Ten years ago (ET) the chuckle brothers staged a shockingly theatrical stunt at Oldway Mansion that read like a live-action video game: bodies strewn across marble staircases, a thrown antagonist over a balustrade and a getaway in a Ferrari — yet no one was actually harmed. The sequence was an elaborate promotion for a newly released ‘Hitman’ title, directed from a studio by Paul and Barry while actors enacted the carnage on site. The stunt merged comedy one-liners with meticulously staged violence to sell an interactive fantasy.
Chuckle Brothers’ live stunt: spectacle and structure
The stunt’s choreography turned Oldway Mansion into a set-piece. Actors playing a hitman and assorted villains moved through the former council building’s halls and staircases, enacting scenes that included the hurling of a baddie over a balustrade to the marble staircase below and the dispatching of a butler with a heavy wrench — moments that were intentionally theatrical rather than real. The performers swapped identities on camera, with one scene showing the hitman slipping into the butler’s clothes. The sequence closed with an on-screen escape in a Ferrari. Throughout, the chuckle brothers peppered the staged carnage with trademark lines and comedic timing, and the mansion’s interiors provided a dramatic, historic backdrop to the stunt.
Why it matters now
This episode matters because it reframed celebrity promotion and place-based marketing within a historic municipal site. Oldway Mansion later became emblematic of change in the locality: it had housed Torbay Council offices until those operations closed in 2013 (ET) and today remains under a massive restoration, shrouded in scaffolding with its interior closed to the public. The stunt repurposed civic architecture into a commercial spectacle, raising questions about how heritage spaces are used for contemporary media projects and how those images persist in public memory, particularly after the subsequent events that changed the brothers’ legacy.
Expert perspectives and legacy
The live promotion was devised by the creators of the video game and produced by a specialist production company. Marc Skouborg, brand marketing director at Io-Interactive, said the objective was to create the feeling of a real-life game experience for participants and praised the production for its attention to detail. The stunt’s filmed output mixed staged violence with the brothers’ familiar comic interjections — lines such as “Take him out! And can you bleed that radiator while you’re there?” and recurring phrases from their television theme, all preserved for a gag reel appended to the promotion.
The video later resurfaced in the public eye two years later (ET) after the death of Barry Chuckle. The Yorkshire brothers, Paul and Barry Elliott, had begun performing as the Chuckle Brothers in the 1970s (ET) and built careers across television, touring stage shows and pantomime. Barry’s death in August 2018 (ET) altered how audiences revisited the stunt: what had been a playful mash-up of slapstick and action was reinterpreted through the lens of the brothers’ broader cultural contribution and personal loss.
Institutional context matters in the aftermath. Oldway Mansion’s municipal past as a council office and its ongoing restoration mean the building remains a visible site of civic investment and heritage debate. The choice to film a commercial stunt there connected private entertainment production with a site many in the locality associate with public life and services.
The stunt’s layered elements — professional production, staged violence, recognizable comic voice and civic architecture — created a brief cultural artifact that has continued to be revisited, particularly after the brothers’ careers shifted from active touring to posthumous reflection. The interplay between promotional ambition and local heritage underscores how single media events can leave long shadows.
As Oldway Mansion’s restoration continues and memories of the filmed stunt persist, how will communities weigh the reuse of civic spaces for commercial spectacle, and what does the renewed attention to that staged rampage tell us about the Chuckle Brothers’ complicated place in popular memory?
