Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (42 page)

Estelle recommended a pub nearby. ‘I’ll take you there, if you like,’ she offered.

‘Really? Will you?’ I said. I was surprised that a young lass like Estelle would be interested in spending her Sunday with a fat fifty-year-old like me.

‘Yeah, what time do you want dinner?’ she said. I told her midday. ‘I’ll pick you up here at twelve o’clock,’ she said. The next day, she pulled up in a car with her brother and sister-inlaw in the back. ‘This is Roy,’ she said to them.

After our Sunday dinner, she dropped me off. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘It was lovely.’

Getting out of the car, I give her a little kiss on the cheek.

‘I wondered when you were going to do that,’ she said.

It was like a little firework went off inside me. Whoa! She fancies me, I thought. I couldn’t see what she might see in a fat middle-aged comic. It had been so long since any woman had taken any notice of me and, after seven years’ marriage to Sandra, I thought no woman would ever look at me again.

I couldn’t wait to return to the De Vere Hotel the next weekend. ‘Eh, thanks for last week,’ I said as soon as I arrived in the bar.

‘It was good fun,’ she said. ‘I enjoyed it.’

‘Can I take you to dinner this week?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. Or why don’t we have a coffee tonight?’

That evening, Estelle came to my room. After a couple of drinks, she went to the bathroom and I could guess what was happening. Brace yourself, Chubby, I thought, she’s going to let you fuck her.

When the Blackpool season finished, Estelle and I kept in touch by phone. About two months later, while working in North Wales, I phoned her. ‘I’m at Rhyl,’ I said. ‘Do you want to come up for a couple of days?’

I’d told Estelle I was married and that I was unhappy. By the time she arrived at Rhyl, she knew the score. Holed up in a log cabin, which was part of the hotel, we had a wild weekend. After the show on the Sunday evening, I waved her off to Blackpool before heading home.

A week later a letter arrived from Estelle. ‘Dear Roy,’ it said, ‘thanks for a fantastic weekend. I love you dearly and miss you every day.’

I was thrilled with the letter. Then I read on. ‘I was wondering,’ Estelle wrote. ‘I’ve seen a small property in the centre of
Blackpool and I would like to open up a ladies’ lingerie shop. Could you see your way clear to lending me nine thousand pounds?’

I didn’t like the sound of that. How was I going to explain nine grand missing out of my bank account to my wife? I rang Estelle. ‘I can’t just take nine thousand quid out,’ I said.

‘You’re leaving her, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah, but I don’t want her solicitor to have anything on me for adultery or anything like that. I don’t need any of that shit.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘I’ll think about it and write you a letter.’

That evening, I wrote the letter. ‘We haven’t known each other very long, but you’ve made me feel like a sugar daddy,’ I wrote. ‘It’s only been a few months and now you’re asking me for money. You make me feel like you see me as a gold mine. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you that money.’

I sent the letter off and hoped that would be the last I heard of the subject and that it wouldn’t affect our friendship.

A week later on a Sunday morning, I came down for breakfast at Sunnycross House. Sandra was making a bacon sandwich when I spotted my name on the front of the
Sunday Mirror
. What’s that? I thought, grabbing the paper and turning to a double-page spread on pages twelve and thirteen.

TOO-BLUE CHUBBY KEPT HIS CAP AND SOCKS ON FOR SEX, the headline said in big thick capital letters. Fucking hell, I thought. What if Sandra saw it?

‘I’m just going to the bog!’ I said, quickly scooping all the newspapers into my arms.

Locked safely in the toilet, my heart pounding in my mouth, I opened the paper to look at the story. ‘How Britain’s crudest comedian charmed a buxom young beauty into his bed,’ it said in big letters stretching below the headline. ‘Roy Chubby Brown in love affair with Estelle Keogh.’

Draped across half the page was Estelle, wearing white lingerie and high heels, lying on a double bed. I had to admit she looked great. The jaw of every bloke in the country must have dropped open with amazement when they saw that picture. I could guess what many of my mates would be thinking. ‘Chubby’s fucked her?’ they’d be saying. ‘The lucky bastard.’

The story didn’t pull any punches. ‘The married millionaire joker wooed Estelle Keogh with silver-tongued chat-up lines a million miles from his crude £10,000-a-night act,’ it said. ‘But when Britain’s filthiest funny man finally got her into bed he slipped back into his stage role – making love to her in fluffy white socks and an old cloth cap.

‘Later, Chubby got his act together, making love to her all night in a four-poster bed, in stage dressing rooms up and down the country and in the back of his luxury Mercedes car.’

Well, some of it was true. It seemed churlish to complain that the bits about the flat cap and making love in the back of my car were pure fantasy, especially as Estelle was quoted as saying ‘Roy’s a really sexy guy. He’s got a bit of a beer belly, but the rest of him is pure muscle.’ I didn’t disagree with that.

The inaccuracies in the article were irrelevant. There was enough in it for Sandra to eat my balls for breakfast, mashed up on one of those bacon sandwiches she was cooking. I thought of flushing the newspaper down the toilet, but realised that it would only block the drain.

I stuffed the newspapers down the back of my trousers. Pulling my top down over them, I sauntered out of the loo as casually as I could manage. ‘Is that bacon for me?’ I said. ‘You know, I’m sick of it.’

‘Where you going?’ Sandra said, noticing me moving towards the kitchen door.

‘Didn’t I tell you I’m away today?’

‘You said it was tomorrow.’

‘Well, all the lads are travelling today, so I thought I best join them.’

‘But I’ve bought Sunday dinner.’

‘Fucking hell,’ I said, pursing my lips. ‘Eh, I’m sorry about this.’

Thinking that it would be the last time I saw Sandra in Sunnycross House, I gave her a kiss and got in the car. At the end of our drive, two reporters were waiting. Beside them, a photographer, camera hanging round his neck, glanced into my car. I shielded my face and turned from him as I passed.

I knew as I drove away from Sunnycross House that my marriage was over – and not a day too soon for me. Things dragged on for a few more months as we tried to patch things up. I spent a small fortune buying Sandra presents and taking her on holiday in an attempt to repair things, but it didn’t work. An already bad situation turned worse and eventually our marriage collapsed. Sandra’s response was to go to the newspapers. A string of allegations were trotted out, most of which I felt were blatant lies.

I phoned Sandra. ‘What have you told the fucking newspapers?’ I said. She denied it to the hilt, but there were too many personal details for me to believe she hadn’t spoken to the press. And again there were quotes from Sandra that revealed her true motives. ‘I want a good financial settlement and I want to stay in this house,’ she’d told the
Daily Mirror
. ‘I am prepared to stick it out until I get what I want, regardless of how long that takes.’

Exactly what that entailed – and how far Sandra was prepared to go to get it – I found out in October, when our divorce came to court. Sandra filed on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour and I didn’t contest it. I would have admitted anything, even being an international terrorist, just to get rid of her. After all, they say the difference between a wife and a terrorist is that at least you can negotiate with a terrorist.

Sandra arrived with most of her family – her son and daughter, her mother, her Auntie Pat. It was a top day out for them. As I walked past her into the courtroom, I gave her my best ‘I hope you die’ look, but once in front of the judge
I
was the one who was murdered.

According to the terms of the divorce, I’m not allowed to say exactly what Sandra got. However, I can say that all I was left with was my pension, a small amount of money in the bank and my car. Sandra even got my beloved fifty-thousand-pound Steinway grand piano, even though she couldn’t play it.

But what really hurt was losing my home. I loved Sunnycross House. I bought it a year before I met Sandra and spent a fortune renovating it. It was my pride and joy, but I was now banished to a little rented cottage beside a pub. It didn’t seem right. I’d been a comedian for twenty years, working my balls off to get where I was. I’d spent eight years in purgatory, married to that woman. And after just two days in court I felt gutted like a fish. I was skint.

After the hearing, George took me out for a bite to eat and a drink. ‘It’s all over, son,’ he said. ‘Do you feel as if you’ve been ripped off?’

‘If I’d had to give her a shilling, I’d have felt robbed blind,’ I said. ‘A shilling would have been too much.’

‘Ah, well. What we’ll do is, we’ll earn it back for you over the next year or so. Don’t worry. You’ll get your money back. We’ll do it together.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

LOVE CONQUERS EVERYTHING

BORSTAL AND PRISON
made me grow up. Clubland showed me an escape from a life of crime and dead-end jobs. Turning blue put enough money in my pocket for me not to have to worry too much about the future. And being diagnosed with cancer made me realise that money isn’t everything and that the love of my wife and children is more important than anything.

The thing that surprised me about cancer is that once I’d recovered I didn’t feel any different. It’s not like I was dragging my leg or I had a lump on my head and every time I combed my hair my comb caught it. But it was living inside me and maybe because of that, it made me change the way I think.

It made me realise that comics of my generation don’t live long. That might be because the job goes hand over fist with drinking, smoking and not eating well. Whatever the reason, every time I open the paper these days it seems that another comedian has died. And they all seem to be around sixty-seven or sixty-eight years old – not much older than me. Anything
beyond that seems to be a bonus. Woody Allen said, ‘I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens’ and I’m like that. When I first discovered that I had cancer, I wondered if it was better to die than to lose the voice that had been my fortune and my saviour. I don’t believe that any more, even if it means that I’m the first comic who has to mime his gags.

I want more time to improve my piano-playing and to learn new instruments, but most of all I want it to spend with my two young children. Having come from nothing I don’t want to go back to nothing, so I’ve always worked hard. But more than anything I don’t want my kids reaching adulthood and thinking that although their dad was famous and left them a good legacy, they never really knew him – like I never really knew my mam.

George kept to his word, packing the calendar with gigs. I never worked as hard as in those first years after I divorced Sandra, toiling to recoup gradually everything she had taken from me. My schedule was relentless and I was in dire need of a holiday when another comedian told me about playing in South Africa. It sounded fantastic – good money and a first-class air fare to a first-class hotel in a beautiful climate. I could see myself relaxing by a cool pool all day, then playing a gig in the evening. It would be like a paid holiday. I told George that I wouldn’t mind having a go and he said he’d make some enquiries.

A few days later he reported back. ‘You can’t go to South Africa unless we take one of their acts,’ he said. Equity rules stipulated that I’d have to find an act just like mine. If I’d been a girl singer or dancer, I’d have had no trouble finding a South African counterpart, but I was a filthy, dirty, disgusting stand-up
blue comedian and there was no one remotely like that in South Africa. I was snookered.

‘Don’t worry,’ George said. He had a plan B. ‘We’ll go to Australia and New Zealand.’

By October 1997, I was on a flight to Australia via Hong Kong, the first stop on my maiden world tour. I spent the entire flight worrying about how I’d go down. Would they understand me? Would English working-class gags mean anything to Bondi beach bums and Hong Kong wheeler-dealers? As it turned out, Hong Kong was fine. I played a small theatre packed to the rafters with expats and army lads. It was like playing any army town in England. And when I arrived in Australia I realised they were more British than I was. They watched
EastEnders
and
Coronation Street
, and of course
Neighbours
and
Home and Away
. They drove English cars on the same side of the road as us. They had Indian takeaways, kebab shops and fish and chips. They had the same problems as us – consumer debt and immigration. And to my North Yorkshire ear there was little difference between the Australian accent and cockney. The only difference was the currency and the weather.

Riding in a limousine from Sydney airport to our hotel in the city centre, I got talking to the driver. ‘So you’re Chubby Brown, are you?’ he said in a thick Aussie twang.