Paul Chuckle and Rotherham’s great moustache tradition

By accident or design, Paul Chuckle has been ahead of the fashion curve for decades

Now 78, Paul has been sporting his moustache since he was 23, long before Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and a new generation of actors and musicians decided that the upper lip was worth decorating again.

There is no suggestion that any of them were influenced by him, of course. But while Hollywood and the fashion world have rediscovered the moustache, Paul has been quietly getting on with his for 55 years.

He's never seemed particularly concerned about whether it was fashionable. When he shaved it off once for charity, his verdict was wonderfully straightforward: “I looked dreadful.”

Paul has experimented with the 'tache over the years, allowing it to become thick and bushy and even trying the full walrus. But it needs regular grooming, he says, otherwise it comes down over the lip and gets thick and bushy. “I have to trim it, else it comes down over the lip and gets thick and bushy,” he explained.

The facial furniture comes in many forms.

DiCaprio has gone for a substantial one, while Brad Pitt has embraced a distinctly 1970s version.

Rotherham has never exactly been short of moustachioed stars either. David Seaman wore one for much of his famous goalkeeping career, while actors Paul Shane and Dean Andrews have both sported the look at various times.

Seaman even recalls being told that his was a “typical Rotherham moustache”, which feels like an appropriately local contribution to the history of the upper lip.

The Daily Mail recently weighed into the topic, asking why men in their twenties and thirties are sporting 1980s-style moustaches and pondering whether they are “in league with the Chuckle Brothers”.

It was clearly meant as a gag, but there is an enjoyable truth buried in it.

A 2011 Movember feature actually ranked the Chuckle Brothers' matching moustaches number one among television moustaches, so Paul and Barry had already staked their claim to the upper-lip crown long before the latest revival.

Barry, who died in 2018, was of course half of the equation. The matching moustaches, hair and general appearance were part of the unmistakable Chuckle Brothers image, but neither brother ever gave the impression of having the slightest interest in looking cool.

They simply looked like themselves, which is an increasingly rare quality in an age when personal style can involve an alarming amount of personal branding.

That is perhaps why Paul makes such an entertaining figurehead for the moustache revival.

It was just part of him, as familiar as the spiky hair and the voice. There was never any great plan behind it. He had a moustache, and he kept it.

So is the moustache back? Almost certainly. The more interesting question is whether it will stay.

Paul, however, is unlikely to be troubled by such fluctuations. He has already seen the moustache go from fashionable to unfashionable and back again, and through it all he has retained his own little patch of territory beneath the nose.

Perhaps that makes him a fashion icon after all, although it seems unlikely that Paul Chuckle would thank you for saying so. His great achievement is that he never appears to have been trying to be one.

While the rest of us have spent the past few decades waiting for the moustache to come back, the actor and comedian has simply been sitting there wearing his.

Fashion, eventually, caught up with Paul.