Above all, they said, try to do the things you’ve always done.

  But instead of doing what I’d always done – get up on stage – I had to lay off my crew. I’d paid them for the first eight weeks of my illness, but I couldn’t continue to pay that kind of money when there was nothing coming in. They all found jobs elsewhere.

  After seeing Pauline in the red headscarf die after three courses of radiotherapy, I decided to devote my time to raising money for cancer charities. With my son Richard, I helped raise money for a cancer hospice at James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough. Richard climbed Kilimanjaro with his mates, almost collapsing six hundred metres from the summit and raising £12,500. I was thrilled at the achievement, even if I felt that the government should have provided it for the working men and women of Middlesbrough who’d toiled all their lives and paid their tax and national insurance only to find that when they got ill there was no one to look after them.

  The late 1970s were not easy times. After splitting up with three women – Beryl, Pat and Maureen – all at once, my love life was in tatters. And although I was gaining a good reputation in the clubs, it was as a crude comic who took no prisoners, which limited the number of venues that would book me. I certainly had a sense that these were the dark days and that, if I persevered, things could only get better.

  Anyone going through difficult times needs good friends and fortunately I’d found one of the best in my driver at the time, Peter Richardson. We first met one night when I noticed a river of piss running down the pavement past my van. I looked up and there was Peter stood in the shop doorway.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t do me a favour? The van won’t start. Do you live anywhere near Redcar? Can you give me a lift?’

  That was a mistake. Peter drove home along the moors roads in a steam bucket of a car. To this day I don’t know how we made it – I was petrified – but a friendship was forged that night that led to Peter working for me on and off for more than fifteen years. In that time, Pete was everything to me – chauffeur, personal assistant, protector and confidant. He loved a bargain and a practical joke, which led to some great laughs on the road, but the best thing about Pete was that he was all heart and fiercely loyal.

  Pete understood the difficult love-hate relationship that I had with my audience and the kind of trouble to which it could lead. It’s a well-known fact that I’ve had my fair share of trouble – the tabloids delight in reporting it – and often the public think I had it coming to me. People assume that because I swear and I’m crude on stage, I’m the same off stage. They presume I provoke the trouble and then get my come-uppance. But that was rarely the case, although my on-stage persona did mean I had more admirers in prison than outside. Several times, women came up to me and said: ‘My husband thinks you are absolutely wonderful. Fantastic. He lives for you. All he does is sit and watch your videos. If he knew I was talking to you now, he would be stood there with a hard-on, but unfortunately he’s inside for the next five years.’ The people who came to my shows weren’t frightened to walk around with a T-shirt printed with ‘Fuck you’ or ‘Bollocks to Chubby Brown’. They were rough people from rough houses on rough estates and they knew I was just like them, except I struck lucky and found a way out. I loved my audience dearly, but it did mean I got more trouble than most comics – and that was where having a friend like Peter came in handy.

  We were stopping at the De Vere, the best hotel in Blackpool. Waiting at the reception desk for my key, Peter standing beside me holding my bags, I was nearly knocked off my feet when this huge lad crept up behind us and jumped on my back.

  ‘Chubby Brown!’ he shouted. ‘You fucking big fat cunt.’

  ‘Yeah, hello,’ I said. ‘Just keep your language down, please. There’s girls behind the reception.’ I thought he was just another over-friendly, pissed-up fan.

  ‘You big fat fucking bastard …’

  ‘Listen, we’ve established what I am,’ I said. ‘Could you just keep your language down, please?’

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’ he said. ‘You big bastard.’

  He walked towards me as if he was going to throw his arm round my shoulders, but I was worried that he had more violent intentions than giving me a friendly hug. I put my hand out to push him away. ‘Look, I’m not in the mood,’ I said. ‘Leave us alone.’

  As I turned around to pick up one of my bags, the lad swung his fist around and punched me smack in the mouth. He must have been wearing a ring with a spike because his punch went straight through my lip and into my gum. Blood squirted everywhere. I was shocked. I hadn’t expected it. It was like being knocked down by a car.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Peter said. ‘Look at your gob!’

  I touched my swollen lip and looked down. Blood was running down the front of my T-shirt. ‘You fucking bastard!’ I shouted and ran after the lad, who ran out of the door and got away. But his mates, about a dozen fellas who were drinking in the bar, stood up as one.

  ‘Come on, then!’ they shouted. ‘Come and get it, you fat cunt!’

  Fists flew everywhere and Pete took most of the punches. He was bitten around the head and hands, kicked and punched, all just to protect me. The hotel security turned up, saw how vicious these lads were and ran off, so I picked up a table in the foyer and smashed it against the lads to get them off Peter. Then I grabbed a vase and broke it over one of the attackers’ heads. Kicking the lad as he dropped to the floor, I shouted to Peter to get out of it quick. We ran to the lift, jumped inside it and managed to get the door shut while the dozen lads tried to pull us out.

  Arriving at the top floor, we found a phone in a corridor and rang down to reception. ‘It’s Chubby,’ I said breathlessly. ‘I’m bleeding pretty badly and so is my mate. I’m going to have to get out of this hotel and get him to hospital.’

  ‘We’ve sent for an ambulance,’ the receptionist said ‘The police are here now.’

  The coppers had rounded up the attackers by the time we got down to reception.
‘Do you know which one did it?’ said one of the bluebottles.

  ‘No, but if I see him again,’ I said, ‘I’ll know him.’

  The copper explained that our assailants were showmen from a travelling fair associated with some of the amusement arcade owners in Blackpool. One of them had a birthday, so they’d booked up the De Vere and commandeered the place with little respect for anyone or anything else in the vicinity. They’d driven cars across flower beds and the police had found stolen credit cards on the showmen they’d arrested.

  Pete and I went to hospital. A doctor put a stitch in my face and four stitches in Peter’s head. Then we went back to the hotel, collected our gear and went home. I cancelled the show, something I do very rarely. I was that upset about it.

  A couple of years later, Peter and I stopped at another hotel in another seaside town. There were two lads at the bar, both with earrings and both a bit Jack the lad. ‘Hiya, Chubby,’ they said.

  ‘Hi. All right?’

  ‘We’re coming down to see you tonight. It was great last year.’

  ‘Oh, smashing.’

  ‘Do you want a drink?’

  ‘Aye.’ We got talking.

  ‘You know, you’re not the bloke I thought you were,’ one of them said.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘That night at the De Vere that you had a fight, I was there. I thought you were an animal. I’ve never seen anybody go mad like that.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m a showman.’

  ‘So were you involved in the fight?’

  ‘No. I kept out of it.’

  ‘So who were they?’

  ‘You don’t want to know …’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘No, I’d forget it if I was you. If there is six of you, there’ll be eight of them. If there is ten of you, there’ll be twelve of them. And they are all fist fighters. They’ll come from miles around to have a go at you, so why don’t you just forget it, it’s all over and done with now.’