Barry Chuckle, half of TV comedy duo, dies at 73
One half of the Chuckle Brothers slapstick comedy act, famous for their BBC Chucklevision series
BARRY CHUCKLE, half of the Chuckle Brothers comedy duo, has died at the age of 73 after a short illness.
His brother Paul, with whom he had been filming a new TV series before his condition forced production to be halted, paid tribute to him as his “very best friend”.
The 70-year-old comedian said: “I’ve not just lost my brother, I’ve lost my theatrical partner of many, many years and my very best friend.”
The brothers, from Rotherham, South Yorks, got their break into showbusiness on Opportunity Knocks. They are best remembered for Chucklevision.
The popular children’s comedy show ran for almost 300 episodes between 1987 and 2009.
The brothers, whose real name was Elliott, made a television comeback this year with Channel 5 clip show Chuckle Time, which saw them perform sketches and introduce funny videos from members of the public.
Barry Chuckle’s agent said yesterday that before he became too ill to continue working, filming on their latest show was “just like the wonderful days of filming Chucklevision for BBC One”.
As the world of entertainment paid tribute to Barry, Paul’s wife Sue posted on her husband’s Twitter account to say that he was “devastated” and that “he knows Barry would be so happy to know how much he was loved”.
Rapper Tinchy Stryder, who worked with the Chuckle Brothers on a charity single in 2014, described Barry as a “Funny, down to earth, super cool, talented, humble legend”.
David Walliams said he was half of “the last link to the music hall tradition that gave us Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin”.
BARRY CHUCKLE (real name Barry Elliott), who has died aged 73, was the smaller half of the slapstick comedy duo the Chuckle Brothers, who enjoyed huge success with their BBC series Chucklevision – the longest-running sitcom in Britain.
The brothers, Barry and Paul Elliott, were the youngest in a showbusiness family of eight and claimed to have been “born in a suitcase” in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Barry on Christmas Eve 1944, his brother Paul in 1947. Their father, Jimmy, was a comic who went by the stage name Gene Patton and worked the London club scene, performing with an 18-year-old Peter Sellers in 1943; their mother was a professional dancer. Two older brothers, Jimmy and Brian, would also form a double-act – the Patton Brothers – and would pop up on Chucklevision as “No Slacking” and “Getoutofit”.
Barry and Paul started entertaining from an early age, putting on shows for friends and neighbours in the back garden of their home in Rotherham, before performing in clubs and cabaret shows from their teens.
From the late 1960s they enjoyed some success on television talent shows, winning Opportunity Knocks in 1967 and New Faces in 1974, and making occasional appearances on comedy and game shows. It was not until 1985, however, that they got their big break with the BBC, recording 13 episodes of Chucklehounds – short shows aimed at pre-school children that had no dialogue, and in which the brothers dressed in giant dog costumes.
Two years later came their biggest success, Chucklevision, a children’s sit-com, broadcast first on BBC One and later on CBBC, which notched up a total of 21 series and 292 episodes, the last in 2009.
Introduced with the aggravatingly catchy “Chu-chu-chucklevision” theme tune, each episode featured the inept duo embarking on a job or adventure involving banana-skin jokes, pranks, disasters and DIY foul-ups. They travelled around on the “Chuckmobile” (registration plate: CHUCKLE 1), a quadricycle with a red-and-white striped roof, and seasoned their largely visual gags with repetitive catchphrases, most memorably “To me, to you”. “It was a family thing,” Barry told The Daily
Telegraph earlier this year. “We used to say it at home when we were moving furniture.”
To adults or older children the Chuckle Brothers’ appeal may have been a mystery, yet their act was slickly professional, and no matter how daft or surreal the situation, the brothers always performed with total conviction. From 1996 to 1998 they presented a children’s game show, To
Me, To You, named after their signature
catchphrase, and they recorded a charity single with the “grime” rapper Tinchy Stryder entitled To Me, To You
(Bruv), in aid of the African-caribbean Leukaemia Trust.
As well as their work on television (which included starring in a commercial for Van Compare and appearances on such shows as The Weakest Link, Ant & Dec’s Saturday
Night Takeaway, and Benidorm), the Chuckle Brothers continued to tour, regularly playing to sell-out audiences around the country at local theatres, nightclubs and student venues. Each of their tours had a theme, as Barry once explained: “We obviously keep an eye on the most popular shows and do comedy parodies of them like Doctor What And The Garlicks, Raiders Of The Lost Bark and Barry Potty, based on the Harry Potter films.” They also appeared frequently in pantomime and were always happy to meet young fans, sign autographs and pose for selfies.
Years on the entertainment circuit brought the Chuckle Brothers the trappings of fame, yet they remained something of a rarity among television entertainers of a certain vintage by being largely untouched by scandal. In 2005 the Sun made headlines of Barry, a married grandfather, having a “steamy encounter” with a mother of two young fans. Barry admitted to sending “fruity” emails to the woman and meeting her at a motorway service station, but it seems that things did not progress much further. An appeal by the newspaper at the end of the rather tepid exposé – “Have you romped with Barry? Ring The Sun newsdesk” – appears to have come to nothing.
Asked in 2013 to name his ideal dinner companions, Barry, who described himself as “little, friendly and humorous”, chose Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, Jerry Lee Lewis, Stan Laurel and Margaret Thatcher (“I always think she did brilliant as Prime Minister, a lot of people didn’t like her but she put the country back on its feet so I’d like to know what she’s like”). One of his proudest moments was performing at the Children’s Royal Variety performance in front of Princess Margaret in 1999.
In 2007 the brothers were delighted to be made honorary presidents of Rotherham FC, of which they had been lifelong fans. The following year they were presented with a Special Award at the Children’s Baftas by Keith Chegwin. In 2015 they performed in front of their largest ever crowd at the “boutique music festival” Bestival. Their last project together was Chuckle Time, a 12-part series for Channel 5, the first episode of which was broadcast last month.
Barry Chuckle is survived by his wife Ann.
Barry Chuckle (Barry Elliott), born December 24 1944, death announced August 5 2018