Paul and Barry Elliott – better known as The Chuckle Brothers – worked together for 55 years, playing the ChuckleHounds on their own show, which launched in 1984, before masterminding ratings hit ChuckleVision on the BBC, which ran for 292 episodes between 1987 and 2009
There’s always a risk that comes with mixing family and business – but for Paul Elliott there was never any doubt that he and his late brother, Barry, would go their separate ways as they carved out a career for themselves as legendary comedy act The Chuckle Brothers.
Paul was only 14 years old when Barry suggested they put on a show for the local kids in their back garden, charging a ha’penny each for their performance, and a farthing for some homemade popcorn. The rest, they say, is history.
Paul, 78, tells The Mirror: “He was three years older than me so we grew up together. He’d have his mates at school, and I’d have mine, but we’d put on shows in the summer – those six weeks seemed like forever when we were younger. We always got on, but we’d row as well.
“As siblings, you have fights and things but within five minutes you’re playing together again. And it was like that all our working lives. We’d never argue about work. We always agreed on what we thought was funny and wasn’t.”
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The double act worked together for 55 years, playing the ChuckleHounds on their own show, which launched in 1984, before masterminding ratings hit ChuckleVision on the BBC, which ran for 292 episodes between 1987 and 2009. The show brought laughter to children and adults alike, and birthed the famous catchphrases ‘To me, to you’ and ‘Oh dear, or dear.’ In 2008, the brothers won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the BAFTAs.
Sadly, Barry died of bone cancer in 2018 at the age of 73. Paul continues to perform in pantomimes every year, and in 2025 he even appeared in gangster film Fall to the Top. But it’s on stage where he feels closest to his slapstick partner of more than five decades.
He shares: “It’s like he jumps in my body, his spirit. I was always the straight man and Barry delivered the punch line. He was the comedian. But now of course I have to be the funny man, and he’s not there. But I feel he’s there.”
Of course, the children’s TV landscape looks drastically different to how it did back in The Chuckle Brothers’ heyday. But in 2023, there was talk of bringing ChuckleVision back to life in an animated version, which would use AI to help recreate Barry’s voice. Having worked with the BBC for the best part of his career, Paul reveals the network would get first dibs should the cartoon go ahead.
Paul explains: “The world has totally changed. When ChuckleVision was first on, there were only four channels. We’d get three million viewers at half past three in the afternoon. It’d be great to get that on a Saturday night now.
“Wherever I go, people say, ‘I grew up watching you, you made my childhood, I used to dash home from school to watch ChuckleVision.’ But that’s all changed. I find there’s no adult comedy programmes on anymore. It’s just completely different. But you can’t turn the clock back.”
Paul continues: “We have a company called ChucklesWorld and hopefully the sale of books will generate enough money to make the cartoon and get it out there for the new generation. It will go to whoever will buy it, because that’s how business works now. But BBC would get first dibs obviously, because ChuckleVision was on the BBC for 23 years.”
Ironically, Paul and Barry were told they were “too old” to succeed on the network back in the mid-eighties. He was 39 when the show began, while Barry was 42.
He reveals: “Martin [Hughes] told us he didn’t know how long we’d get, hopefully two or three series. He said there was a bit of ageism at the BBC, and that was back in the mid-eighties. We were seen as a bit old to do children’s TV. But I don’t think kids thought about how old we were. They all used to say, we’re just like a couple of grown-up kids.
“Whatever job we were doing, we did it how kids would do it. If someone asked us to hang up a picture on the wall, we’d get a hammer and a nail and go bang, bang, bang and there would be plaster everywhere!”
Paul and Barry followed in the footsteps of their father, James Patton Elliott – best known as Gene Patton – who performed on stage and live radio. James once worked alongside a teenage Peter Sellers in the No 10 Gang, performing in front of audiences around the country. Their mother, Amy, was a high-kicking dancer in Rodney Hudson Dancing Girls, a group that paved the way for the iconic cabaret troupe, the Bluebell Girls.
The showbiz bug must run in the family, because Paul’s great niece and nephew, Sophie and Pete Sandiford, star on Gogglebox. Paul would love to make a guest appearance on the Channel 4 show, or better yet, sign up to Celebrity Traitors.
He shares: “I’d love to do Traitors. Me and my wife have watched them all – the American, Australian and New Zealand versions. We’re in the middle of the Irish one now. I’d definitely want to be a traitor!”
Alongside his professional career, Paul is celebrated for helping raise millions for charity alongside his brother – and in December he was made an MBE in the New Year Honours list for his charitable work.
As a self-confessed “out and out royalist”, he’s not nervous about coming face to face with the royal family later this year – he’s met them several times over the years. In fact, he proudly displays a picture of himself meeting King Charles, or rather Prince Charles as he was known back in 2017, in his living room.
He reveals: “The first one was Princess Margaret when we did the Children’s Royal Variety Performance in 1994. She was walking along the line, meeting everyone. But then she asked me question and we ended up chatting for ages. I do that when someone asks me a question – she shouldn’t have asked!
“We went to watch the Royal Variety another year and I met Princess Anne backstage. I actually bumped into her and said, ‘Oops, sorry!’ And then I told her I’d actually met her Auntie Margaret several years ago. And after I thought, ‘Should I have called her her Auntie Margaret?!’”
Between 3rd and 11th March, Paul will be travelling across the UK to celebrate 40 years of Marie Curie’s Great Daffodil Appeal in his bid to raise £40,000. And in true Chuckle Brothers style, he’ll be making the trip on a quadricycle named the ‘Daff bike’ – a sweet nod to his and Barry’s beloved ChuckMobile.
Paul and Barry became official Marie Curie ambassadors in 2016, and Paul has continued to be an active supporter of the charity after experiencing the invaluable care that Barry received from Marie Curie at the end of his life.
The charity also offers bereavement support for those left behind. As well as Barry, Paul has lost three of his other siblings over the past two decades, and heartbreakingly, his three-month-old daughter Nicola in 1974, whom he shared with his first wife Anna. Paul has previously spoken about how he had no choice but to perform on the evening of his daughter’s funeral.
He says: “Back then, it was like, ‘Get on with it’. But you’ve got to talk about it, and have people with you to hold your hand, and let the grief out, which again, as a man, you weren’t supposed to cry.
“Grief is hard – it’s not just sadness, it’s a physical pain. You feel it inside you, it hurts. And what I do know is that you need to talk about it before it happens. Barry would always say to me, ‘You’ve got to keep on in the business. Don’t just pack it in because I’ve gone. You’ve got to keep going, and I’ll be with you.’ And he has been, ever since.”
Paul’s ‘From Me to You’ thank you tour for Marie Curie takes place between 3rd-11th March. You can find out more information and donate to the Great Daffodil Appeal at mariecurie.org.uk/frommetoyoutour
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