How the Chuckle Brothers made Britain laugh for 50 years
End of an era for slapstick humour as Barry Elliott, one half of the madcap duo, dies aged 73
Not clever, not satirical, they were just sweetly funny, and quietly adored by millions for their innocent humour. And for those under 40, they are as familiar as Laurel and Hardy were to a previous era.
But whatever your age, when you laughed at the Chuckle Brothers you were a child again.
they even gave us a national catchphrase. Whenever two people pick up a table, a ladder or any other big, awkward object, they have to say: ‘to me! to you!’
It’s endlessly funny, even if it barely makes sense — just the sound of clumsy panic and two people who don’t really know what they’re doing.
Now, the Chuckle Brothers are no more, following the death of Barry Elliott, the elder of the siblings.
He died at his home in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, at the weekend, aged 73, with his wife Ann and family at his bedside.
the star had reportedly been diagnosed with a heart condition last summer, but kept his illness secret from friends and fans.
His brother Paul, 70, said he was ‘absolutely devastated’.
though the duo got their initial breakthrough when they won the TV talent contest opportunity Knocks in 1967, they were better known to a far younger generation of Britons because of their children’s show Chuckle Vision.
Launched in 1987 on BBC1, it ran for almost 300 episodes, but even after it ended in 2009 the brothers were rarely off screen for long. Earlier this year they filmed a new show, Chuckle time, crammed with their trademark silliness, for Channel Five.
on stage, the slapstick never stopped. In the late Nineties, I took my older son, James, then aged three, to see them in a holiday show. Barry picked up a plank and swung it round on his shoulder. Paul ducked. the cries of ‘to me! to you!’ rang out as the plank swung round and round. A policeman’s helmet went flying, a buxom dame got a whack on the behind. Paul and Barry knocked each other down. they bounced up, bickering furiously.
then Paul grabbed the plank and it all began again. James and I laughed so hard we slid off our seats.
that catchphrase became so identified with the duo that when they launched a children’s gameshow in 1996, set on a desert island with an infinite supply of custard pies, it was the obvious title.
But they had other stock phrases, just as daft: ‘oh dear, oh dear,’ ‘Silly me, silly you’ and ‘No slacking’. ‘You can try and think of a catchphrase,’ Barry once said, ‘but it has to come about naturally. “to me, to you” was always a family thing. We used to say it all the time at home, when we were moving furniture, for example.’
Barry was born in Rotherham, the third of four brothers, on Christmas Eve 1944. their father, James Patton Elliott, was a ‘whistling’ comedian and dancer on the variety stage under the name Gene Patton, who used to boast that he had discovered the teenage Peter Sellers.
It was expected of all the boys that they would follow ‘Gene’ into the music halls.
the older two, Jimmy and Brian, formed a double act called the Patton Brothers, but it was Barry and little brother Paul who enjoyed success first.
It didn’t hurt that, even as boys, Barry with his lantern jaw looked much older than the three years that separated them. Paul was twice his size, and always played the dominant, bossy character, while Barry acted dim and goofy.
they called themselves Harman and Elliott (Harman was Paul’s middle name), and hit the big time when Paul was barely 20. ‘ opportunity Knocks was the X Factor of its day,’ Barry recalled. ‘We were one of the only acts to ever win both the judges’ round and the public vote.’
But first fame was short-lived. Audiences wanted clever sitcoms, surreal sketches and saucy double entendres — none of which suited Barry and Paul’s old-fashioned style.
Changing their name to the Harman Brothers, they kept plugging away on end-of-the-pier bills, and even toured with King of the Clowns Charlie Cairoli in his circus, doing a hapless plate- spinning act that Barry later called ‘sort of an apprenticeship for us’.
they repeated their talent show success with ITV’s New Faces in 1974, appeared on the Good old Days, the Freddie Starr Showcase, and the game show 3-2-1 — by which time they’d renamed themselves the Chuckle Brothers. But a decade passed before they got another real break, after being spotted by a BBC children’s producer.
In hindsight, it’s amazing it
My son and I giggled so hard we slid off our seats
took 20 years for anyone to see that children’s TV was their natural home.
Handed a couple of canine costumes, they starred in a knockabout show called the Chucklehounds. It proved so popular that after two years they took off the dog-suits and launched ChuckleVision. It ran for 22 years.
Most weeks saw the two trying out a new job, and getting into a hopeless mess. As ice lolly salesmen, they ended up plastered in ice cream. When they became gardeners, Paul found himself neck- deep in the compost heap. Customers in their cafe got soup in their laps and mashed potato in their faces. Older brothers Jimmy and Brian would often join them, as bossy Mr No-Slacking and Mr Get-Out-Of-It.
Loyalty to family and friends was part of their old-school code. In 2014, Elliott and his brother appeared at the trial of veteran DJ Dave Lee Travis who faced charges of sexual assault. The pair had starred alongside Travis in a production of Aladdin in the early Nineties, and spoke in court of playing card games with him off stage and insisted they had never seen any inappropriate behaviour.
Many of their routines had a strongly Northern flavour. They almost demolished a Corrie-style terraced house when they set up as pest exterminators. And they were intensely proud, as lifelong Rotherham United supporters, to film an episode at the Millers’ home ground — in which they turned out for the team and scored an own goal. They were made honorary life presidents of the club in 2007. It wasn’t all down-to-earth Yorkshire humour, though. In later series they found themselves trapped on a spaceship with bug-eyed aliens and a dangerous quantity of tomatoes, and travelled back in time to the court of Henry VIII...where Paul talked Barry into becoming the King’s seventh wife. Among other performers, they had a reputation for being easy to work with. CBeebies presenter Chris Jarvis said yesterday: ‘On screen he was hilarious, on stage even more, but off stage Barry was also the kindest of gentlemen.’ As a generation of their fans grew up and had their own children, the Chuckles found they could fill theatres across the country with their touring parody shows — Star Wars and Harry Potter were favourites — under crackpot names like ‘ Barry Potty and his Smarter Brother Paul in the Chamber of Horrors’ and ‘Doctor What and the Return of the Garlics’.
Far outside the media bubble, and often working on shoestring budgets, they became major TV stars and in 2008 received a Bafta Special Award for their contribution to children’s television.
Wherever they went, their faces were instantly spotted. Barry didn’t mind: ‘If you don’t want to be recognised, stay indoors,’ he said.
Their success meant they were able to do what they loved, and not be dragged into the sordid world of reality shows.
‘I don’t fancy it,’ Barry said firmly. ‘ If other people feel happy in Celebrity Big Brother, that’s up to them, but I couldn’t stand being cooped up with strangers.’
A statement by the brothers’ manager Phil Dale yesterday highlighted the fact that Barry had been working almost to the end when ill health intervened: making the new series for C5 had been, he said, ‘just like the wonderful days of filming ChuckleVision’.
It was Paul, though, whose brief statement really brought a lump to the throat: ‘I’ve not just lost my brother, I’ve lost my theatrical partner of many, many years and my very best friend.’
‘He was hilarious ...and the kindest of gentlemen’