Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (26 page)

As we pulled up, Dec read out a poster outside the venue. ‘Bernard Manning, 12 Exotic Dancers plus support,’ it said.

‘Eh, Bernard’s on here soon,’ I said as we walked inside. ‘I wonder when.’

In the dressing room, the manager introduced himself. ‘Bernard’s on at nine,’ he said.

‘Hang on?’ I said. ‘Bernard what?’

‘Bernard’s on at nine o’clock,’ the manager said. ‘You do twenty minutes, then we’ll put some strippers on. Bernard goes on for an hour, some more strippers, then you do another twenty minutes.’

‘I’m on here with
Bernard Manning
?’ I said. If I had been upside down, the shit would have come out of me collar. I was petrified. Bernard’s reputation went before him and I was on the same bill.

Bernard was the king of the club circuit. The top comic. He was the boy. I’d never thought in my wildest dreams that I would ever work with Bernard Manning, but here I was, on the same bill, even if it was as ‘plus support’.

At eight o’clock, the four-piece house band struck up a tune and the compère stepped up to the microphone. ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Jollys. We’ve
some
show for you tonight,’ he announced. ‘First of all, a young man, a comic who’s just starting out but who we think is going to be a big name in the future. He’ll keep you laughing for twenty minutes or so, then we’ll bring on some of the girls. At the top of the bill, Bernard Manning will arrive at the building at nine o’clock, then …’

I walked onto the stage. Jollys was the biggest venue I’d played until then. It was a classic old-style nightclub, with rows of tables banked up from the stage, each with a little lamp on it. The lads were sitting four, six or eight to a table and the bars ran right around the back walls in a horseshoe from the stage. The waitresses wore bunny ears, like in the Playboy Club in London, taking orders for trayfuls of drinks. I did my set – it went down well, but I knew my place and I was very much bottom of the bill behind Bernard and the strippers – and left the stage, hoping to meet Bernard.

Bernard’s ways were renowned in clubland and one of his many habits was always to start his set at nine o’clock and never to arrive before five to nine. He didn’t like to sit in his dressing room, taking his time getting dressed and preparing for the show. Bernard would sit outside the venue in his white Rolls-Royce until the very last minute. He was well known for it.

At five to nine, Bernard arrived in full view of the audience in his usual costume – a white shirt and a black suit – and slipped on a bow tie. There were no inhibitions or starry antics with Bernard. If the venue was small, he wouldn’t even bother with the dicky bow.

I grabbed Bernard’s driver as he walked past. ‘Excuse me, is there any chance of an autograph and a photograph with Bernard?’ I asked.

‘Course you can. Just do it before he goes on.’

I met Bernard in the wings of the stage. ‘What do you do?’ he said in a deep, gravely voice that could strip paint.

‘I’m the warm-up comic,’ I said.

‘Do you want some gags, do you?’ Bernard said with a smile. ‘What d’you do, then?’

I ran through my repertoire. Bernard needed to check we weren’t doing the same jokes. I told him I did a few adverts off the telly and a few parodies.

‘Oh, right, that sounds fine,’ he said and walked straight on stage.

I watched Bernard’s act with open-mouthed wonder. He walked off the stage into the crowd, picked up someone’s pint and drank it. Then he borrowed a cigarette off somebody else. He hadn’t told a gag, but he already had the audience in his hand.

‘Eh, these are nice,’ he said, taking a drag on the cigarette he’d cadged. ‘How much are they these days?’ He patted the pockets of his jacket. ‘I’ve got some fags,’ he said and pulled out an old packet of Woodbines. ‘I’ve had these since 1939.’

It was a simple act, based on having a go at the audience, but it was clever and very funny. Since then, I’ve known Bernard’s routine off by heart and like all the 1,800 blokes in Jollys that night I loved his act. He was a great genuine man and a fabulous storyteller.

After an hour, Bernard came off. He would usually leave immediately after changing his shirt, but on that night he came into my dressing room after I had finished the second of my two twenty-minute sets. ‘Where the fuck have you come from, son?’ he said. ‘Even I don’t use that word.’ He meant ‘cunt’.

I had a shower and went out into the backstage corridor. Bernard’s driver was waiting inside the stage door.

‘Do you think Bernard liked what he saw?’ I said.

‘If Bernard gives you a backhanded compliment, he likes you,’ the driver said.

A little later, Bernard came walking down the corridor.

‘What do you think, Bernard?’ I said. ‘Did you like the act?’

‘You want to pack it in,’ he said. ‘You’re rubbish.’ We shook hands. ‘All the best to you, son,’ he said.

‘Thanks, thanks, Bernard, take care of yourself,’ I said as he walked out of the club and climbed into his white Roller. That’s a star, I thought, a real star. I was more excited about having worked with Bernard than I had been about playing in front of an audience of 1,800 and them all laughing at me. As far as I was concerned, Bernard was the King of Comedy and I was thrilled to have met him.

Bernard opened a lot of doors for controversial acts like mine and in those days I never thought I would ever reach Bernard’s level. I don’t think anyone ever thinks they’re going to get to the top of their game. Kelly Holmes says she never thought she would be an Olympic champion when she was starting out. She thought she was a good runner and vowed to do the best she could. Edmund Hillary didn’t begin his mountaineering career thinking he was going to be the first man to reach the summit of Everest. He just kept climbing higher until the day came when he thought he’d have a go at the biggest prize.

And when I was starting out, I saw myself as one of the thousands of club comics. A warm-up act for the big boys. I
thought that was all I would ever be. I never thought my name would be on a ticket. I never thought people would pay eighteen quid to see me. I was just a warm-up comic who got a low wage. And for many years that was what I did. I worked with a lot of stars at different venues throughout the country, but I was still on two hundred quid for a week of six shows, always a bit skint, whereas they would be on daft money.

I worked on the same bill as Bernard a few months later at the Mayfair Ballrooms in Newcastle, where I was better known than in Stoke. Halfway through Bernard’s act, someone shouted out: ‘Where’s Chubby?’

Bernard knew he was in my home territory and immediately snapped back. ‘You can shout all you like, as long as they don’t get the wage packets mixed up.’

Over the years, Bernard and I kept in touch. I did a few gigs for his charities and we occasionally shared the same bill. He is a gentleman with few pretensions, just a bloke who tells jokes.

A few years ago, when Danny La Rue was on a farewell tour and several comics held a dinner for him, Bernard came into my dressing room. ‘How are you, Bernard?’ I said.

‘If it wasn’t for me angina and me arthritis and me knees and me back, me deafness and that, I’d be fine,’ he said. That evening, I went home and wrote a poem about Bernard called ‘I Should Be All Right for the Shape I’m In’.

I’m fine, honestly, I’m quite all right, there’s nothing wrong with me.
There was a time, in 1961, I had just a touch of dysentery,
And at the moment I can’t catch my breath. It’s just a little wheeze,
And, yes, I’ve backache and angina and arthritis in the knees.
I’ve got a few teeth that’s rotten. I can’t hear, you’ll have to shout,
I’m overweight ’cos I drink a bit. And someone said it’s gout
.

No, I don’t sleep at night with fallen arches and it affects both fucking
feet
,

The cramp gets worse when it’s cold. That smell? It’s called Deep
Heat
.

Dizzy spells, I’m used to them – my head is in a spin
,

Without paracetamol and Nurofen, and of course my saviour which
is aspirin
.

Eyesight? God, what’s that sign? Now I have to be told,
But don’t worry, it happens to all of us. It’s a case of getting old.
Aches and pains and cystitis. I’d have rust if I was made of tin,
But I’m doing well for seventy-five. For the shape I’m fucking in
.

There was no better way of learning the ropes of clubland than sharing the bill with big names such as Bernard Manning. From them, I learned how to control audiences and how to deal with club committees. Of all the hazards of the game, not getting paid was one of the worst. Each club was different, but they were all united by one simple policy – don’t spend money. If they could avoid paying you, they would. The chairman would tell you that you were being ‘paid off’, although the phrase was a misnomer. The ‘paid’ part of it didn’t apply. You were ‘off’ and that was that.

It happened to every act that came up through the clubs. I heard that even the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had bad nights when they would be paid off. The unfortunate thing is that it was the bad nights that audiences remembered, not the good ones. Within five minutes of picking up the microphone, I knew whether I was going to do well or not that night. And if I wasn’t getting the laughs, the clock would start ticking until someone walked up to me and said: ‘You’re off!’ The only unanswered question was whether the committee official had a heart. If he did, he’d let me do half my act and give me maybe half of my fee. If he was a bastard, like the committee member at the Tanfield Lea Club in County Durham, he’d let you run through your entire act, then stitch you up like a
kipper. I’d played a full one-hour set when I came off and the concert chairman summed up my act in three words: ‘You were shite.’

‘Was I shite after ten minutes?’ I said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, why didn’t you tell me to come off after ten minutes? I could have got in my car and gone home.’

‘I can’t take you off after ten minutes,’ he said. ‘The bingo doesn’t start until nine o’clock.’

‘So you let me suffer for an hour, sweating like fuck, worrying myself sick and then walking off to the sound of me own fucking feet because the bingo doesn’t start until nine?’

‘Yeah. What’s your fee then?’

‘You know what the fee is. It’s fifty quid. That’s what I’m on. Fifty quid.’

‘We don’t pay that type of money here.’

‘The agent told me to pick up fifty pounds.’

‘I work down the pits all week for that, you know,’ he said. I’d heard that same line so many times before. ‘We are going to give you five for your petrol because you have come a long way.’

It had taken me an hour and a half to travel from Redcar. There were no motorways or dual carriageways in that part of the country in those days. ‘Five pounds?’ I said. ‘No, I’m not taking that. You keep the fiver for putty.’

‘Putty?’

‘Yes,
putty
. Because I’m putting all these fucking windows in.’

‘You what? I’ll get the police.’

‘You get who you like. Get the Coldstream Guards, the Green Howards. If you don’t give me my money, I’ll smash every fucking window in this club.’

The chairman walked off and I thought I was going to get my money until he returned from the bar with two big bruisers – six foot, four inch Geordie equivalents of the Kray Twins.

‘So yur gunna put wor windas in?’ one of them said in a thick Geordie accent. ‘Ahm gunna put
yer
windas in!’

‘Hang on … hang on,’ I said. ‘I don’t speak your language. I’m from Middlesbrough. I don’t talk Geordie. Is there a translator in the house?’

‘Don’t get fuckin’ funny wi’ weh. I’ll punch yer fuckin’ face in. Ye knaa what ah mean, leik?’ And they picked up my gear – very nice of them – carried it out of the club, dropped it in the street and dumped me beside it. I never got a penny. Not even the fiver.

As an act, you were powerless. There was no redress. If you had a complaint, you could go up in front of the local consultative committee, but the committees were staffed by members of all the clubs in a town or village. They made the rules, they sat in judgement on the rules and they made sure the rules always favoured the clubs, not the acts. They ruled with iron fists. If you did anything wrong, you’d be banned from the clubs for a minimum of six weeks. It was a racket.

But it wasn’t just the clubs that would refuse to pay if they didn’t like what they heard. I was booked to play a wedding at Wallsend British Legion Club. I always had the worst trouble on Tyneside. ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ I said. ‘Welcome to this glorified fucking cowshed. My name is Chubby “Whoops” Brown – the vicar dropped me at the christening.’

Immediately I realised that the groom’s family on the right side of the room loved my act, but judging by the silence on the left of the room the bride’s relations hated me and there was nothing I could do about it. I cracked a few more gags.

‘I’ve seen the bride. No wonder they’re all queuing up to kiss the groom,’ I said. ‘Has the fat sod had a shower? And what about the best man, eh? He’s thicker than the cake and he left the ring on the curtains.’

A woman in a big white hat stood up. ‘Get off! Yer rubbish!’ she shouted.

‘Who’s the twat in a hat?’ I said.

‘The bride’s mum,’ yelled someone on the groom’s side of the room as everyone around him cracked up laughing. With the right side of the room in stitches and those on the left booing, it wasn’t surprising that a fight broke out between them. The wedding party came to an abrupt halt and again I wasn’t paid. And they say until death us do part – it was my death and they parted.

The pit villages were the hardest venues to play, but at least they usually had decent facilities. The rugby clubs were diabolical. Some of the smaller clubs wouldn’t even have a changing room. At best, there’d be a toilet with piss on the floor. At worst, they’d ask you to get changed in a corridor or in your car.