IT’S three years since I last saw Chubby Brown and I thought he was hanging up his helmet, flying goggles and multi-coloured suit to retire.

So I was surprised to see that the North Yorkshire-based comic, who is nudging 70, was touring again and returning to York Barbican.

I’d read some mixed comments on the internet about his latest tour, Who Ate All the Pies?, so I was fearing the worse. But I was wrong. Chubs was brilliant.

Support act, the Shane Richie Jnr Band, got the evening off to a lively start - and then Chubby bounded on stage, punching out gag after gag from his repertoire of some 4,000 jokes!

The packed audience loved it, and he lapped it up, telling them he loved the city, but the “tourists spoiled it”.

For me, it seemed all new material - crude tales about celebrities such as Rolf Harris, Madonna, Bob Geldof and Band Aid, plus the usual “wife” jokes.

Chubby is also a talented pianist and can sing. His renditions of Rolf Harris’s Two Little Boys and The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles were hilarious. This time round I felt he was even more non-PC than usual, if that’s at all possible.

His race jokes do border on the cringeworthy, but he’s still not as offensive as some comedians I’ve seen. There was the odd heckler which Chubby was ready for, savaging them with a string of one-liners.

The finale of the hour-and-ten-minute show saw Chubby do a striptease which was incredibly funny - I didn’t know you could do such things with a sock!

Chubby promises to be back next year with even more new material. Me, and his legion of York fans, can’t wait.

Review by Jayne Ritchie