Angelos Epithemiou

February 2011

A GOOD weekend for me? I’d get up and fill the kettle up to fill the bath. Then I’d go down Londis to see what food has just gone out of date. Then I’d go home and really attack the day. I don’t know what I’d do though.

I might go and see one of my brothers, depending on who’s about. I’ve got four brothers: Agamemnon, Aggatheus, Archipelago and Arterius. I don’t know what they do for a living. I think they’re nude dancers.

My love life? Never you mind. I’ve got one or two things up my sleeve. I’m getting closer to Ulrika Jonsson. If you call standing outside her bedroom window closer. It is closer than standing outside her kitchen window because I’ve got a ladder now. I stand up there peering. She don’t mind.

And Kate Moss likes me. But she’ll have to get in line.

At Christmas someone got me a new video player, which I was over the bloody moon about because I’ve got loads and loads of episodes of Crimewatch that I recorded from when it was first on. So I sit down at the weekend, put me feet up, get me box of Magnums out and watch them. I’m up to about 1987.

I like it because you don’t know who’s done it, do you? Although you can guess. You can piece it together yourself. Much better than what the police can do.

What am I reading? The back of a Cornflakes packet. Other than that I like to read books about murder and Jack The Dipper and all that sort of carryon.

I like Bollywood music. And the theme to Hill Street Blues. I can listen to that all day... (sings) da-da-dar, da-da-dar...

I don’t have any pets. There’s a mouse but it’s not a pet. It just comes in the kitchen.

I eat a lot of fried stuff. Chips and all that. Stuff you’re not allowed to eat anymore because it’s not good for you. But I pile it away and it’s not done me any harm. I’ve got terrible heart trouble but apart from that I’m fine.

I never ate anything off my burger van, no. I knew where it had been. No chance. I don’t have it any more anyway because it was destroyed by mysterious forces. But I don’t it any more because I’m a superstar.

I don’t go to the gym or jog or anything like that. I keep fit by rolling down hills. I’ve done that since I was a boy. It seems to do the trick. Apart from my bad heart.

I’ll be busy at weekends soon with my next tour. I was in Not-num at The Glee Club last year and I tell ya, I’ve been used to playing these big places all over the world, and the Glee Club’s like playing in a youth club. Tiny little place. There are pillars and iron bars... it’s a joke in there, actually. Which is right because it is a comedy club, so it should be a joke.

I’m going to Notnum Playhouse this time and it’s about time. And as the name suggest, I will be playing about in there.

I don’t go out to see other people doing comedy, no. I don’t like comedy. I can’t stand it. It takes a lot to make me laugh. My mate Barry makes me laugh but he’s got one leg. Sometimes he takes it off and hops around and that. There’s no way I’d go and see Vic and Bob. They got me in to this mess, I’m not going to see them muck about on stage. They’re a pair of chancers. They’re members of the lucky club.

Angelos Epithemiou and Friends, Nottingham Playhouse, Friday March 4, 8pm, £17.50, 0115 941 9419, www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk

Charlie Chuck

September 2008


ACCORDING to Justin 'Phoenix Nights' Moorhouse, Charlie Chuck couldn't do Just The Tonic's Millennium Eve show because he'd had a heart attack.
"Ah, bloody hell. What it was, was I'd done too much 'cos... that's going back seven year, innit? I know who passed that on, it were a comedian down south or summat. Yeah."
So you didn't have a heart attack?
"Did I 'eck. I played piano in Montreal other year, upside down on a piano," adds the 62-year-old as if to illustrate his physical health. "But yeah, I'm all right."
All right enough to wreck his drum kit every night on a tour with Frank Sidebottom, which comes to the Rescue Rooms next week. It's his party piece, literally – giving the snares and toms a good hiding every time Paul McCartney has a birthday bash.
"I've done that about four or five times. I've done Christmas shows as well. I wreck the drums, I do the business. It was great. Mary McCartney (Macca's daughter) rung me up and asked if I'd do a show for their dad who'd seen me on the James Whale show. It was at Peasmarsh, his farm (in East Sussex). There were people like Jeff Beck there.
"The last one I did was in Brighton at The Dome where I met his new wife. Well, his wife's gone now, like...
"I remember pulling up in my car to ask someone where The Dome was and I swear on my life it was Paul McCartney."
Walking down the street?
"Walking down the street, I could not believe it. It's gospel truth."
Have you any memorabilia from those gigs?
"I've got photographs, yes, and I could put them on my website but I respect how he is. His privacy. And I'm not a bighead."
The wild-haired Chuck rose to fame as Uncle Peter on Vic & Bob's The Smell Of Reeves & Mortimer, senselessly barking "Donkeh!" and "Woof! Bark! Donkeh!" to surreal comic effect.
He's not spoken to them for years. "They did great for me. I can't knock that. I paid me house off. But that's a long while ago. I had more to do with Johnny Vegas and Mackenzie Crook. I toured with Mackenzie for about two years when he was Charlie Cheese."
This was before his role as Gareth in The Office.
"His act wasn't the best act in the world. It was really corny. But he's cracked it hasn't he?"
Indeed, after The Office Crooke has been in all three Pirates Of The Caribbean movies.
"It's the same with Johnny Vegas. You don't know who's going to make it big," says Chuck.
"John Thomson owes me a fiver from when he was skint. I slummed it with him at Edinburgh before the Steve Coogan days."
While past collaborators have gone on to big or small screen success, Chuck has remained busy.
"I've been doing things. I'm playing Dr Frankenstein on Nickelodeon next month. I did Comic Cuts for ITV2. And there's talk of doing a pilot for BBC3, the Medieval Chronicles of Charlie Chuck. So I'm always working."
TV ads for Double Decker and Twiglets have kept his bank account buoyed up as well.
"£18,000 for one day's filming," he says of the former.
Chuck, real name David Kear, started out as a drummer, playing with, among others, the Small Faces.
"I toured with them when it was Steve Marriott (in the line-up). I toured with Ginger Baker's Airforce. And I was on with Bill Haley and The Comets in Frankfurt in 1962."
He says: "I'm happy, what I do. I also work with people with disabilities. I teach music and drama. I took them to Edinburgh in 2004 and I'm doing the West End with them. It's a singsong type thing. But there's an element of comedy. It's costing £30,000 per night."
He's also an aromatherapist and is training as a counsellor.
"That's the other side of me," he says.
"People think I'm just nuts."

Charlie Chuck appears with Frank Sidebottom at the Rescue Rooms on Tuesday September 23. Tickets are a very specific £14.94 on 0871 310 0000.