As a visual comic, I’d always held my microphone at my stomach so the audience could see my face clearly. I didn’t want anything to get in the way of the body language upon which my brand of innuendo often depended. Nowadays I hold the microphone just below my mouth – any further away and my voice would fail after fifteen minutes.
Middlesbrough was playing a big game, so I went to the football with Peter Richardson. ‘How’s your throat, Chubbs?’ a Middlesbrough supporter asked as he barged past me in the stand.
‘Fine, thanks,’ I hissed. ‘Getting better all the time.’
‘It comes back, you know.’
‘What do you mean, “It comes back”?’ Peter cut in.
‘I’ve got it. Cancer, y’know,’ the bloke said, a gormless smile creasing his podgy face. ‘I had it a few years ago and thought I’d got rid of it, but it comes back.’
I looked at the gormless bloke and my heart sank. It was lucky for him that my voice was still shot to pieces, otherwise I’d have called him all the names under the sun. ‘What a tactless fucking arsehole,’ said Peter when the cretin had moved on. ‘I just wanted to pick him up and throw him two hundred yards.’
‘If they want you, they’ll pay what you want,’ said George. He was right. After years of struggling, the money was pouring in and I couldn’t play enough gigs to meet demand. Whenever George put up my fee, we got more bookings. And all because I was filthier than any comedian had ever dared to be.
I bought a house, the first proper home after a string of rented flats and rooms. George moved out of his run-down semi into a big, detached pile. We both started taking holidays abroad, but the best thing about my success began with a phone call from George. ‘Who’s your hero?’ he said.
‘You know who my hero is.’
‘Doddy, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, he wants you on his radio show.’
My heart nearly stopped. ‘You’re joking. This a wind-up.’
‘No, you’ve got to drive down to London to the BBC studios. Doddy’s doing a radio show and he wants you on it.’
A few days later I was in a studio near the Haymarket in London. The door opened and in he walked. My idol, my comedy god, my definition of comic perfection – Ken Dodd. I was in total awe of the bloke. I always had been and probably always will be. For me, Bob Monkhouse had the best comedy brain of his generation, Bernard Manning was the warmest, most caring and thoughtful comic I’d met on the circuit, and Doddy was the most talented stand-up comic this country had ever produced. Face to face with my idol, I didn’t know what to say.
‘Hello, my hero – Chubby Brown,’ Doddy said.
‘Eh, you’re taking the piss now,’ I said as we shook hands.
‘I hear you’re doing very well. I follow you round the theatres and the clubs. Everyone tells me what a nice fella you are …’ He was just like I’d expected, only better. Somehow more ‘Doddy’ in the flesh than on stage or on television. And his compliments were embarrassing me. This is Doddy, I kept reminding myself, and he is complimenting me. ‘You’ve got a lovely reputation and you are a gentleman …’
‘They say the same about you, Doddy …’ I said, wishing he’d stop the compliments. It was too much.
‘I’ve written this script’, he said. It was for his Sunday show on Radio 2. ‘We’re going to turn the tables. I’m going to be blue and you are going to be dead clean. That’s the sketch. People won’t believe this, that Ken Dodd’s been blue.’
I read the script. Doddy’s lines were full of ‘Knickers, knackers, knockers’ and ‘Up yours, missus’ – hardly blue, but racy enough for Doddy.
‘You need to say all your lines in a very posh accent,’ Doddy said, reading my lines from the script. ‘Like this: “Ken, Ken, Ken, dear boy. This is all poppycock” – that kind of voice, do you think you can do it? – “one doesn’t want to start using that sort of language. There’s really no need at all.”’
I thought I could manage it. And I was helped in every way by Doddy’s commitment to perfection. He was the ultimate professional, making me repeat my lines five or six times until I said them just the way he wanted. I’ve never been good at reading or writing, and I was struggling to get the lines right. There were loads of words I’d rarely seen written down before – words such as ‘tampering’ or ‘material’. ‘Mat … errr … eeee … all,’ I said, looking around at Doddy laughing. ‘What you laughing at?’
‘You don’t say it like that,’ he said. ‘You say it like this: material.’ I felt a bit stupid, but I loved the bloke. He could do no wrong; I just thought he was fantastic.
We finished the sketch, shook hands and I left, exhilarated at meeting Doddy but disappointed it was over so soon. Travelling down to Brighton, where I was appearing that evening, I couldn’t stop thinking about meeting him. I told everybody at the club that night about it. ‘I’ve been on The Ken Dodd Show, you know,’ I said. ‘Guess what I was doing this afternoon? Recording a sketch on The Ken Dodd Show. That’s right …’
For me, it was the ultimate accolade. A real sign that I’d arrived, a star in the comedy firmament. I listened to the show when it was broadcast a few weeks later and still couldn’t get my head round it.
I was hungry for confirmation of my success. Being invited onto Ken Dodd’s radio show was one indication. The other was how much I was worth. Other comedians would tell me that the big stars, such as Freddie Starr at that time, would routinely earn five grand a night – much more than the amount I was being paid.
‘Don’t listen to that bullshit,’ George would snap in reply to any question from me about my fee. ‘It’s just artists exaggerating their value. I can tell you what Starr’s getting because I’m a theatrical agent and I can book him over the phone. You get exactly the same as he does. Nobody gets a penny more than you.’
‘Oh right, so …’
‘If you want more money we can do it, but we’ll have to move into theatres,’ George said. ‘You won’t get a wage. You’ll get paid according to how many tickets you sell. If you sell only one ticket, you’ll lose a lot of money. If you sell out, you’ll make a fortune. It’s more risky, but that’s how it works.’
Playing theatres meant we’d have to do all our own promotion and publicity, hire lights and fit out the stage ourselves – all added costs that we’d previously avoided. George’s response was typical. ‘I want thirty per cent if I’m putting you on in theatres,’ he said. ‘I’ll need more staff, we’ll have to deal with cheques, credit cards, phones, security …’
In a venturesome spirit, I decided to take a chance on theatre gigs, but minimised the risk by playing several club nights each week for a standard fee. We charged two pounds a ticket, twice as much as club audiences were paying to see me, and doubled the ticket price in London because we thought Londoners had more disposable cash.
Theatres were a whole new ball game. It wasn’t just the fancy curtains, proper backdrop and bright lights. Everything was different. In clubland, I was nobody. Often the audience came for the bingo, the pie and peas, the raffle and to gossip with their mates. The artists were bottom of the pile. I’d arrive at a club to find a single word on a blackboard announcing my appearance: Comic. You knew you were a star if it was written in coloured chalk.
In the theatre, I was the star attraction and instead of a tetchy committee chairman on my case, the theatre manager would greet me pleasantly just because my name was on the poster. I was the client and he was there to make my life comfortable – a blissful turnaround. ‘Is there anything you would like, Mr Brown? A drink? Anything? Can we get you a sandwich?’ he’d say. The office would ring ahead when I was booked into a theatre. ‘When Roy arrives, he’d like a cup of tea and a corned-beef sandwich,’ they’d say. And sure enough, they’d be waiting when I walked into the dressing room.
Not all the theatres were great – you wouldn’t believe the state of the dressing rooms behind some of the plushest stages and auditoria
in the country, places where rats passed by, wiping their feet, and cockroaches held their noses, places where millions were spent refitting the seats and only a coat of undercoat was slapped on in the dressing rooms – but at least the staff treated the entertainers with respect. In clubland, the committee couldn’t even spell ‘entertainer’.
The first time I played a London theatre, George aimed high and put me on at the Dominion in Tottenham Court Road. Eighty-six people turned up in a theatre that could seat an audience of more than two thousand. It didn’t bother me. I lost a lot of money that night, but I was capped to be playing a major West End venue.
George had a simple response to the Dominion fiasco: carpet bomb the towns and cities surrounding London. I played anywhere that would have me – Guildford, Hayes, Sunbury, Tunbridge Wells, Dagenham, Croydon, Gillingham and many more. Then, with the groundwork laid, George placed one massive advert in the papers. Two years after I’d had eighty-six people in the Dominion, I sold out three nights. More than seven thousand punters passed through the doors, many of them clutching tickets they’d bought from touts for two or three times their face value. When we pulled up outside the Dominion and my name was up in neon lights – Tonight: Roy Chubby Brown SOLD OUT – I couldn’t believe it. I was a bag of nerves in the dressing room. Billy Connolly was in the audience. Afterwards he said he couldn’t believe what I’d said on stage. Central London had never heard anything like it. But the punters didn’t care. I tore ’em apart.
After that, barely a night passed when I didn’t sell out. I played two nights at the Royalty in London, two nights at the Hammersmith Apollo, a season every summer in Blackpool, and more than two hundred theatre and large club gigs a year up and down the country. Each and every one was rammed to the rafters. After nearly twenty years of slogging my act around the clubs, suddenly I was a national overnight success, a big name who could do no wrong. Doors that had been closed to me suddenly opened. Everyone wanted a part of me.
I was invited onto TV-am to be interviewed by Frank Bough and Anne Diamond. I knew that Frank had lived in Great Ayton, a village outside Middlesbrough, when he worked for Tyne Tees Television. Sitting on the sofa beside Frank and Anne, my mind working overtime trying to avoid saying anything rude, I answered Frank’s questions like a good schoolboy.
‘Have you any plans to go to America?’ Frank said.
‘You know, I’m really an English comedian. I’m tea and biscuits and Yorkshire puddings,’ I said as Frank smiled. ‘You’ve been to the USA, haven’t you?’
Frank looked confused. ‘Have I?’ he said. I think he was worried about where I was heading.
‘The Uther Side of Ayton,’ I said. Frank burst out laughing. Turning to the camera, he said: ‘That’s an in-joke, by the way.’
‘How do you know I lived in Ayton?’ he said. I explained. ‘I’m very pleased,’ Frank said. ‘You’re completely different from the person I thought you’d be. I’ve heard your tapes and you’re really funny, but you’re not how I expected you to be. Do you write all your own material?’
‘Yeah, I write all the time,’ I said.
‘Where do you get your inspiration?’
‘From the newspapers and what’s going on around me.’
‘Can we put you on the spot?’
‘Yeah. Of course,’ I said. Frank handed me a copy of the Daily Mirror. A picture of a fella who was claiming to be the new Houdini was on the front. With his bald head, rotten teeth and wrapped in chains, he looked a fright. ‘Well, he looks like a ball biter, doesn’t he?’ I said.
For just a fraction of a second, the whole studio froze. Nobody said anything. Nothing moved. After all, nobody said ‘ball biter’ on breakfast television. Then Frank asked another question, brushing over it as if I’d said nothing. I’d got away with it, but for weeks afterwards people stopped me in the street.
‘Eh, I laughed when you said he looks like an arsehole, a ball biter,’ they’d say.
‘I didn’t say “arsehole”,’ I’d reply.
‘Ah, but you might as well have done.’
After the show, I walked into the green room, sat down and took a sip of a cup of coffee. Looking around the room, my eyes nearly burst out of their sockets. Sitting opposite me was Charlton Heston.
‘Morning,’ he said.
‘Good morning,’ I replied.
‘I hate doing these things.’
‘So do I,’ I said nonchalantly, as if breakfast TV was a regular occurrence for me. ‘Why?’
‘I’m doing the rounds to promote something.’
‘You’re Charlton Heston, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right, and who are you?’
‘Roy Chubby Brown. I’m an English comedian.’
‘Do you make movies?’
‘No, I’m just an English comedian. I’m on here because I talk about sex, violence, drugs and rock and roll.’
Sat on a lumpy sofa, I explained my act to Charlton Heston, who I was convinced was wearing a wig. He was the first internationally famous person I’d met. All I wanted was to ask him about Ben-Hur, but he wanted to talk about working men’s clubs. It was bizarre.
Meanwhile, my love life, which had been in the doldrums after I’d been dumped simultaneously by Beryl, Pat and Maureen, had taken a turn for the better. While playing at a northern club, a very attractive receptionist called Shirley caught my eye. Whenever I got the chance, I’d give her a bit of patter. Nothing too strong, just subtle stuff like ‘How are you doing?’ and ‘Boy, I would like to see you with no clothes on’ and ‘Do you want to go halves on a baby?’
Three months later, I was back at the same club.
‘That Shirley took a shine to you,’ one of the doormen said as I arrived. ‘She hasn’t stopped talking about you since you left.’
‘What’s she like?’ I said.
‘You’re all right there.’
I went straight to the reception. Shirley was waiting. ‘What are you doing later, then?’ I said.
‘Nothing.’
‘Do you fancy going for a bite to eat?’
‘Yeah.’
I took Shirley to a Chinese restaurant. She liked her drink and she clearly liked men because she dragged me home that night. She was a hell of a shag. The best I’d had until then.
I fell big time for Shirley. I didn’t love her, but I was deeply besotted with her. And although she was as rough as rats, I’d come to like her. After three or four months screwing Shirley, I was booked again at the same club. When I arrived, John, the manager of the club, took me aside. ‘Chubby, I believe you and Shirley are getting a bit warm,’ he said. ‘I would be careful if I was you.’
John and I had been friends for a couple of years and I felt I could trust him. ‘Is there something you should be telling me? Is she married with kids?’ I said.
‘She’s been married a few times,’ John said. ‘She’s got about five kids.’
‘That’s funny. She’s never mentioned them.’
‘Well, there’s a lot that Shirley doesn’t mention,’ he said. ‘I think you’d better come and look at this.’
I followed John into his office. He opened a drawer of his desk and took out an envelope. Inside the envelope were about thirty photographs of Shirley sucking John off, being shagged by another fella and carrying on with other blokes.
‘She’s anybody’s,’ John said. ‘Anybody who has money. She’ll get her claws into you and she’s very hard to shake loose. It took me a long time to get rid of her.’
But I was too blinded by the mind-blowing sex I was having with Shirley to take much notice. And anyway, my thoughts were occupied with something much bigger.
Late one night, after playing a big show in Leeds, my tour manager Richie knocked at my dressing-room door. ‘There’s a girl outside who wants to meet you,’ he said. ‘And I think you should. She’s an absolute stunna.’
As the girl walked in, my heart stopped. Fucking hell, I thought. With perfect eyes and teeth and a cute nose,
she was absolutely beautiful. ‘I’ve got to say you are one of the—’ I started.
But the girl interrupted me before I made a fool of myself. ‘Hi, Roy,’ she said. ‘You used to be engaged to me mother.’
I stared at her. Surely it was some mistake? ‘What’s your name?’ I said.
‘Greenwood.’
‘Greenwood? I’ve never been engaged to a Greenwood.’
‘My mam married Geoff Greenwood. Her name was Sandra Pallent.’
Sandra Pallent? The penny suddenly dropped. Big-breasted Sandra from school in Grangetown. Sandra who I was in love with when I was seventeen. It was a good job I hadn’t said owt. ‘You’re Sandra’s daughter?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s just split from my dad. He’s an accountant here in Leeds and he’s just left Mum.’
‘Where’s she working?’
‘At the hospital. She nearly came to this show tonight.’
The next day, I spoke to Sandra. She filled me in on her news. ‘What is this about you and your husband?’ I said.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said.
‘That’s all right – I was only being polite. If you’re ever lonely and you want a night out, give us a ring.’
A few days later Sandra rang me and came to see the show. Afterwards she joined me in my dressing room. ‘What do you think of the show, pet?’ I said.
‘Roy …’ she said. ‘It’s absolutely filthy.’
I took her out for a meal. She had aged well, but she wasn’t quite the same Sandra I’d known when I was a kid. She was tougher and sharper. Life had knocked some of the softness out of her.
Slowly Sandra and I drifted together over the next few months. I was still seeing Shirley the super-slapper, but I was starting to think that Sandra might be a better long-term bet. After about a year together, I took Sandra to visit my mother, with whom my frosty relationship had recently thawed slightly after she split from Norman Trevethick. I would visit Mam more regularly than previously, taking her cakes and scones, paying her phone bill and television licence. I’d recently moved her to sheltered housing in a bungalow. ‘Mother, this is Sandra,’ I said. I made them a cup of tea while they chatted. The next day I visited my mother again, this time on my own.
Common As Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown Page 28