Roy Chubby Brown biography

One of my favourite books of all time has to be the biography of the legendary king of blue comedy, Mr Roy Chubby Brown.

His name for many years has been notorious to hear of, some of the jokes and comments surrounding him making my curiostiy grow to know him. Being from the Northeast his name is quite common to hear of so when his film Chubby Brown Down Under, basiclly about him and his tour of Austrialia.

I watched and i found him hilariously funny, very offensive, not one for the faint of heart but i found him funny none the less.

Wanting to learn more about him, i bought his biography last year (2008) and read up about it, and i have to say it was something entirely different to what i had come to expect.

Born in Redcar, Chubby Brown didn't have quite a warm upbringing, with his dad ruling the roost of the house in your typical 40s 50s type of man in the sense he got the best before everyone else.

Unable to live with it anymore, Roy's mother left Roy and his father for another man in Blackpool with Roy's sister, leaving Roy with no mother in his life, only meeting her briefly later in his life (she died soon afterwards). With no else to take up the slack, Roy took his mother's place in the scheme of things in reference to the upkeep to the house and looking after his father. However, this was all to change when his dad got a new girlfriend.

Moving in and practically taking over the house, the girlfriend and her children took Roy's bedroom and damaged and destroyed some of his toy models (which he worked extremely hard to build and paint) with the dad forever taking the side of his girlfriend over his only son.

Unable to live with him either, Roy left his home and slept rough in a unused boat until a policeman discovered him and took him to a shelter for the young.

Working his way up with no love or support, Roy would go on to work in construction as a lorry driver, folk lift driver, a masoner and a cook in the merchant navy. Subsequently leaving or thrown out of the jobs, Roy soon took the path of crime and ended up in Borstal, the nortorious prison for youths.

Unless you seen the 1981 film Scum then you will how aweful of a place Borstal was, with rapings, murders, thefts and police corruption being a common norm within its walls. Leaving the place, Roy joined a small well known pop band where they made hits and played at local clubs and pubs.

Soon learning the ropes of comedy, Roy left the band in pursuit of a career in the limelight.

I won't go on any further into the story, this being only a simple tastier but the story is truely a heartfelt experience, being able to empathise with a man who seemed to lack so many things in his early life, money, love, a family to name but a few, and eventually finding all he could want and need by the end of the story.