Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (12 page)

‘It says here,’ he said, ‘that your father thinks you’re no good and that you’re better off inside Portland than back at home. So we’re stuck with you for another six months.’ I’d never felt so rejected.

At the end of my two-year sentence I was released with about ten other boys. They gave us itchy tweed suits, put us in a van, drove us to Weymouth railway station, and gave each of us a train ticket and three shillings and sixpence. It had been two years since I had last held some money. I’ll never forget the feeling of getting on that train, the money clutched in my hand as we made for the buffet car. We bought cups of tea and sat back to savour them in freedom. We’d passed Bournemouth before we spotted him sitting at the other end of the buffet car. It was Bruce Forsyth. ‘Ask him for his autograph, go on, ask him for his autograph,’ one of the lads said. So I did.

‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Forsyth,’ I said. ‘Could I have your autograph, please?’

‘Oh yes, of course,’ he said, taking a pile of photographs out of his bag. While he signed some pictures of himself, he asked us what we’d been doing. I said we’d just been released from Borstal.

‘Ooh,’ he said. ‘You are naughty boys!’ We chatted for a while. He was on his way to the Palladium in London to rehearse for a show.

‘Do us a favour, boys,’ he said as we drew into Waterloo station in London, ‘and behave yourselves in future.
Behave
yourselves.’

CHAPTER SIX

BEAT SURRENDER

TEN DAYS AFTER
the cancer diagnosis, I was driving home after seeing Dr Martin for another consultation. Nothing had actually changed, but now that I knew I was ill, I felt as sick as a show-jumper with piles. As usual, Dr Martin was full of encouragement, but I was still convinced I was going to die. Why should I be any different from Roy Castle or Marti Caine, I reasoned. They couldn’t beat cancer. So why should I get the break that they didn’t? Why should a lad like me, from Grangetown and with a criminal record, deserve to live when other clean-living law-abiding folk hadn’t? Surely, by escaping my past and making a name for myself, I’d already had more luck in a lifetime than anyone deserved. It didn’t make sense, I thought. I was bound to die.

The car phone rang. ‘Hello, is that Chubby?’ said a very familiar voice that for a moment I just couldn’t place.

‘Yes, it’s Chubby,’ I said. ‘Who’s speaking?’

‘It’s Bob Monkhouse.’ Fucking hell! I’d admired Bob all my life and now he was on the phone.

‘Hello, Bob,’ I said, feeling tongue-tied. Well, it’s always difficult knowing what to say when you first speak to one of your heroes. ‘You don’t mind me saying this, but this is not a piss-take, is it? Because I know a few impressionists and you could be one of them.’

‘No, it’s me, Chubby,’ Bob said. ‘I’m sat here with Russ Abbott, on my veranda outside my house in Barbados, sipping a glass of wine, and I heard about what’s happened to you and I just wondered how you got on today because I know you’ve been to see the doctor.’

I wasn’t really taking in Bob’s words. I couldn’t. There was no space for them in my head. It was filled with just one thought. That’s Bob Monkhouse – Bob fucking Monkhouse – and he’s talking to me! I pulled the car into a lay-by. My eyes started to well up with tears. I couldn’t believe it. Bob Monkhouse was talking to me from his home in Barbados.

‘Bob,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I’ve gone quiet. I am just gobsmacked that you rang me up.’

‘And why not?’ Bob said. ‘We’re fellow professionals, aren’t we?’

‘Well, we are, but I admire you that much, that I never thought …’

‘Now listen,’ Bob said, ‘don’t try and talk, son. Let me do the talking. I’m used to it.’ And Bob went off on a routine, cracking joke after joke. Then he paused. ‘You know I’ve just been through what you’re going through,’ he said. ‘It’s never easy, but you hold in there. It will get better. We’ll fight this disease together.’

‘Yes, I’d heard about you, Bob,’ I said. ‘I wish you the best of luck.’

‘Well, don’t worry. And don’t believe everything you read in the papers,’ Bob said. ‘I never admitted on television I had cancer. I never said I was taking shark food to get rid of it. It’s
all baloney and I’m all right. Don’t worry about me – I’m very well, sipping a lovely glass of wine, and the weather’s gorgeous.’

‘Well, it’s blowing a gale here. It’s awful,’ I said. ‘Rain’s coming down in sheets.’

We chatted a bit longer and I thanked Bob for calling out of the blue. ‘Well, all the best to you,’ he said. ‘Let me know how you get on and I’ll write to you.’

I arrived home and Johnny Hammond, a Middlesbrough comedian, came over. Johnny’s a great mate. ‘You’ll never guess who rang me,’ I said. ‘Bob Monkhouse.’

‘Oh,’ said Johnny, ‘I’ve had quite a few calls asking for your number. Norman Wisdom was asking.’

‘Oh, Johnny, fuck off!’ I said. ‘Pull the other one. You know it’s got bells …’ The phone rang. I got up and answered it. ‘Hello … Hello?’

‘It’s Norman here.’ I turned around to where Johnny was sitting on my sofa, a grin the width of a fat lass’s knickers cracking his face.

‘I know …’ Johnny mouthed. ‘He’s ringing from the Isle of Man.’

We talked for about ten minutes. ‘Norman …’ I said, ‘I’ll never forget this phone call. Thank you.’

‘Oh, right,’ Norman said. ‘Yes.’ Norman hung up abruptly and I put the phone down. Twenty minutes later it rang again.

‘Hello, is that Chubby?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Norman here, Norman Wisdom.’

‘You rang me a short while ago, Norman.’

‘Oh, what a berk!’ Norman said. And he put the phone down, leaving me shaking my head in disbelief. Bob Monkhouse and Norman Wisdom in one day.

I was soon back on Teesside, back with my mates and back in the King’s Head, a claggy mat on a particularly run-down council estate. There was always fighting in the King’s Head. Every night. It was that rough the Alsatian had sandals on and all the barmaid’s tattoos were spelt wrong.

‘Hey, I saw Sandra today,’ Robbie shouted over the noise of the bar one night. I hadn’t seen her for two and a half years.

‘Did ya?’ I said.

‘Oh yeah, she looked gorgeous. She was with a blond-haired lad.’

‘Oh, right. What’s she doing here?’

‘She’s at her mother’s,’ Robbie said. ‘Y’know, 17 Ann’s Street.’

‘Is that where she is?’ Bolstered by seven pints of beer, I went up to Ann’s Street. Approaching number 17, I noticed a van parked outside Sandra’s mum’s house. Inside the van, a bloke with blond hair was kissing a woman. Bloody hell, I thought. That’s Sandra.

Buoyed by Dutch courage, I walked up to the van and banged on the window. Sandra jumped, turned around and stared at me. Her face went white when she realised exactly who was standing in the darkness. ‘Go away!’ she screamed. ‘Go
away!
’

‘I just want to talk to you,’ I yelled.

‘I don’t want to talk to you. Go
away
.’

So I shook the van, rolling it back and forth, trying to turn it over. Sandra screamed and the man with her yelled at me. He was frightened, but he managed to start the engine. As the van lurched forward, I grabbed the side and jumped up onto it. With a crashing of gears, the van moved off, and accelerated. I
fell off it. Sandra’s mother was standing in the door to her house as the bluebottles turned up and I was dragged off to the police station. Sandra had moved out of my life again.

I spent a few months doing odd jobs in and around Middlesbrough until someone suggested there were better jobs to be had in Blackpool. With fond memories of the town from the summer that my father had taken me there for a holiday, I needed little encouragement to get out of Middlesbrough.

Walking along the seafront the day I arrived in Blackpool, I noticed some workmen loitering in a big blue shed and got talking to them. It turned out they were red-leading Blackpool tower. Fifteen minutes later, I had a job. Dressed in overalls, I got into a lift to the fourth floor, where we climbed onto some scaffolding. Three hundred feet above the Golden Mile wasn’t a place for someone frightened of heights. ‘You didn’t last long,’ the foreman said.

‘I’ll go on the pancrack,’ I told the foreman, but when I got to the dole office they told me I wouldn’t need to sign on. The Queen’s Hotel needed a porter.

Every morning I would line up with the rest of the Queen’s Hotel staff and hold my hands out so that the manager could inspect my nails. I had to wear a full uniform with a bow tie even though I was only carrying bags up to rooms. This wasn’t for me, so I found work handing out mats for the slides at the Funhouse on the Pleasure Beach, the next in a succession of dead-end jobs, few of which lasted longer than a couple of weeks. I painted the Big Dipper; I worked for the council letting out deckchairs on the seafront; I grafted in chippies and hotels.

None of the jobs paid much, so most of the time I slept rough. In Queen’s Square, opposite the North Pier, where I’d later play summer-theatre seasons, there was a gents’ toilet with a green railing around it. I’d go down there when the pubs chucked me out, climb over the rail and break in. It was warmer
than outside and I could sleep sitting on the loo. When the weather turned colder, I found rooms in run-down boarding houses or the YMCA.

One evening I met a fair-haired Scottish lad and an English lad, both drifters like me. ‘Where are you stopping tonight?’ the Scottish lad said.

‘I’m thinking of the youth hostel near the bowling alley by the North Pier,’ I said. It was two and six a night and they had hot water.

‘If you fancy a change, do what we do,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Past the Savoy there’s a big roundabout and on the other side is Pontins. Round the back, near the airport, there’s a hole in the fence. You can get in there. Some of the chalets aren’t taken. Look through the window and if there’s no bags in it, you know nobody’s staying there. Give the door a good push and it’ll come away from the latch.’

‘Eh, great,’ I said.

It was worth the effort just to save two and six. The scam ran so well that we got to know some of the holidaymakers and would go back to their chalets for a party. Then I got caught by security. I told them I’d come about a job. They put me in charge of teaching kids to swim. But teaching swimming also involved tearing arse – a load of tiresome tasks such as sweeping up at the end of the day, collecting sunbeds and stacking towels. I’d had enough and was looking for a way out when the Scottish lad made a suggestion.

‘Let’s hot-wire a car,’ he said.

We broke into an old Austin and set off, taking turns to drive along country roads with no particular destination in mind. We thought of ourselves as fugitives from society, but really we were just a trio of shitheads. Ending up near Oxford, penniless, tired and filthy after sleeping in the car for two nights, we came upon
an old house in a country lane. We knocked at the door. There was no answer. We looked in the garage. No car there. So we smashed a back window and climbed into the kitchen, where an army uniform was hanging behind the door. Finding some food in the fridge, we cooked ourselves bacon and eggs, then ransacked the house looking for money. We found nothing of any value, but I loved every minute of it. I thought I was one of the Kray Twins, a proper gangster, when all we were attempting was petty burglary.

We left the house, needing to refuel the car. As we approached Oxford I noticed a middle-aged woman standing at a bus stop. ‘Slow down and I’ll open the window,’ I said to the blond Scot, who was driving. ‘I’ll grab her handbag.’ It worked a treat. We found a couple of pounds in the bottom of the bag, dumped the evidence, filled up the car with petrol and drove home.

Back in Blackpool, we spent what remained of our booty on three beds in a boarding house in Grassmere Road. The next morning, we drove the car to a nearby café for breakfast. After all our escapades, we were starving and the breakfast tasted great. We’d been in the café for about twenty minutes and I was just finishing a cup of tea when a copper walked in. ‘Whose is that red car outside parked on the yellow line?’ he said.

And like an idiot I opened my mouth without thinking. ‘Oh, it’s mine, mate,’ I said.

‘You better move it if you don’t want a ticket,’ the copper said, so I ambled outside.

A squad of bluebottles was waiting and the cuffs were on me straight away. The gang of three was soon in a police van bound for Oxford. After two days in the police-station cells we were in court. The woman we’d robbed had the make of the car, its licence-plate number and a full description of the three of us, down to the colour of our eyes and our hair. Served us right for
robbing a local magistrate. We were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and I was sent to Bristol jail.

I’d left Borstal less than three months ago. Now I was in prison, but for some reason it didn’t seem a big deal to me. I wasn’t frightened. I wasn’t even particularly bothered. Thinking that my most likely future was a life of crime, my reaction was simple and unsentimental. This will do for me, I thought. I’m going to be like this. I’ll be an arsehole all my life.

Bristol nick was a comparatively cushy number. There was none of the football, cricket, swimming and rehabilitation of Borstal – prison is just about being locked away and left to rot – but I’d been in Wormwood Scrubs, Leicester and Armley jails. They were shithouses compared with Bristol. Full of lags who’d been there for twenty years or more, Bristol jail was like an old people’s home.