Although he's the most successful black performer in Britain and has been for some time, don't expect Hot Chocolate's Errol Brown to be down with the brothers: a Surrey mansion (and I mean mansion), racehorses trained by Jenny Pitman, a pristine Adlolfo Dominguez suit and a Rolls Royce or two have insulated the bridge-playing, Tory-supporting Brown from the worst excesses of racism, British style.
But either way he's not bothered: "I understand what makes all those gangsta rappers furious, but it's really not me or my era. Once you become rich and famous, how long is the angry thing supposed to last? There aren't many black people where I live or where I socialise because there aren't many in my income bracket, simple as that." He has reached his dizzying income bracket level by dint of the phenomenal success of his band in the 1970s - with a hit each year in that decade, they even outstripped Elvis Presley's sales in Britain - and now it's all happening again, much to his amusement.
The film The Full Monty features one of his biggest hits, You Sexy Thing, on its soundtrack and it is selling by the lorry-load - especially in the US, where he never really sold before. And to tie in with all the new-found attention, Hot Chocolate's Greatest Hits has just been re-issued (for the sixth time, something of a record) and is back sitting pretty in the top ten.
It is somewhat fitting that a film that ostensibly features women drooling over the male form has rejuvenated a career that was based, although not exclusively, on very much the same premise in the first place. An admirable showman, Errol Brown's audiences back in the 1970s always had something of a "hen night" quality and he is more than a bit bemused that now he is back out on tour again - at 49 years of age he is still receiving the same lewd suggestions, and indeed detailed invitations, that he did 20 years ago. He has always represented the black sexual fantasy - with all its attendant myths.
While the hips may shake and the eyes wink as struts his stuff on stage, off stage he is a happily married man with two teenage daughters, who is more concerned with his lobster thermidor, glass of chablis and computerised bridge game than he is with chasing up any of his voluble admirers in the front row of the audience. For someone who is such a vociferous supporter of Britain's Conservative Party (he sings at their rallies and everything) it is surprising, in a way, to find he was discovered by John Lennon: "Myself and a friend recorded a reggae version of Lennon's Give Peace A Chance," he says, "and when we sent a copy off to him, he loved it and immediately released it on the Beatles's Apple label. In fact, our first ever gig as Hot Chocolate was supporting John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the Lyceum in London. I remember them jumping out a flour bag . . . " Born out of wedlock in Kingston, Jamaica - "I come from a place where you had to dig holes in the ground to go to the toilet" - he was brought up by his aunties after his mother left to find work in London. Five years later, once she had saved enough money, she sent for him to join him. At school in Streatham he experienced his first bout of racism. "I was ridiculed for both my colour and my Jamaican accent and there were times when I had to use my fists to defend myself. I soon moved to a private school in West Hampstead but my mother taught me never to blame my colour for failure or the white people for what happened to me."
His mother died of cancer, aged 38, when Errol was 19, and he says of her: "For all the effort she put into her life and the class of woman she was, I felt I had to achieve something to uplift her memory."
Although he had a good sensible job as a clerical officer with the Treasury, he spent his nights at The Speakeasy and other clubs of the time, watching and being mightily impressed by acts like Tina Turner, Ray Charles and The Drifters. He formed a band (called Hot Chocolate because they comprised five black men and two white men) and started writing songs for the likes of Mary Hopkin and Julie Felix, until he met producer/manager Mickie Most who told him to keep his songs for himself.
Their first single, Love Is Life, was a top ten hit and then massive hits like It Started With A Kiss, So You Win Again, No Doubt About It, I'll Put You Together Again and You Sexy Thing made him into a millionaire by the time he was 25. One of his songs, Brother Louie, was a very rare foray into something resembling sociopolitical comment. It was about an inter-racial marriage, but in real life Errol accepted that even in the early 1970s he would not be asked to meet the parents of his white girlfriends: "I wouldn't
go to their houses, it was just understood. These people had never met a black person and their view was negative - I never set out to convince them."
How much of an issue was it/is it? "Because of my background, I am socially aware, and I would do more to help but maybe I'm not a big enough star. But I'd really do anything I could. I just try to live so that the next black person that comes in after me gets a smile and a welcome. If I could say one thing, it would be to tell black parents not to fill their children's heads with white people being always to blame. I don't believe in the token black thing. Why shouldn't a black person do the things I do? If you're in a certain circle you make friends, accept invitations, give dinner parties - that sort of thing. I don't have to go to some drinking club in Brixton just to prove I'm black. The best I can do is be known as a black man who has achieved something."
He knows though he is far removed from his roots and on a recent trip back to Jamaica to chase up some of his history, he was left feeling empty. "Jamaica was beautiful, but I had lost the country. And I could never revert to sitting round smoking ganja - I am, after all, a public school boy from West Hampstead!"
When he broke Hot Chocolate up in the mid-1980s - he allowed his ex-band members to keep the name and they still play the circuit with a different singer - he was tipped to have the same sort of solo success as Lionel Richie had when he left The Commodores. But Brown's solo album, That's How Love Is, flopped and he retreated in haste from the music industry.
"I suppose I had fulfilled my ambition to make something of myself so I'm not on the edge of my seat thinking I have to be back up there with another hit record. But this new lease of life is nice."
He's not tremendously fussed about breaking America on the back of The Full Monty but that's mainly because, as he says, he has fulfilled his ambition. "I have created my own world as a black man and my money allows me to live with dignity. That someone can be treated badly because of the colour of their skin hurts the soul."
Hot Chocolate: Their Greatest Hits is available on the EMI label. Errol Brown hopes to tour Ireland this year.