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

by Roy Chubby Brown

  ‘You actually know the lad with the ring?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s an absolute cunt. And so is his family.’

  ‘Where are they from?’

  ‘Here. They own all the amusements on the seafront.’

  Sometimes it’s best not knowing. That lad in the De Vere marked me for life. And for nothing but a stupid bit of horseplay. When I get a tan, the scar he gave me on my lip stays white. I’m still as mad as blazes, but I had to realise it was time to put it behind me, else I’d carry the anger for ever.

  Although incidents such as the fight weren’t commonplace with Pete, there were dozens of other occasions when he came to my rescue, particularly as Pete looked very similar to me and could often pretend that he was me when I had a bit of trouble. And whenever something funny happened, Pete was also usually there.

  We were staying in a pro digs in Wales that we called Pansey’s Down because we couldn’t pronounce its proper Welsh name. Staggering in, laden with bags, we dinged the bell at the reception desk. This fella appeared, six foot four and thin as a rake.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Chubby Brown, Peter Richardson …’

  ‘Yeeees? What do you want?’

  ‘We booked in.’

  ‘Did you now? When did you book?’

  ‘Our office will have booked it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Peter and I looked at each other. This fella didn’t have the moustache, but in every other way he was just like Basil Fawlty, so much so that it was like he was doing an impression.

  ‘Right. Right,’ he said. ‘I see … Yes … Have you much luggage?’

  ‘Yes, lots.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to carry it yourselves. No porter.’ We didn’t know whether to laugh or not. ‘Right! That’s your key. OK? Your key.’

  ‘What number’s my room?’ I said.

  ‘Are you blind?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, can’t you see it’s number fourteen?’

  We went to our rooms, then met in the lounge, where the Basil Fawlty fella was serving behind the bar. He did everything in that hotel – reception, room service, waiter in the dining room and barman.

  ‘What’s everybody having?’ I said.

  ‘What’s the beer?’ said Peter.

  ‘Could you make your mind up?’ the Basil Fawlty fella said. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

  ‘Would anyone like some crisps?’ I asked Peter and some of the other performers we knew in the lounge.

  ‘Crisps?’ the Basil Fawlty fella said. ‘You want crisps? We’ve got two flavours. Take it or leave it. It’s up to you.’

  As he passed me the crisps, I noticed he had a plaster on his finger.

  ‘What happened there?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What happened to your finger?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Him. In the cage.’

  As if his manner wasn’t enough to convince you he was John Cleese, a sad-looking parrot sat in a cage at the end of the bar.

  ‘The parrot bit your finger?’

  ‘Yes. And he lived to regret it.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘He was squawking. Squawking all the time. Squawking. Couldn’t talk to the customers. Couldn’t hear myself think. So I opened that window there. And I opened the cage and I shook the cage and I said go! Fuck off! I don’t want you any more. Get lost!’

  ‘Christ, what happened?’

  ‘He flew out the window. I thought that was the last I’d see of him and the bastard flew back in that one.’ He pointed at the other window, further along the wall. ‘I didn’t have the heart to throw him out again so I put him back in the cage. He fucking bit me!’

  We were crying with laughter.

  ‘Look!’ he said. ‘Fucking bit me! I’ll get him back.’

  At another hotel in Skipton, Pete and I stayed up late in the bar with Kay Rouselle, a jazz singer who worked with a six-piece band. Kay was lovely, one of the lads who liked a drink, a cigarette and a shag. She could fart like the rest of us. And she could handle the blokes. She always used to say she could fuck all night.

  Whenever we worked at the same venue, Kay would introduce me on stage; she really knew how to deal with hecklers. If any of the lads shouted ‘Get your tits out!’ Kay always had a reply. ‘You wouldn’t know what to do with them,’ she’d snap. Or: ‘Go home, your mother’s waiting there for you. It’s time for your breast feed.’

  Peter and I were sat in the lounge at the Skipton hotel having a drink with Kay when we noticed a bloke at the end of the bar who kept staring at her. He turned out to be the manager and bought us all a drink. ‘Not a bad bloke,’ Kay said after the manager had bought us a second drink. ‘Quite handsome.’

  The manager only had eyes for Kay, but then, she was the only bit of skirt there. ‘Are you married to any of these lads?’ he said.

  ‘Oh no, my husband is on the QE2,’ Kay said. ‘He’s a trumpet player.’

  I thought no more of it and went to bed around half past one. Next morning, we were all sitting at breakfast when Kay walked into the dining room. Sashaying through the room, a fur coat over her shoulder, she winked at a group of us sitting at a big table.

  ‘Morning, lads,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Morning, Kay,’ we said.

  ‘There won’t be a bill this morning,’ she said with a dirty smirk on her face. She’d obviously spent the night with the manager. ‘No charge after last night.’ And she was right – there was nowt to pay.

  Peter was invaluable in those days. He shared the laughs and he helped fend off the trouble but, more significantly, he was there when things got really miserable. And miserable would have been a compliment to some of the clubs I played in those dark days. The worst of all was a club at Queensferry in North Wales. The graffiti on the dressing-room walls was a masterpiece. Like an obscene version of the Sistine Chapel, every square inch was covered with cocks, fannies and filthy comments. As for the sink, it was full of piss. And there was dog shit on the floor. I’ve never forgotten the smell. It stank worse than anywhere I’ve ever been. I only wish I’d had a camera at the time because it would have made an ideal photograph to show how I started. The toilets were cleaner than the dressing room.

  The worst night I ever had in that period was so bad it ended up on the front page of a newspaper. I’d been booked to play a stag night at the Dial House, one of the largest clubs in Sheffield, with Dennis Beard, a magician, and four strippers. If someone had told me that Tommy Cooper had pinched his entire act from Dennis, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised. Born at the turn of the twentieth century, Dennis had a wrinkly little face, always wore a fez and specialised in magic tricks that went comically wrong.

  Word had got around that Chubby Brown was on and by the early 1980s I had a bit of a reputation, so the tickets sold out in four hours. But about a hundred tickets had been sold to people from Rotherham, most of whom turned up in football strips to rile all the Sheffielders. Daggers were drawn before the show started. By the time the first stripper came on at about nine o’clock, most of the crowd were on their fourth or fifth pint. It didn’t take long for a fight to break out. I stepped out of my dressing room and peered out from behind the stage curtains to see chairs, tables and glasses flying through the air as about forty Rotherham supporters took on about eighty Sheffield fans.

  It was like a western, when a fight breaks out in the saloon and everything gets smashed – the furniture, the bottles of drink, the glasses and the mirrors on the walls. I could see that the action might put my eye out and I could hear police dogs barking, so I decided not to venture out from behind the stage. After about an hour, the police carted the fighters off in police vans and the girls got dressed. Emerging at last from the dressing room, I found a bloke with blood on his white shirt standing in a room that looked like a sawdust factory.

  ‘Committee man?’ I said.


  He nodded. ‘Steward.’

  ‘Eh, what was all that about?’

  ‘They sold the tickets to the wrong people, man.’

  ‘That’s some damage you got here.’

  ‘I’m not bothered,’ said the steward, opening up the palm of his hand. He was holding four solid gold chains, about half a dozen rings and a thick wad of money. ‘I’ve just picked that up off the floor. It’ll pay for some of it.’

  In spite of having absolutely nothing to do with it, I was blamed for the fight. Geordie Comic Incites Riot said the headline in the Sheffield evening paper the next day. I don’t know what the biggest insult was – calling me a Geordie when I’m a Yorkshireman or blaming me for sommat that had nowt to do with me.

  On 3 April 1982, Brian Findlay phoned me. It was a Saturday night and Brian wanted to know if I was going to pick him up the next day on the way to playing a club he’d booked me into in Thornaby. I agreed to pick him up from a little caravan he kept at Hutton Sessay, about twenty miles from York. The next morning, I got a phone call from Brian’s wife, Rita. Brian had been making a bacon sandwich at about ten o’clock that morning when he’d had a massive heart attack. He was only forty-eight.

  After Brian’s funeral, Rita tried to take over his talent agency, but she didn’t have a business brain and all the acts suffered. There was no work coming in and when she did get work for her clients the money was terrible because Rita was too nice to demand a decent fee for her acts.

  I needed to find a new agent and remembered meeting George Forster shortly after Louvane’s death in Malta. I put on a blue suit and made an appointment to see him at his office at Chester-le-Street. Everyone I spoke to in show business advised me to keep away from George who, as the son of a Geordie docker, had a reputation as an unpleasantly hard man.

  ‘He’s ruthless,’ they said. ‘He’s a sixty/forty man.’

  George, they said, kept a tight grip on his acts’ earnings and would sack them at a moment’s notice. And apparently he was underhand and had no friends. ‘George Foster?’ one act said to me. ‘Work for him? I wouldn’t work for him if he was the only agent on this planet. I’d pack the business in.’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘He’s an out and out cunt.’

  But I believed in making my own judgement, so one day in November 1982 I knocked on George’s door. Stuck on the first step of the show-business ladder, I wanted to climb higher and I thought George might be able to help me.

  Dark and handsome, but not that tall, George looked a bit like Paul McCartney. I told him I was looking for new management. ‘Do you fancy taking over?’ I said.

  ‘OK,’ said George. ‘As from when?’

  It was that straightforward. George came across as all right to me and I believe in taking as I find. I could see that George was all ‘me, me, me’ and I’d have to be all ‘George, George, George’ but I liked him and refused to have owt said against him. ‘He’s all right with me,’ I’d say to anyone who asked.

  About a month later, he sent me to Wallsend British Legion Club and told me to pick up £125 for the gig. I’d never earned that much before. I was a seventy-quid-a-night comic at best.

  ‘I can’t ask for £125,’ I said. ‘I’m not worth it.’

  ‘Look, Roy, they’ve asked for you, they want you and they’ll pay the money,’ George said. ‘You just go and do the job.’ It was a very different approach to Brian’s.

  I had a good night on stage. George rang the next morning. ‘I’ve just had the club on,’ he said. ‘I hear you had a fantastic night.’

  ‘It was great George, yeah.’

  ‘Did you get your money?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Why? Didn’t they pay you?’

  ‘To be honest, George, I didn’t ask for it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘One hundred and twenty-five quid? They’d have told me to fuck off.’

  ‘Oh,’ said George. The phone clicked dead.

  Four hours later, there was a knock on my flat door. It was George. ‘Here’s your cheque,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s your cheque.’

  George had driven sixty miles from Chester-le-Street to Wallsend to Redcar to give me my money. When I saw him do that, I knew that going with George had been the right decision.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said George.

  ‘I haven’t got a bank account.’

  ‘Well, get somebody to cash it for you.’

  ‘I don’t know anybody who’d have a hundred and twenty-five pounds.’

  ‘Oh fucking hell,’ George said. ‘Give it here.’ He disappeared down the corridor. Ten minutes later he was back, having cashed it nearby. ‘You’re going to have to open a bank account because most of my work will be with cheques. That’s the way you’ll get paid from now on.’

  From that day, my fee shot up to £125 or £150. If I was asked for personally, it was two hundred quid. And also from that day, a whispering campaign started among my show-business pals. You can’t trust George, they’d claim. But I always had an easy answer. I thought George’s ruthlessness, aggression and wheeling and dealing worked for me rather than against me. I’d rather have had George fighting my corner – even if he was as hard-headed as alleged – than a spineless agent who was as honest as Brian Findlay.

  George and I soon discovered that we were very alike in many ways, and maybe that was what held us together. When we stayed in hotels or pro digs, we folded the towels the same way – even George’s wife remarked on it – and we’d both straighten the bed as soon as we got out of it. George liked HP Sauce on his food; so did I. We both married women whose birthdays were in June and we were both Aquarians. Silly little details, perhaps, but often it’s the little things that make the difference and George and I soon became very close friends.

  One of the things I liked about George was that things had to be absolutely right or there’d be trouble. George wouldn’t accept second-best. He was the governor and you did things his way or else, particularly as he had a very quick temper. I once saw him lose his temper on the A1 with a van driver. He grabbed the driver by his shirt and tried to drag him through the side window of his van, he was that angry and that determined to do something about it.

  But George wasn’t all aggression. If it suited him, he could be very charming, particularly with the ladies. But to George, seducing a woman was like securing a business deal. I lost count of the number of times George would be in a hotel bar sweet-talking a woman, and then he’d go missing. The girl would ask where George had gone and I’d always have to shrug and say he’d gone to bed. He lost interest once he knew he could have them.

  George’s and my business dealings were sealed by a close friendship. I thought he was a great fella and he thought the world of me. He was the brother I never had – albeit a brother to whom I paid a percentage and gave generous Christmas presents but got little of material value in return. George’s house was full of pictures and ornaments that I had bought him. I didn’t resent it – I’d bought them because I was so grateful for what he’d done – but I was lucky if I got a Christmas present at all from George. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have anybody say owt against him. Other people would be surprised when I said I worked with George Forster and ask if he was still a cunt. I’d always leap to his defence. George was a wonderful fella, I’d say, and the only reason they thought otherwise was because they’d never got to know him.

  As soon as I signed with George, my fortunes changed. At last I had someone who fought my corner. He was just as loyal to me and wouldn’t stand anyone saying owt against me.

  ‘How much is Chubby Brown?’ a club concert chairman would ask.

  ‘I want £250 for him,’ George would answer straight back.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty quid? I can remember when I paid fifteen.’

  ‘Yes, I can remember when you paid him fifteen quid, too – and you robbed him blind. He was worth a lot more t
han fifteen pounds but you got him for that and you exploited him and you never ever gave him what he was worth. He packs places out now. You put his name on the board and people flock to see him and you still want to pay fifteen quid? He’s £250. If you don’t like it, lump it.’

  ‘Yeah, but he’s foul-mouthed …’

  ‘He’s not foul-mouthed. He’s clever, very clever at what he does. How many people do you know who can stand on stage for an hour and have them in hysterics by saying “fuck”? It’s not just a word. It’s where you put the “fuck”. If you put it at the beginning of a joke or at the end of a joke, it’s got to be there for a purpose. He doesn’t just say “fuck” for the sake of it. You want to sit and observe him and see how hard he works at what he does. You people come on the phone and you offer fifteen quid for him. You won’t give me fuck-all for him. I’ll give you him for what he is worth and I think he’s worth £250 for an hour spot and I want …’

  That was George. He always made sure I got my dues. And if it was New Year’s Eve, he’d treble my price. I’d go to the highest bidder, like at a cattle market. I trusted George implicitly. I never asked to see a breakdown. He looked after me, I looked after him and I believed I could rely on him a hundred per cent. It was like a marriage.

  George once booked me at a nightclub in Whitehaven, a journey that from my home took me across the Pennines, passing through Brough, one of the highest towns in England. One thing was for sure: if the weather was bad in Middlesbrough, it would be a nightmare in Brough. And that day it was snowing in Middlesbrough.

  George and I arranged to meet in Whitehaven, but coming over the Pennines I got stuck in the snow along with about thirty wagons, vans and cars. Arriving at a hotel in Brough, I found a queue of eight people waiting to use a single payphone. Eventually I got through to the club in Whitehaven. George was having a drink at the bar, so I asked the club management to get him to come to the phone.

  ‘George, it’s Roy,’ I said. ‘I’m stuck in a snowdrift on the A66. I can’t go forward and I can’t go back. Everybody’s waiting for a snowplough.’