Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (34 page)

‘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 than 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.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said George. ‘I’ll ring my mate at Newcastle airport and get a helicopter to come and pick you up.’

There was no way I was going in a helicopter, especially in snow so thick that I could hardly see the tip of my nose.

‘If I was you, George, I’d make a sharp exit.’

‘Aye, right,’ he said. George found the club owner and told him what had happened.

‘George, you’ll have to go on the stage and tell them,’ the club owner said. His club was packed to the seams with punters who wanted to see Chubby Brown. There wasn’t enough room for oxygen in the place.

‘Aye, right …’ George said. It was the manager’s job to explain my non-appearance to the audience, but I knew George well enough to know he’d be petrified at the thought of walking on stage. ‘… I better have a ciggy first. I’ll just get my fags out the car.’

George went out to his car, jumped in and drove off. The club owner rang him the next day. ‘You crafty bastard, George!’ he said. ‘You knew what you were doing. You just didn’t want to go on stage and face the music.’

After a year together, George suggested that instead of being an agent of twenty-odd acts, he would be a manager of just one: me. I was very happy with the arrangement.

‘I’ll concentrate on you because I think me and you could go a long way,’ George said. ‘You’re the talented one. I’m the businessman. You leave the money side to me and I won’t tell you what to do on stage.’

Not long after we formed the partnership, George and I were sitting in a hotel when he made a suggestion. ‘I’ve been thinking about your act, Roy,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of television work coming up, but you need to decide what you want to do.

‘You’ve got a gift for saying “fuck” without being too offensive …’ he said. ‘Well, you haven’t, but this disgusting character
you’ve invented seems to be able to say “fuck” without causing offence. I think you should stop arsing about doing blue gigs and clean gigs. I think you should go full-time blue. Because if you do, you could become one of the most successful comedians in the country.’

Put like that, it was an easy decision. Whenever I could, I’d do a blue gig even if there was only an extra tenner in it. Going full-time blue would mean more money at a time when I was struggling to make ends meet.

However, there was a sting in the tail. ‘If you go full-time blue,’ George said, ‘you can kiss goodbye to any dreams of appearing on television. No television company will touch you.’

Regular television appearances were seen as one of the few sure-fire routes to wealth and fame for comedians. Just about every successful comedian working in the 1970s and 1980s got their big break on television – Russ Abbot, Billy Connolly, Victoria Wood, Bob Monkhouse and many others. If I went full-time blue, I realised, the crucial stepping stone of television would be out of bounds to me.

However, I also had to face the facts. I was never going to be Mr Clean, tap-dancing, singing, playing the drums and cracking jokes on my very own TV show. It wasn’t going to happen that way for me because I was simply too rough for the rarefied world of television. I was no good at sucking up to the concert chairmen in clubs, so what chance would I have in television where the recipe for success was one part talent and two parts arse-licking influential producers?

So I decided to become blue because it meant I could earn up to five hundred pounds for a show. In the end everything comes down to getting paid and paying your bills, and I went for it. I decided to go right over the top and be the rudest man in the country.

As soon as it got around that I was full-time blue, many clubs
that I’d played for years rang George up to say I was no longer welcome. When I became well known, they offered me fortunes to go back just because they knew I put arses on seats, but in those days they didn’t want to know me.

The list of clubs that would have me got shorter and shorter. When I looked at my material, I was baffled. The only real difference between my old clean act and my new blue act was that there were more swear words. But back then, the number of comedians who had the guts to go on stage and say ‘Are you cunts having a fucking good time?’ instead of the same sentence without the expletives was small and the number of clubs who were prepared to tolerate such language was tiny.

At times I wondered if I hadn’t made the wrong decision. In quiet moments, I’d worry about what would happen when I wanted to settle down, get married and have children. Did I want my children living with a man known as Britain’s foulest mouth? I already knew that some audiences couldn’t tell the difference between the bloke on stage in the multicoloured suit and flying helmet and the bloke at home with his kids. They were the kind of people who’d think I went home to my wife and said: ‘Get the fucking kettle on, you fat twat. Are the fucking kids in fucking bed yet?’ They were the types who would later think nothing of shouting ‘All right, Chubby, you fat fucking cunt!’ down supermarket aisles. I worried about all these things, but I never back-pedalled.

Instead, I placed all my trust in George. And George trod very carefully. There was no longer any point booking me to play a Catholic club. He worked hard to place me in the right clubs. Good agents are like good second-hand car salesmen. They have to be good liars. In the office, I’d overhear George on the phone – ‘Yes, he’s fantastic … comic of the year … sells out everywhere … in huge demand … don’t know if I can squeeze you in, he’s that busy …’ – and when he put down the receiver,
I’d ask him who he was talking about. ‘Oh, I was just selling you,’ George would say.

‘Selling
me
? I didn’t recognise myself in all that, George!’

‘Just leave it to me, Roy. You tell the jokes and I’ll do the business.’

Gradually my notoriety started to work for me. The slamming in my face of many clubs’ doors was a form of censorship. And like anything that’s prohibited – booze, fags, drugs, pornography – the more I was driven underground, the greater the demand for my act. George started getting calls from punters asking where they could see me because their local club wouldn’t have me on stage. Word got around that I was
the
comic to book for stag nights. So George put up my price, which made people think I must be something really special, which drove demand up even further.