Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (43 page)

‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘Do you know me?’

‘Oh, yeah, mate. I know you. I’ve got all your tapes. I had Billy Connolly in the limo last week.’

‘Billy?’ I said. ‘He’s fantastic.’

‘He is, yeah, mate. He rates you!’

‘Does he?’ I said. The taxi driver told me how they’d passed a building site surrounded by a massive wooden fence plastered with posters advertising bands on tour.

‘Then,’ the limo driver said, ‘Billy spotted a poster for your tour, mate. “Oh, fucking hell, Chubby’s coming here,” he said.
“D’you know him?” I asked. “Yeah, he’s fantastic, I love him. He’s a broad-church comic. He’s open to everybody. He talks about things that we all laugh about.”’

With Doddy, Billy Connolly has always been my comedy hero, so hearing that was just the confidence boost I needed before facing an Aussie audience. I played three nights in Sydney, the first in a comedy club beneath Sydney Harbour Bridge, the steel for which my father helped produce all those years ago when I’d wave him off to work at Dorman, Long. It was a great night, with a lot of heckling, but the Aussies had never heard anything like my brand of answerbacks and ad libs – ‘Why don’t you get your mind read? It’ll cost you fuck-all’ I shouted at one of them – and they loved my act. The next night I played the University Theatre and, on the third night, another big theatre where I was on with a band that combined rock and roll with yodelling. They called themselves the Von Trapp Family. So bad they were funny, they came on stage dressed in lederhosen and green Bavarian hunters’ hats with feathers. My audience, mostly lads on the piss, didn’t take to them at all. ‘Fucking get off!’ they shouted. ‘You’re shite!’ When the Von Trapp Family came off stage, George met the lead singer in a backstage corridor.

‘I’ve never known a rougher crowd than that,’ the singer said.

‘Well, you know who’s on, don’t you?’ George said. ‘Britain’s bluest comic, Chubby Brown. You didn’t stand a chance.’

We checked out of the Ritz Carlton hotel the next morning. Two days later, I was on stage in Brisbane. The news had broken that afternoon that Michael Hutchence had hanged himself in the hotel I’d just left. He must have been staying there at the same time as us. ‘I stopped at the Ritz Carlton in Sydney yesterday,’ I said on stage that night. ‘Closed the bathroom door, there’s a fucking bloke hanging there with an orange in his mouth.’

The audience gasped. Hutchence was a god in Australia. It was the equivalent of making a joke about Princess Diana just after her death. But I thought it was just a throwaway line, so I kept going. ‘Paula’s coming over,’ I said. ‘Do you know Paula Yates? She has got Fifi Trixibelle and Peaches, and I think the other one’s called Cream.’ I told some more gags about the kids’ names. The audience fell about and I’d got them back on side, but it was a close-run thing. The Aussies have no inhibitions and nothing seems to bother them. They’re very accepting and take as they find, so my brand of humour went down a storm, even better than in Britain.

We went on to Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Every city was wonderful and every gig sold out. The staff at the theatres told me that the tickets had gone quicker than any others for years and treated me like a superstar. In Perth, we shot a video that later became
Chubby Down Under
. I thought it was one of the best gigs I’d ever played.

Spending as much time as possible looking around each city, I loved everything I saw in Australia. It was just like the clichéd view of Oz, only better. Instead of working crazy sixty-or seventy-hour weeks, like in Britain, the Aussies had got the balance right and spent as much time as they could outdoors, on the beach, drinking lager, throwing prawns on the barbie, surfing, cycling, running and swimming. It was no wonder they were so good at sports. Everyone was tanned, beautiful and healthy – I only wished I was twenty years younger. And when I went out in the evenings, the bars were relaxed and easygoing, with girls singing and bashing tambourines and the lads joining in.

The one thing I really noticed about the Aussies was that they swore so much they made me sound like the Archbishop of Canterbury – maybe that’s why they took me to their hearts. Whatever it was, they looked on me as some kind of international celebrity and I loved every minute of it.

After Australia, we flew on to New Zealand. I was expecting Maoris everywhere but, riding in the taxi to the hotel, we could have been in Middlesbrough – Marks & Spencer, Woolworths, the houses and most of the stores on the high streets were the same. I got to the hotel and switched the telly on. The first channel I turned to was showing
Coronation Street
. On a side table was a kettle with Tetley teabags and sachets of Maxwell House coffee.

I played a small theatre in Auckland. Another superb night with a cracking audience. The next morning I got a phone call asking me to come onto a radio show. ‘You can say anything but “cunt”,’ the disc jockey said.

‘What? I can say “bastard”, “fuck” and “fanny”?’

‘Yes, anything but “cunt”,’ he said. ‘And we want you to take the piss out of our mayor. She’s a lesbian, but she thinks nobody knows it. Of course we all do.’

It sounded like the perfect radio show for me, although I was worried that they might be setting me up. When I arrived at the studio, they poured me a coffee and sat me in front of a microphone. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve waited a long time for this …’ the DJ said. ‘He’s finally here, the fat bastard himself, Chubby Brown.’

‘Don’t you be so fucking ignorant, you fucking halfwit,’ I said. My first sentence broadcast on New Zealand airwaves had two ‘fucks’ in it. I thought it was great. ‘And that fucking big fat lesbian you’ve got here, can you imagine me and her on the job? Fart and give us a clue …’

I talked for about twenty minutes, running through my gags. When I got to the theatre that night, the manager stopped me. ‘Were you on the radio this morning?’ he said.

‘Yeah.’

‘We’ve been inundated with calls for tickets. Our phone’s never stopped today, we can’t get them all in.’ That night I played a blinder, one of my best performances ever.

Two years later, in 1999, I toured Australia and New Zealand again, but this time we flew via Los Angeles, where I played a gig at the Henry Fonda Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. I didn’t like LA. The people were rude, George nearly got arrested for smoking in a bar, we were frequently tapped for money by beggars on Venice Beach, a Groucho Marx T-shirt cost two hundred dollars, the waiters and waitresses were all out-of-work actors full of bullshit and nobody talked to us in the street. But the show was a barnstormer.

Appearing in the middle of Hollywood, the centre of the show-business universe, I was racked with nerves before the curtain went up, but as soon as I started I realised that half the audience was British. I sat at the piano, played some ragtime, told gags about America, flying, hotels, Venice Beach with its muscle men, dieting and mother-in-laws, then finished off with a number on the ukulele-banjo. I got a standing ovation.

When we returned to Middlesbrough, George was being pestered by a bloke in Bahrain who wanted to book me to play a gig in a desert tent. Having just travelled halfway around the world, I didn’t feel like getting back on a plane. I don’t like flying any road and I didn’t want to go all that way for one gig. ‘He’s offering you a small fortune plus all expenses. We can take the whole crew,’ said George.

‘I don’t want to go,’ I said. ‘Tell him to double it and I’ll think about it. That’ll shut him up.’

The bloke phoned back ‘He’ll pay double plus all the crew and expenses,’ George said.

‘Fucking hell, George,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to go. What are we going to do now?’

George, as usual, had a plan. ‘I’ll tell him you’re pencilled in to do a TV show and the only way you’ll cancel is if he’ll pay three times his original offer and provide first-class accommodation and air fares.’

The bloke phoned back again. A fee of three times his original offer of a small fortune was not a problem. It was the most I’d ever been offered for one night’s work, so I reluctantly flew out to Bahrain.

Once I got there, I realised it was the best decision I’d made in a long time. With a chandelier larger than some English houses, the hotel was amazing. I was there for only a couple of days, but I felt like I’d put on more than a stone. At least I came home with a lovely tan.

Because it was illegal to drink in Bahrain, the bloke who’d hired me had erected a marquee near an expats’ tennis club. We drove out into the desert until, in the middle of nothing but sand, we arrived at a wire-fenced compound like an army camp. Passing through a checkpoint, we drove on until our little convoy pulled up beside a big white tent. Inside it was carpeted, with a stage at one end, an excellent PA system that sounded better than most theatre sound systems, and a grand piano. Outside it was hot, the temperature in the high eighties even at night, but they’d air-conditioned the tent and inside it I could have been anywhere.

I played for ninety minutes to an audience of oil workers, their families and the expats who serviced them, such as doctors, dentists and cooks. There was even a lad from Grangetown who’d been three classes below me at school.

After the show, they opened a cupboard behind the stage. It was packed to the gunwales with whisky, brandy, gin, rum, sherry, beer and wine. Invited to help ourselves and with only half an hour until a taxi arrived to take us to the airport, we ripped through the cupboard’s contents, nearly emptying it. By the time we arrived at the airport, I was legless. ‘How are we going to get Roy on the plane?’ George said. I couldn’t stand up. They dragged me into the gents’ toilet and splashed cold water on my face until I pulled myself together. I took a deep breath and stumbled to the check-in.

‘You’re in a good mood, aren’t you?’ said the woman at the check-in desk.

‘Yesssh,’ I said, slurring and grinning inanely. ‘I’m in a very good mood.’ And then I let out the longest, loudest fart I’ve ever heard. When it was finished, I turned around. George, his son Mick, the sound engineer Aaron and our lighting technician Mick were all on the floor, weeping helplessly with laughter. None of them could stand up or speak.

‘Somebody’s excited about getting on the plane, aren’t they?’ the check-in woman said.

The fact that drinking was illegal in Bahrain just made us all feel like naughty schoolboys and, despite concerns that we might be prevented from flying, none of us could stop giggling for the next two hours. It was only when the plane was in the sky and we had a fresh round of drinks in our hands that we calmed down.

When we got home, I tried on my multicoloured suit. After the stupendous breakfasts at the hotel and the booze blow-out on the last night – something to which I was no longer accustomed – it was getting tight. But then, I’d got used to being more svelte than for many years. Before going out to Bahrain I had lost more than two stone in weight since 1997. Why? Because I was in love.

After the trauma of the divorce from Sandra in 1996, I thought I wouldn’t look at another woman ever again. Life with Sandra had damaged my view of all womankind, and I thought I’d be happy to bumble through the rest of my life on my own.

‘If you see me with another woman,’ I used to tell my friends, ‘shoot me in the back of the head and hide my body somewhere. Do whatever you like, but don’t ever let me set eyes on another woman.’

Sometimes I felt lonely, but I just ploughed my energy into my work. I spent a lot more time tinkling at the piano or pounding my drums. I devised a lot of songs and wrote more
poetry than I had done for years. I saw Richard and Robert, my kids from my first marriage, and got to know my grandchildren a bit better. Totally uninterested in women, I just kept myself busy.

That all changed after a show at the tail-end of the 1997 summer season. Skegness was on Wednesdays, Thursdays I was in Rhyl, Fridays were Great Yarmouth, Saturday and Sunday I played Blackpool. I was always travelling and always stuck behind caravans, the curse of the road. It must have been a Wednesday because we were in Skegness when my driver Peter Richardson led me out of the stage door to where some fans were waiting. ‘There’s a girl here,’ he said. ‘She was here last week with a friend. Now she’s come back with her boss and her boss’s girlfriend.’

‘Right,’ I said – thinking, so fucking what? – as Peter brought them over. ‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Hello,’ the girl said. I hardly looked up.

‘Can she have a photograph, Roy?’ Peter said. I picked up a colour photograph to hand it to her, but Peter interjected. ‘Can she have a photograph with you?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Of course you can.’ I stood up. ‘What’s your name?’ I said.

‘Helen.’

‘Oh.’

Helen looked at me and I looked at her. I won’t say it was love at first sight, but there was definitely something. She was the first woman I’d noticed for a long time. And boy was she a bonny girl. I tried to guess her age Thirty-two? Thirty-one? Maybe even younger? Whatever – she was far too gorgeous to be interested in me. Long blonde hair. Perfect figure. Lovely teeth and green-blue eyes. She was wearing a pink cardie and from what I could see had a perfect pair of tits beneath it. By God, you’re nice, I thought.

‘Have you seen the show before?’ I said.

‘Yes, I was here last week with a friend.’

‘Is your friend a fan too?’ I said.

‘Well, I converted him,’ Helen said. ‘I heard a couple of tapes of yours, then I saw you on video and you made me laugh so much that my sides were aching. I’ve always been a fan, so I persuaded my pal to come to your show last week.’

‘Well, that’s nice,’ I said.

‘And I’m coming next week as well.’

‘You what? You were here last week, this week, and next week? Who’s this you’re with?’

Helen introduced me to John, a farmer, and Julie, who giggled a lot. I smiled and Julie grinned back. ‘Will you sign this?’ she said, pulling her jeans down. ‘Will you sign my arse?’

I looked at Helen. Her face was redder than the ripest tomato and she was staring out the window. For Julie, who moaned in mock ecstasy as I signed her arse, it was all a big joke, but I could see that Helen wasn’t like that. She watched silently. Then, as they were leaving, she said quietly, ‘I’ll see you next week, then?’