The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer: Weathercock Tour 1495: Hammersmith Apollo, London, 1994
AAARRRGGGHHH! It’s The Bollock Factor: The Malcolm Hardee Awards Show: Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh, 2009
Charlie Chuck (real name David Kear) has a great face for comedy and a wild curly mop of hair. He is an inspired, very funny, strange, bewildering act. I first saw him live at the Hammersmith Apollo in London when he appeared with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer on their Weathercock Tour 1495. That night, Chuck destroyed a drum kit whilst shouting out the words ‘Woof!’, ‘Bark!’ and most famously ‘Donkey!’ at random intervals. I found this incredibly funny.
I next saw Chuck as a guest in the annual Malcolm Hardee Awards Show in Edinburgh in 2009. This is a showcase for acts in honour of Malcolm Hardee who was an outrageous comedian, author, comedy club proprietor, compere, agent, manager and mentor to many great comedians including Reeves and Mortimer, Paul Merton, Arthur Smith and Charlie Chuck. I went to see this show with a friend of mine who didn’t know what had hit him when Chuck appeared on stage. As he walked onto the stage shouting ‘Donkey!’ he suddenly and frantically started to open a packet of biscuits. He then shouted ‘I don’t know if I’m going to eat these here…’ then pointed at my direction, ‘… or over there!’. He just about managed to get the last three words of his banal sentence out because as he had pointed in my direction, he saw me crying with loud laughter and he started to laugh loudly himself before leaving the stage and was never seen again for the entire show.
I love off-the-wall, surreal comic acts and Chuck is one of the best. He is not to everyone’s taste but if the member of the audience gets the joke and is in on the act then Chuck is one of the funniest acts to see.