I first heard that they were father and son about 10 years ago and saw no reason to disbelieve it, but your question has prompted me to do a bit of probing to prove/disprove that and so far it seems that they are indeed brothers. They are apparently the youngest two children out of eight in a "show-biz" family from Rotherham. Paul and Barry Elliot (or Elliott depending where you look) have been performing together since childhood. They attended Spurley Hey School. That's about all I can find, although several sites say things similar to: "The Chuckle Brothers, real-life brothers called Paul and Barry Elliot". Sorry I can't be more specific but things do seem to point to them being brothers after all, but I'm going to carry on digging, and if I find out anything to the contrary I'll post back here.