Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (45 page)

We met again a few weeks later at the library and exchanged a few photos. I didn’t see him again, but occasionally I’d hear from someone else what Martin was doing. He had a bad reputation around Stockton and had got in with some nasty company, eventually landing up in court, where he admitted firing a single cartridge from a double-barrelled shotgun pistol because he believed they thought he had access to my money. He claimed in court that he had received death threats and demands for ten thousand pounds. I thought it was a load of bollocks and that he pulled the gun for the simple reason that he
thought the two other lads in the other car were going to kill him.

I was outraged that he’d been portrayed as my son when we’d had contact for no more than a couple of hours, so I rang up the paper. ‘What are you fucking doing? I don’t even know the lad,’ I said. They didn’t have an answer.

Martin wasn’t the only child who came crawling out of the woodwork around that time. A year later, a letter dropped on the doormat. ‘Dear Roy,’ it said. ‘I don’t really know where to start, I’ve tried to write this letter a million times and still don’t know what to say.

‘We’ve never met each other although I’ve got to know quite a bit about you. This is very difficult for me and I’ve no idea how you are going to respond to this letter.

‘I was born in January 1972 at Middlesbrough Hospital and was named Lisa Audrey, although that is not my name now as I was adopted at six weeks old by fantastic parents.’ The letter went on to explain how its writer had traced her true parents through adoption agencies and the Salvation Army and that, although my name wasn’t on her birth certificate, there was a note saying that the father was believed to be a drummer from Redcar.

I spoke to George. ‘If it was me I would want to meet her,’ he said. ‘I would want to know.’ So I made contact.

We chatted for a short while on the phone, then I told her I’d just started a new family. ‘We’ve got a new baby. His name is Reece,’ I said. I’d recently rushed from Birmingham, where I’d been playing a gig, to Grimsby Maternity Hospital, where Helen had gone into labour. Running from the car park into the hospital, I was stopped by Helen’s mother.

‘It’s a boy! It’s a boy!’ she shouted, somewhat spoiling the surprise I was anticipating with Helen. ‘He’s eight pounds six ounces …’ I’d hoped to have been there with Helen when the
baby was born, but the price of living on the road was often missing out on this kind of precious moment.

Now I was talking to another supposed child of mine and discovering that my brood was much larger than I’d thought. This time there appeared to be a germ of truth in the story. I had known Audrey and I had slept with her shortly after splitting up with Judith, my first wife. I looked at my arm. Tattooed there, somewhat faded now but just about legible, was Audrey’s name alongside Judy, Pat (who claimed that her daughter Michelle was mine), Beryl, Lana (who also claimed she was carrying my child), Sandra and a few others whose names I’d forgotten. It seemed like a fair cop.

‘I did sleep with your mam,’ I told the girl on the phone. ‘But I didn’t know you existed. Maybe we should meet.’

Sitting in the bar of the Copthorne Hotel at Newcastle, my heart almost stopped when the girl walked in the room. She was the spitting image of Audrey. I gave her a kiss and we sat down. We started talking about the old days. She wanted to know how it had ended up that she’d been put up for adoption.

‘We were kids, young and immature,’ I said. ‘Nobody I knew had heard of condoms, but we were still at it like rabbits.’ The girl looked at me.

She was lovely. Bright, intelligent, well-dressed and pretty, I would have been proud to have called her my daughter.

‘You know, the jigsaw is starting to come together as we sit here,’ I said. ‘It’s all coming back. About the time you were born, my mother told me that a girl had dropped by her house with a baby she claimed was mine. I’d assumed the girl was Lana, another girl I’d been seeing, but she must have been your mam, Audrey.’

We’d all assumed that Audrey had returned with her family to Sicily, but I’d just heard from Joan Boothby, the wife of Mick, my old mate and bass player from Jason and Everard and the first incarnation of Alcock & Brown, that she wasn’t in Sicily at
all. She was in Redcar, collecting her pension every Thursday at the post office, where Joan bumped into her.

‘I got an anonymous letter about a year ago,’ the girl said. ‘It said “Roy Vasey is your father” and that’s what started me looking for you. I tracked down my mother and wrote to her, but didn’t get a reply. I wrote to her brothers, but they said she was in Sicily. Obviously she just doesn’t want to know.’

I put myself in the girl’s shoes. She’d spent ages tracking down her biological parents, then found out that she was the product of little more than a bit of fun, and now her mum didn’t want to know. I felt responsible.

‘I can see you are a lovely person,’ I told her. ‘And I wished I had loved you as a daughter, but I don’t know you. I have a family and I love my kids. That’s where my life belongs. But if you want anything, I’ll help you.’

We kept in contact after that, exchanging birthday cards, meeting up at Christmas and speaking on the phone. One of the times we met, she brought along some photos of her adoptive parents on holiday with her.

‘I’m going to tell my mum and dad that I’ve met you,’ she said.

‘Do me a favour,’ I said. ‘Don’t do it.’ The girl looked at me surprised. ‘Your mum and dad have been looking after you for more than thirty years. You love them, don’t you?’

‘I love them very much.’

‘Well, don’t even think of telling them,’ I said. ‘After they’ve devoted their lives to giving you love and affection, it would just hurt them and it wouldn’t make any real difference to you. Please don’t tell them.’ For that reason, I’ve not mentioned this young woman’s adoptive name, only the name that Audrey gave her at birth. We still keep in touch, but I’ve had to recognise that she belonged to a past life far away from my current circumstances.

As I approached my sixtieth birthday, I had a sense that at last I was coming to terms with my past, putting old demons to rest. Most of it was due to the love and contentment I’d found with Helen. We married in Las Vegas in 2001, not long after my daughter with Audrey made contact with me. Six months later, I discovered that I had throat cancer and underwent treatment. A year later, in the summer of 2003, I was fined for battering a recovering heroin addict with an umbrella in Blackpool after he repeatedly insulted me and goaded me into taking him on. In November 2004, my cancer specialist gave me the all-clear to go back on the road. After surgery, radiotherapy, physiotherapy and rest, the cancer was gone and the one vocal cord remaining in my throat was strong enough for me to play three gigs a week.

Early in 2005, just as I was writing the first chapters of this book, I summoned the courage to remove George Forster. I now felt he had been quietly squeezing the soul out of our relationship until the only way for me to survive was to cut him out of my life.

When I started to write this book, I thought I’d dedicate it to George, finishing with a chapter thanking him for everything he’d done for me. It would have been a testimonial to our long career and close friendship. But I realised our partnership – the longest relationship of my adult life – would have to come to an end. I felt that George was treating me like a thoroughbred racehorse that won every race for him, but every race wasn’t enough.

Instead this book is dedicated to my third wife Helen, who taught me to accept myself in the way she has accepted me since the day we met. When I realised that Helen was the one for me, I sat her down and explained how my life worked. ‘I love you very much, darling, but I’m Chubby Brown and I’ve got to give him a hundred per cent,’ I said. ‘That means in most cases you will come second. I’m sorry but that’s how it is.’

Without Chubby, I told Helen, I couldn’t earn a living. Before Chubby, I was nobody, just another stupid arsehole with no future and a dodgy past, like many of the kids with whom I grew up.

Edmond Saul, who’d been my best friend in Grangetown, whose tin soldiers I nicked as a kid and whose leg I injured when we went camping as teenagers, came to one of my shows shortly before my sixtieth birthday. ‘In our class,’ he said, ‘there were twenty-two girls and fourteen boys. Out of those fourteen boys, eight have died.’ If I hadn’t got out of Grangetown, it might well have been nine dead. I’ve watched dozens of Grangetown lads who were just like me when I was younger – always stealing, lying, fighting and drinking, constantly in and out of prison – drop like flies, cut down in their prime by cancer, heart attacks or violence. That was their miserable life. I was part of that brigade, part of that shitty existence, but Chubby showed me a way out. He taught me that until the music started and you walked on stage, you didn’t know what the audience would be like or what the night would bring. That’s how I look at my life – don’t make assumptions about anything until you’ve been there. And think on your feet if you want to succeed.

Chubby made me something. Call it schizophrenia if you want, call it two people in one suit, call it what you like, but I owe him everything. He saved me from myself and brought me the kind of success and riches no Grangetown lad could ever reasonably expect. There’s some people who say money’s not everything, but you try and get something without it. We all know how it works.

I said my bit to Helen and she accepted it all. We got on with our strange life and, over time, Chubby stopped taking first place. One evening, when I was getting ready to go on stage, I took a phone call from Helen saying that Amy, our two-year-old ray of sunshine, was not very well. My immediate impulse was to cancel the gig and rush home to be with my family.
Helen persuaded me that it could wait until I’d done the show. Another ninety minutes wouldn’t make a difference, she said. She was right, but I realised something that night. Helen and the kids had replaced Chubby. Nothing had ever made me think of cancelling a gig before. Chubby had always been more important to me than anything, but not any more. He used to rule my life because I felt I owed him everything. Those days were over. Chubby had become just a bloke with a mucky mouth and a silly suit. A bloke in a flying hat and goggles, a clown who goes on stage every night and tells rude jokes, but who gets packed away when I go back to my dressing room, take off the suit and the helmet, get under the shower and wash off the greasepaint before I step out into the night. And that’s all.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to my perfect wife, Helen, and my beautiful children, Amy and Reece.

To Richard, Robert and your families – so proud of you all: ‘Our dad was an arsehole in his younger days but we wouldn’t change a minute.’

A big thank you to the ‘team’ who accompany me on the road: Ritchie, Scottie, Ian, John, Keith, Jeff and Steve and the fantastic band Hooper. Also the ‘team’ at my management company Handshake Ltd: Craig, Jean, Bob, Todd, Kate, David, Carla and Nicola for organising my life so well, and an extra special thanks to my accountant Philip Steele and my manager Stuart Littlewood.

To Eddie, Helen, AJ, Chris, Stuart and all at Universal for everything they have done for me during the past fifteen years.

To Robert Uhlig for his brilliant contribution in writing this book with me and to Robert Kirby (PFD) and Antonia, Viv and all at Little, Brown for believing.

Since I started to write this book, some very good things have happened. My children are one year older, and even more wonderful. I have changed my management and I am now happy in that department; my latest DVD
King Kong
has gone double platinum; Middlesbrough Football Club has had a great season and has supplied the new England manager; and you, the great British public, have continued to support me. My only sadness is that Mam and Dad never witnessed their son at the peak of his success. I have enjoyed recalling the highs and lows of my life and I do hope you have enjoyed sharing them with me.