Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (19 page)

‘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.

CHAPTER 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?’

‘Your turn, I’m afraid, Roy. It’s always your turn.’

The nurse would help the radiotherapist push the trolley into a large machine that looked like a body scanner. The heat would come on and I’d try to keep as still as possible until the buzzer sounded. It was like getting a tan on a sunbed. It was that boring and that mundane.

‘Are you all right, Mr Vasey?’ the nurse would say afterwards.

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

‘Would you like to put your shoes back on?’

‘Thank you.’

‘See you tomorrow.’

‘Yes – I’ll bring some bread in tomorrow. Will you put it under the machine when I go under? I’d like some toast.’

‘You know, we’re going to miss you when you stop coming, Roy,’ the nurse said. ‘We’ll miss the crack.’

For the first couple of weeks’ treatment I felt no real change. I couldn’t eat much anyway, so I stuck to my sloppy food and vitamin drinks. But in the third week I woke up to find that my neck was covered in purple and red blotches. It looked like I’d been beaten up or severely sunburned.

Having been blessed with baby-face skin, I’ve always scoffed at anyone who said it was impossible to lie about your age because the skin on your neck would give the game away like the rings on a tree trunk. I’d look at women my age – they had saggy necks from the age of fifty – and they’d look at me and say I had the skin of someone twenty years younger. But now I really looked my fifty-seven years. The skin on my neck was as tired, mottled and saggy as an old sack.

It wasn’t just the side effects of the radiation that were getting me down. I wasn’t sleeping well. At home after the radiotherapy, I’d lie down on my bed in the hope of sleeping. But as soon as I lay back the coughing started. It was one of those tickly coughs that never lets you rest. Irritating as hell and worse at night. I found it impossible to sleep, so I’d lie awake coughing and worrying.

In the morning, I’d try to get out of bed, but the lack of sleep and the radiation made me tired and lethargic. I didn’t feel like doing anything, I had no energy and I couldn’t swallow. The one thing I wanted was a chip sandwich, but the only things I could eat were ice cream and soup. Not having eaten properly for weeks, the weight fell off me. I went from nineteen stone seven pounds to seventeen stone two pounds. I was chuffed about the weight loss. I just wish cancer hadn’t been on the end of it.

I had a friend called Ronnie Aspery, an alto saxophone player in Back Door, a jazz fusion group. Ronnie went on to record for Warner Brothers, tour the world and perform with Keith Richards, Ronnie Scott, Status Quo and Chris Rea. He wrote music for films such as
The Spy Who Loved Me
,
McVicar
and
Natural Born Killers
and for television shows such as
Baywatch
,
Friends
,
The Simpsons
and
Sesame Street
. But in the early 1970s, Back Door was a local band with a cult following and a residency at the Starlight Club in Redcar and Ronnie would play with Colin Hodgkinson on bass and a drummer called Tony Hicks.

Ronnie was a wonderful lad, a bit of an awkward sod but always funny. I was talking to Ronnie after watching him play one evening.

‘What you doing with yourself in the daytime?’ I said.

‘I’ve opened a little shop in Lord Street, selling second-hand instruments. Ukuleles, banjos, guitars, flutes, trumpets, saxophones. You know, anything. I’ve got a tuba in there. Keyboards, drums.’

‘Eh, that sounds great.’

‘I want to extend the stock range. You know, it’s only a small thing, but I want to get bigger.’

As it happened, I’d been talking to somebody who walked salerooms. I used to love auctions, all that buzzing around looking for a bargain and the auctioneer’s spiel – ‘Twennyfive-twennyfivewho’ll-give-me-twennyfive … ah-thirtyfive-thirtyfive-give-me-thirty five … fortyfive-fortyfive-do-I-hear-fortyfive?’

According to the bloke I’d met at the salerooms, the mucky bookshop opposite the Red Lion in Westdyke Road was closing down. I made a few enquiries, found out the rent was ten pounds a week and told Ronnie about it.

‘Did you say you liked to walk a saleroom?’ he said.

‘Yeah. Love it.’

‘D’you think if I give you a float, you’d help us?’

I gave up all my other daytime jobs and Ronnie and I became partners in Alley Cats, his shop. I did the legwork, Ronnie paid the rent on the shop and we shared the profits on anything that I bought in for him. I’d buy watches, clocks, wooden ladders, buckets, any old junk for a pound here or ten shillings there.

After a month or so, Gerry Hartley, the manager of the Starlight Club, joined us as the third partner and we formed a tight team. I’d walk the salerooms, scouting for stuff for the shop. Then Gerry, the big boy with the cigar, would come in with a thick wad of cash and take over. He was that kind of person, the type that’s good at driving a hard bargain and sealing a deal.

There were two flats above the shop, so I moved into one of them. It wasn’t very pleasant – the shop was near a road junction and there was no double glazing in those days – but I did it up and decorated the stairwell. There was always the noise of traffic, but it didn’t matter as the only time I went upstairs was to sleep.

The turnover in the shop could be phenomenal. Situated less than a mile from Redcar racecourse, the shop would attract the lads coming back from the races with no money in their pockets. They’d flog us a watch or a camera for a couple of quid so they could have one last drink before heading home. And the luckier lads, who’d won at the races, would pass by, spot the watch or camera and buy it. I’d give one bloke a fiver for his watch, put it in the window and ten minutes later somebody else would buy it for twenty quid. We’d make fifteen pounds’ profit in no time.

And occasionally we’d pick up something really valuable from
the salerooms – although we also had our fair share of missed opportunities. On one occasion, an old lady sold us a figurine. She only wanted a fiver for it, so I put it in the window. Two days later, a lad called Brian bought it for ten quid. Only an hour or so after he’d bought it, another lad came in.

‘How much do you want for the figurine that was in the window?’ he said.

‘Sorry, mate, I’ve sold it.’

‘That’s a shame. I’ve been after a Queen Anne for ages.’

‘A Queen Anne? What’s that, then?’ We knew nothing about antiques and such things.

‘It’s a rare piece of porcelain.’

‘Oh, is it?’ I said. I ran around the corner to Bradley’s, a jeweller’s shop. Peter Bradley was a bit of a dab hand at antiques. He looked up the figurine in his catalogues. It was worth about five hundred pounds. I had only one thing to say – ‘Fucking hell!’ – as I legged it out of the shop to track down Brian and force another ninety quid out of him.

About six months after we’d been in business, Ronnie’s jazz career took off. Back Door recorded its first album, played a few sell-out nights at Ronnie Scott’s Club in London and became a big thing. Ronnie departed for stardom, leaving Gerry and me to run Alley Cats. We split the profits down the middle and I started to make a decent living. I was still playing drums with The Nuts and with a bit of money coming in from the shop I could afford to move into a better flat, above a hairdresser’s. When they did a perm downstairs, the stink of the chemicals would make my bread turn up at the ends, but the flat was larger and more comfortable and I really had a sense that things were looking up.

Gerry and I renovated the two flats above Alley Cats and rented one to Mick Boothby, the bass player from The Nuts, and the other to a woman called Beryl. Tall, with long dark hair,
Beryl looked a lot like Sandie Shaw and had a little boy called Gary. I fancied her from the moment I set eyes on her.

Beryl would come into the shop every now and then for a cup of tea and we’d have a laugh. ‘Is he bent?’ she’d ask about Gerry.

‘I think he’s either way, to be honest with you,’ I’d joke.

Beryl told me she was working at Kings, a fish shop on the seafront. I’d pop in once in a while and she’d give me a free wrap of fish and chips or pie and chips. Gradually, we got to know each other. I told her that I was a drummer with a pop group and that I’d split with my wife. She said she was separated from a lad called Ginger. I’d heard of Ginger, who had a hell of a reputation, and of Beryl’s brother, Billy Mundy, a Redcar lad I knew as a bit of a hard case. I invited Beryl along to a gig and bit by bit we got closer.

I was in the shop one day when a ginger-haired bloke came in. ‘Is Beryl about?’ he demanded.

‘I think she’s at the shops.’

‘I’ll fucking teach her.’

‘What?’

‘I’ll fucking teach her.’

The penny dropped. I knew Beryl’s husband had red hair. ‘You’ll be Beryl’s husband, will you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s she done? We don’t want any trouble here,’ I said.

‘This has got nowt to do with you.’

‘I’m renting these premises and Beryl is renting the flat above it. I told you, I want no trouble here.’

Ginger went off on another rant, shouting that he would knock the living daylights out of Beryl. Just as he finished, Beryl walked by the front of the shop. Ginger ran out into the street, grabbed Beryl and tried to drag her into the shop. I couldn’t stand by and watch him do that, so I ran out after Ginger and hit him so hard he fell over.

‘You fucking bastard!’ he shouted as he tried to kick me.

‘You get your hands off her!’ I shouted.

Beryl screamed. ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ she yelled. Little Gary, her son, was beside her, crying hysterically, and everyone in the street had stopped and turned around to see what was going on.

Ginger lost his nerve, ran across the street and jumped in his van. As he drove off, I hurled a milk bottle at him. ‘If you ever come back here …’ I yelled as the bottle smashed the rear windscreen.

A couple of days after that Beryl and I started going out. I never saw Ginger again, although Beryl would take little Gary over to him on Sundays. Beryl and I became a solid item. We were as good as married, although that didn’t stop me straying every now and then, but I was more committed to Beryl than I’d been to any previous woman.

Around this time – the early 1970s – my cousin Lee and Davy Richardson got fed up with The Nuts and packed it in, leaving just the trio of Mick, George and me. I’d recently taken to wearing a First World War flying helmet as part of my stage outfit, so we decided to play on that and name ourselves after Captain John William Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown, the British aviators who made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the appeal of the name was our intention of tricking the audience into thinking they’d got a good deal because Alcock & Brown implied a duo. The three of us would walk on stage and announce ourselves as Micky Hall, George Cock and Roy Brown – and more often than not, it worked. The typical club audience member was not the brightest bulb in the room and we’d hear the collective sigh of recognition when they realised it was Hall, Cock and Brown instead of Alcock & Brown.