Frank Skinner is in a coffee shop on a bitter January lunchtime trying to choose between a five-cheese toastie or an oat pot “thing” and musing on some of the “terrible” jobs he had before finding his niche in comedy.
Now 66, he is about to go on the road in a stand-up tour, and can’t wait. He loves performing, and has always been a grafter, but part remembering jobs he had as a young man also keeps him going.
He says: “My dad had a big thing about working hard. When I got a job as a labourer the other labourers would say to me, ‘Hey, slow down, you’re making us look bad’. What has been great for my motivation was doing some terrible jobs.
“I worked in a glass factory, and one thing I had to do was take wheelbarrows of broken glass and tip them in a hole in the floor into a skip below, and a cloud of glass dust came up. I used to have to drop the wheelbarrow and run away, but I was still breathing in that glass. You always had blood running off your finger tips.”
Frank Skinner and his long-term partner Cath (Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Frank Skinner admits he misses dog Poppy when he is awayHe’s as upbeat about comedy now as he was when he started out 40 years ago. In fact, he’s upbeat about most things, including the oat pot he finally decided on. He says: “My partner says I have high serotonin.”
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David Baddiel, 59, his old comedy partner, close friend, and now neighbour in north London, is very different. They became mainstream with their Fantasy Football Show in the Nineties, peaking with their collaberation with The Lightning Seeds for Three Lions.
Frank says: “When I worked with David I never thought he enjoyed it as much as he should have done. When Three Lions happened I’d sort of shake him and say, ‘Dave, this is absolutely amazing’. And maybe he’s a more laid-back bloke, less excitable than I am.
“But I always thought it was because Dave finished at Cambridge University, worked for two days in a secondhand bookshop, and then became a professional comedian. I think having done some horrible jobs is quite good for the soul.”
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He relishes the thought of touring with his new show, “30 Years Of Dirt”. He says: “There is nothing making me do it, to be brutal I don’t need the money, I can live without it, I just really like doing it. Retirement has never crossed my mind. My mum and dad both retired at 65 and were both dead by the time they were 70.
“I think they thought they just worked for money. But they worked for all sorts of things, the social side, the structure of it, the satisfaction of thinking they’d done a good day’s work, and they were never the same again. And they worked in factories and missed that. I have a job where there is no other job I would rather do.”
Of course, when he is away he misses his partner Cath, son Buzz, 11 – and the family dog Poppy. He pined so much for Poppy when he did the Edinburgh Festival last year he picked a fluffy rug up from the hotel floor and put it on the sofa as a Poppy substitute.
Frank Skinner after being made a member of the Order of the British Empire in April 2023 (PA)For the tour this year, Cath has given him a cushion with a photo of Buzz and Poppy on it. But he cannot imagine giving up touring. He says: “There is something romantic about touring, being on the road.” Dave has become an activist, an intellectual guy, he’s good at it and incredibly smart. But I would rather be doing Oldham on a Tuesday night.”
Frank, whose real name is Christopher Collins, struggled at school, getting expelled for “embezzling the school meal service”. He says: “I found out where they threw the old meal tickets and resold them.”
But the grim jobs that followed, quickly set him back on the path to A levels. university, a Masters in English Literature, then teaching. His career in live comedy truly began in 1987, when he spent £400 of his last £435 booking a room at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Four years on, he beat Eddie Izzard and Jack Dee to The Perrier Award.
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After the first three months of stand-up, he stopped getting nervous, and says he rarely feels it now. That’s despite having quit a heavy drinking habit before he embarked on this comedy career.
He says: “When I was drinking I thought I needed drink to do anything. I remember drinking five pints before I joined the library, because I thought I can’t just walk into a library sober, it would be terrifying. And then not long after I was playing to 3,000 people stone cold sober.”
Besides comedy, Frank is a presenter on Sky Arts, and is proud of his Poetry Podcast. He’s great pals with the broadcaster Joan Bakewell and they regularly go to opera together. But he accepts to many he’ll always be Frank from the Midlands.
He says: “I met Harriet Harman at the opera and she said, ‘Oh god, do you like opera?’. I said ‘Harriet, you’re meant to be champion of social mobility’. Still, to a lot of people I’m just that mouthy, laddish comic.”
Frank Skinner will be performing his brand-new stand-up show ‘30 Years of Dirt’ at the Gielgud Theatre from February 5-17 before taking it on a UK tour from March 12 – June 9. For tickets, visit frankskinnerlive.com. A new series of Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast is available from all the usual podcast platforms.
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