Comedy and offense

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Chubby was a hustler for years. Like a racist Colt Cabana. Or basically like a modern Jim Cornette. His casssette tapes would be in the market and would be gone as soon as they hit the shelf. His VHS tapes were out every year and be up there with Friends and Nick Hancock's Hilariously Stupid Sliding Tackles as best sellers. Its crazy, but he used to be a massive underground name. Sell out shows everywhere. His comedy albums were massive as well. He had a fanbase, like ICP. Where there's obviously something wrong with them, but money is money.

About 3 years ago he was advertised my a pub round our way, and I thought "that's it for him then. You cant sink lower than that." But the recent rise of "it's PC gone mad" has got him back in the fold. The thing is, he's fucking 76 and had some of his voice box removed due to cancer. At this stage of the game, any publicity for him is good. Who can honestly say they knew he was still going in 2021 without this little uproar?

He had great delivery in fairness. "I caught the landlord this morning nicking towels off the guests" and "I like to prepare for my mother-in-law coming round by scraping the letters off the Welcome mat" are as clean as he gets.

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by IANdrewDiceClay

[Carbomb]

I echo Pat's bafflement at how Chubby Brown has operated over the years. I only ever heard of him when I went on family holidays in Blackpool, getting billboards as big as Davidson and Manning. They presented him as this huge TV star, and he seemed very much like that old style variety/panto performer comedian that I thought "he must've been on TV at some point, then, I probably just haven't seen him". But he just never showed up, except on the peripheries of mainstream culture, and because my parents would never have bought tickets to any of his shows, I didn't know what kind of comedian he was until my mid-teens. It did seem odd that, in eras when TV made a comedian's career, and the media establishment was more than happy to give exposure to other shite right-wing comedians, that he didn't get a look-in, but then Pat summed it up: too blue when blue wasn't tolerated, and too nasty when nastiness wasn't welcome.

[BomberPat]

45 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

His audience and the audience of his contemporaries aren’t necessarily laughing at the joke, theyre laughing at the imaginary offence it causes to the imaginary lefty pc liberals who live in their heads who have ruined the country. 

Absolutely, and that's what's clear in that documentary - he's getting pissed off at his audience not really paying attention to the act, whereas for them the comedy is secondary to the racism. They've gone there to be among like-minded folk where they're allowed to say The Bad Words without the Political Correctness Police tutting at them. 

[Mr JL]

Ignore

Edited September 9, 2021 by Mr JL

[Keith Houchen]

28 minutes ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

His casssette tapes would be in the market and would be gone as soon as they hit the shelf. His VHS tapes were out every year and be up there with Friends and Nick Hancock's Hilariously Stupid Sliding Tackles as best sellers.

When (or possibly where)do you mean? I worked in retail and then video distribution throughout the 90s and early 2000s and his cassettes, or cassette to be more accurate, gathered dust. The videos didn’t fare much better, whenever orders were placed, they were single digit orders and not box quantities. 
 

His was the stuff that for one unit sold, ten copies were made and passed around the pub. “Comedy Home Video Release” wasn’t exactly a packed market at the time so it was relatively easy to be in the top part of that particular chart if nobody else released anything that week. 

[IANdrewDiceClay]

9 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

When (or possibly where)do you mean? I worked in retail and then video distribution throughout the 90s and early 2000s and his cassettes, or cassette to be more accurate, gathered dust

North East. His manour. He was massive up here. I think he was a big deal in Blackpool as well.

Edited September 9, 2021 by IANdrewDiceClay

[Keith Houchen]

1 minute ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

North East. His manner. He was massive up here. I think he was a big deal in Blackpool as well.

Yeah his gigs always sold well at the time but the main reason why his audio and video output sold out was because so few copies were on the shelf to begin with. I felt let down when I first saw him on a cover. I’d heard his stuff at school (always copies passed around) and was expecting someone much fatter. 
 

 

[Perry]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Chubby Brown is a weird one, because he's managed to have this weird alternate universe fame - he never had a TV series, I don't think he ever really had any TV specials, and when he did guest on anything was usually exposed as being a bit shit. When mainstream TV would have accepted his bigotry, he was too sweary, and when they would have accepted his swearing he was too much of a bigot. He also suffered from what most of his generation of working men's club comics did, in that he relied on the same routine for years, so whenever he did get on TV, it meant you heard it all and there was no point going to see him live.

Yet somehow he managed to sell out major venues for years, and always had a video out for Christmas. One of my older brothers was a big fan when I was a kid. Given how stand-up these days is such a TV-oriented business, it's mad to think how successful he's been without it. It's not like Jim Davidson where he had a dual career of being a fairly innocuous prime time TV host while producing his inexorable offensive videos - the videos were all he had. Baffling.

Also released UFO The Movie in 1993.  I remember it being shown on Sky Movies or The Movie Channel at least twice a week for a while during '94.

[BomberPat]

early to mid 90s, my Dad worked in a Ritz Video in East Yorkshire. Comedy videos sold well for the Christmas market, and Chubby Brown's especially. My brother definitely had some (in my head I think he even had a poster, and I'm desperately hoping that's an insane false memory), and it wasn't something you'd ever be shocked to see next to the telly if you went round someone's house. But then, they always seemed to be in bargain bins at petrol stations too.

[FLips]

Roy Chubby Brown was everywhere when I was a kid. People my grandparents’ age always had a video in their house, he was a household name.

I was with my Mam in town once buying a wrestling video from I think JVC or something in Wellington Square in Stockton and we bumped into his ex wife and daughter and they had a chat for a bit. My Mam said afterwards who it was and how he never bothers with the kid. Don’t know if he has more time for her now he’s not as busy.

[King Coconut]

Everyone on my estate had at least one VHS of his in the living room too.

[Slapnut]

A friend and I were once invited into Harvey’s house at age 8 to watch Chubby Brown.

Who is Harvey, you ask? Well he’s on the sex offender’s register these days, so that’ll sum it up.

When I told my mam, she was more disgusted at the idea of me watching Chubby Brown than potentially being groomed by Harvey.

[Chris B]

4 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

His audience and the audience of his contemporaries aren’t necessarily laughing at the joke, theyre laughing at the imaginary offence it causes to the imaginary lefty pc liberals who live in their heads who have ruined the country. They thought it was GREAT Britain and just want their country back. It’s a bizarre phenomenon “Yeah good one, snowflakes won’t like that!!”

It's interesting that, despite being really different in a lot of ways, Stewart Lee's identified that about his own audiences (although in a mocking way). "I went to see that Stewart Lee." "Oh, was it funny?" "No, but I agreed the fuck out of it."

Glancing at a bit of that doc, he was probably big through sheer longevity as much as anything else - regular videos since the mid-80s? Even if they'd stopped selling as well by the 90s, there'll be people who've gone to see him because he's been a known quantity since the 70s.

I always wondered if he thought he'd get more respectability after doing League of Gentlemen, and there was definitely a moment where he could have been re-evaluated if he'd had more about him and got more TV work etc. But he doesn't and he didn't.

[Just Some Guy]

He's still has name value here in Blackpool (sadly). Playing the North Pier theatre every week while the illustrations are on.

I remember my mate borrowing a RCB video from a mate sometime around 1993-4 and us turning it off after 5 minutes. Utter shit on every level, performance & material.

Bernard Manning on the other hand (as I remember) had great delivery & timing. This is from watching his "keep it clean, Bernard" stuff on TV in the 90s. No way would I have wanted to watch his uncensored stuff.

[Mr_Danger]

1 hour ago, Just Some Guy said:

He's still has name value here in Blackpool (sadly). Playing the North Pier theatre every week while the illustrations are on.

In that case the quicker they draw to a close the better.