David Kear Interview — Charlie Chuck, Uncle Peter, Small Faces and Montreal

A conversation with a true comedy legend, David Kear; best known for his work as Charlie Chuck, and alongside Vic & Bob as Uncle Peter.

Lee David Tyrrell
10 min readApr 14, 2022

David Kear is a remarkably unique voice in British comedy. His principle character, Charlie Chuck, is an unpredictable powder-keg of visceral joy. Often putting a dark twirl on commonplace Northern activities, his unhinged persona found laughs from discomfort, years before better-known contemporaries. In the early 90s, Kear began to accrue mainstream fame through television. He first appeared to a wider audience — as Chuck — on Sky Star Search in 1990; an odd little show, fronted by Keith Chegwin.

Three years later, Kear became one of the few recurring characters on The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. Performing alongside two of the UK’s most exciting and influential comedians of the time, he seemed a fated match. Though he played a pitch perfect version of his well-established Chuck persona, the show renamed…

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Lee David Tyrrell

Fiction writer, mostly attracted to sci-fi and strange, experimental tangents. I’ve also worked as a music journalist for Clash, eGigs, eFestivals & C64 Audio.