10:44am Saturday 19th December 2009
Roy Chubby Brown talks about his DVDs, the no-swearing rule and his 43 years on the comedy scene.
IT comes as something of a shock to hear Middlesbrough comic Roy Chubby Brown complaining about bad language and even more so when it relates to his children breaking the noswearing rule that he operates at home.
Did we hear that correctly? Then again we are in the world of the flying helmet, goggles and patchwork suit where Brown’s foul-mouthed antics are strictly linked to the stage and his annual 18-certificate DVD releases which have made him a wealthy man.
“It’s earned three ex-wives a good living. You can write that down as well, the b****rds,” he says through gritted teeth.
“In our house we have no swearing at all, no toilet talk. I have an eightyear- old boy and a six-year-old girl… and when I said we were going to sing songs around the piano, she said ‘like Santa Claus Where’s Me ****ing Bike?’ he says about a relative who has added Brown’s tune as a seasonal ringtone.
“So obviously, she’s been told that daddy sings that song. I’ve got two older boys who are 42 and 41 and they were 18 and 19 before I’d let them see me. Before that my mother and father wouldn’t speak to me. My father said ‘I hope you don’t think that swearing in public is funny’.”
Asked about his 43 years in the business, he says: “I started off as a club comic and as I wasn’t a Brad Pitt lookalike I developed a character who took off. We’re surrounded by that much misery that I can’t watch the news on TV these days, it just upsets me.
“Last night at Hartlepool I’m entertaining people who don’t go very far. They probably only have one holiday a year, so business, politics and talking about the Ackerman theory on different gearboxes on cars just would not interest them. Instead, I’ll say they’ve removed all the phone boxes in Owton Manor and I feel sorry for the lads because they’ve got nowhere to wee, and they all fall off their chairs laughing. It’s common as muck gags, and that’s what they like,”
he says.
Those with long memories will recall that the comic born Royston Vasey switched to blue comedy in the mid-Seventies after losing ignominiously in a TV talent show.
“If I’d have won and been taken under a London management company’s wing I might have developed as something else, but I came up the hard way. In 1971, when I’d been a clean comic for five years, it was a case of me getting £15 for two halfhour spots or it was £150 for me to say **** with the same jokes. But it was a no-no and I was accused of all sorts.
Other comics said I’d brought comedy down to the gutter, but somebody had to do it. I took the building site and put it on the stage,” Brown explains.
DVD-wise he’s got 19 years worth of VHS and DVD Christmas releases with the latest, Too Fat To Be Gay, racing to 60,000 sales The 80,000 miles he covers each year as a stand-up in the clubs and theatres, unloved by the TV cameras, means that his health has suffered.
Asked about the latest on his battle with throat cancer, which cost him a vocal chord, he says: “A woman told me that she’d lost a breast to cancer and I said ‘it must be awful swimming in a circle’ and we had a laugh, because you have to laugh about it.”
He recalls being struck almost dumb in 2002 by throat surgery and being unable to reply to a fan who saw him in a shop and stormed off saying: “So you don’t want to talk now you’re famous”.
“Peter Kay is god at the moment.
Fifteen years ago they said that about me when I sold out three nights in Glasgow in 20 minutes,” he says.
“Unfortunately I’m coming up for 65 and every dog has had his day, but the reason they come back to see me is that I tend to say what other people are thinking. I get the blame for everything.”
■ Tour dates: Wednesday, Harrogate International Centre, Box office: 0845-130-8840, royalhall.co.uk; February 4 and 5, Middlesbrough Town Hall, 01642- 729729, middlesbrough.gov.uk; February 23 and 24, Newcastle City Hall, 0191-261-2606, newcastlecityhall.org Too Fat To Be Gay, Universal, DVD, £19.99 or Mucky Man Box Set, £29.99
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