Obscene and Not Heard

Roy Chubby Brown built a lucrative comedy empire completely outside of broadcast television, relying instead on a relentless touring schedule and straight-to-video releases. Obscene and Not Heard operates as a vault-clearing exercise for the British club comic, bypassing a single theater recording in favor of a compilation format. The release stitches together previously unseen stand-up routines, relying entirely on the aggressively blue stage persona that kept his fan base buying tapes year after year.

Released by PolyGram Video in October 1997, the collection pulls from over a hundred hours of personal footage and unreleased live material. By this point in his career, Brown had firmly established himself as a dominant force in the United Kingdom’s regional venues, performing in his trademark flying helmet. The tape simply delivers what his audience expected, gathering the sexually explicit and taboo-heavy club material that could not be broadcast anywhere else.