Celebrity Interview – Paul Chuckle

by Steve Orme

On his first show on his own:

“I was a bit nervous. The music was just about to start playing and I looked across the stage. We always used to come on from opposite sides and I could swear I saw Barry standing there putting his thumbs up. I felt great. I walked on and the audience were brilliant.”

There’s an old showbiz saying that goes “old actors never die – they simply lose the plot.” But that doesn’t apply to one comedy legend who at 77 is still going strong despite losing his best friend and theatrical partner.

Paul Chuckle is preparing for his 58th panto and will return to Nottingham’s Theatre Royal to play Starkey in Peter Pan. He was last there eight years ago when he and his late brother Barry created havoc in Jack And The Beanstalk. So will it be bittersweet for Paul to be on stage without his mate?

“Not really because I feel he’s still with me,” says Paul who is billed as the funniest man in showbusiness. “We always told everybody this is our favourite theatre. It was always mine and Barry’s as well. I’m looking forward to coming back.”

What’s so good about it? “The atmosphere, the whole auditorium. It feels like you’re talking to everybody person to person. Everyone feels that close to you.”

Barry died of bone cancer in August 2018 at the age of 73. Only a few months later Paul had to go on stage on his own for the first time in 56 years. 

“I was a bit nervous. The music was just about to start playing and I looked across the stage. We always used to come on from opposite sides and I could swear I saw him standing there putting his thumbs up. I felt great. I walked on and the audience were brilliant. 

“I expected they probably would be because it was the first panto I’d done on my own. They gave me a massive cheer and from then on I grew in confidence and enjoyed it.”

Paul Harman Elliott was born on 18 October 1947 in Rotherham. He came from a theatrical family; his father, James Patton Elliott, worked with a young Peter Sellers, performing in the Far East, India and Burma as well as in this country. Paul’s mother Amy was a dancer.

Paul and Barry came to prominence when, as the Harman Brothers, they won the television talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1967. Seven years later they had similar success on New Faces. 

They started to work regularly on the small screen and on children’s television they cemented their reputation as one of the finest comedy acts in the country.

Their show ChuckleVision allowed them to excel as their slapstick, visual gags and wordplay went down fantastically well with youngsters and their parents. There are few people who don’t recognise their catchphrases “to me, to you” and “oh dear, oh dear”.

ChuckleVision ran for 22 years, earning them a lifetime achievement award at the 2008 BAFTAs.

The Chuckle Brothers revelled in panto. So why does Paul come back to it every year?

“Money!” he laughs before becoming serious. “It was just Barry and myself wherever we went all the time. Panto is the one time of the year you work with other people, actors – proper thespians. 

“The only problem with that is you’ve got to give them the exact line for them to come in. Otherwise they get thrown a lot because that’s the way they’re taught. 

“Sometimes it’s quite fun to give them the wrong line, to see the glazed look across their eyes,” he says with a mischievous grin.

However, Paul admits that a panto run can be taxing: “It gets tiring. I’ve been used to doing four weeks for many years now. Peter Pan is a long run. It’s five weeks, twice a day six days a week.

It’s hard but it’s nice – the audiences are brilliant, especially the ones in Nottingham.”

Over the years Paul and Barry raised a huge amount of money for charity. Paul is continuing to do that and is an ambassador for end-of-life charity Marie Curie. It started about 12 years ago.

“I’d just reached 50,000 followers on Twitter and I tweeted ‘do you realise if you all donated £1 each to Marie Curie there’d be a massive amount of money for the charity’.

“Marie Curie were there for Barry at the end. They’re brilliant, they’re fabulous. It’s nice to give something back. Giving your time doesn’t cost anything.”

Paul who is also an ambassador for the Midlands Air Ambulance and Yorkshire Children’s Air Ambulance has another passion: football. He is honorary president of Rotherham United, the team that used to be managed by Derby County’s head coach Paul Warne.

“Lovely guy, great mate,” says Paul Chuckle. “We’d love him back. He’s a great manager.”

Paul is still incredibly busy, thanks in no small way to becoming an unexpected pop star. The brothers teamed up in 2014 with rapper Tinchy Stryder to release a charity single, To Me, To You (Bruv) to raise funds for the African-Caribbean Leukaemia Trust. The song was downloaded three million times at £1 per download.

“I always wanted to do music stuff,” says Paul. “As a teenager I would have loved to have been in a heavy rock band. Now I’m playing music (as a DJ) and people are dancing to it. It’s a great feeling.

“The song was number one in the hip hop charts for weeks! From that, nightclubs started booking us to go and do meet-and-greets and lots of clubs said ‘why don’t you DJ?’

“Barry never wanted to do that. When Barry became ill right at the end, we’d got a couple of clubs already booked in. Barry said ‘you must carry on doing them’. I did a couple and about 12 other clubs came in for me after that.”

Plans are in the early stages for a new version of ChuckleVision which will be a cartoon version similar to Mr Bean, the British sitcom created by Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis. It would use artificial intelligence.

“Obviously I would do my own voice but the beauty of AI is that we can use Barry’s voice rather than have to get someone else to do it. It’s very slow progress but at the moment an Indian company is looking into it.”

There are few things that Paul Chuckle hasn’t done in showbusiness. It may surprise some people to know that the brothers made a short film shortly before Barry died. They starred in Grimaldi: The Funniest Man in the World, with Barry playing Joseph Grimaldi who became the most famous clown in London in the 1800s.

“Barry passed away at the end (of the film). That was quite upsetting because Barry was actually dying. It was a good movie although it was only 30 minutes long and was made for festivals. It was shown in Cannes, Moscow, Hollywood, all over the world. Barry got an award for the best supporting actor.”

There’s one last thing that Paul is up for: “If they want me to do the next James Bond, I’ll do it. The oldest James Bond in the world. They bring him back after he’s retired. I can see that!”

In the bizarre world of showbusiness, don’t bet against it. Paul would certainly raise a chuckle as 007…

Peter Pan will run at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham from Saturday 7 December until Sunday 12 January.