A Score Of Chuckles

This week heralds an anniversary celebration for two bargain-bin celebrities who are so sub Z-list they don’t even register on the standard 26-letter English alphabet, and require the use of the Cambodian alphabet containing 74 letters.

You won’t see them on the cover of Hello magazine, they won’t ever be the subject of News of the World exposes snorting cocaine off the thighs of supermodels (as the moustaches would almost certainly prove too ticklish) and you can bet they travel to personal appearances in a clanking Morris Marina rather than a stretch limo, but famous they most certainly are, having successfully peddled a very particular brand of mirth for two decades (thereby exhibiting a comedic longevity far in excess of most practitioners of the art).

Chucklevision is twenty years old this week (as opposed to Paul and Barry Chuckle whose combined ages are somewhere around 120). Their sprightly comedy has remained unchanged since 1987 when they first bumbled onto our screens.

Paul Chuckle (the slightly better-looking one with the spikier hair) attributes their success to their timeless slapstick offerings: “If you hurt yourself, people think it's funny,” he explained, going on to say that their tendency for physical abuse has been drawing crowds since Roman times (exhibited by Romans that is, not by them).

However, their time in the dim limelight of kids' TV is increasingly finite. There are only so many times an elderly man can slip on a banana skin before he fails to spring back to the vertical, and his rapidly-approaching pensionable age makes the activity more hazardous by the day for Barry (the odd-wrinkly one who either has too much skin on his face, or a skull which has shrunk over time).

For now though, they’re still going strong and bouncing off pavements with aplomb to the delight of children and students alike. And I defy anyone to carry a mattress up a flight of stairs without engaging in a little Chuckle catchphrasery (“To me… to you…”). That’s the true mark of fame.