Interview: Frank Skinner at City Hall

Frank Skinner brings his stand-up show Man in a Suit to Hull City Hall on Saturday 19 December. This interview looks at what makes the long-standing comedian tick.

If there is a finer live comedian than Frank Skinner currently at work in this country, then I have yet to see him (or her). So it is with great excitement that we welcome him back to the live arena. He is hitting the road this autumn with his coruscating new show, Man in a Suit. It is his first major national tour in seven years. But it has been worth the wait.

Frank has had an immensely successful broadcasting career ranging from The Frank Skinner Show and Fantasy Football League in the 1990s to today’s Room 101(the fourth series of which will transmit on BBC1 in the spring), and his Sony Award-winning Absolute Radio show, which commands 600,000 listeners every week and has had more than 13 million downloads as a podcast.

But it is as a stand-up comedian where he feels most at home. The live arena gives full rein to Frank’s spontaneous wit. It allows him two hours to demonstrate how he cannot help but make you laugh. He is one of Nature’s most effortlessly funny people.

The critics agree. For instance, The Scotsman says that, “This is a terrific, feel-good show…He can still do it, old Frank. He is warm, relaxed, down-to-earth and properly funny…It is hilarious stuff. Skinner's delivery is so gentle, so friendly, that there is no sense of the judgmental, of ridiculing. And that actually makes it much funnier. This is the work of a seriously skilled stand-up”.

Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday declares that, “Frank is a terrifically gifted individual who consistently out-funnies his contemporaries.”  The Independent describes him as, “Highly accomplished and very funny”, while The Guardian observes that, "You could put Skinner down in front of any audience at any time and he would have them in stitches."

The great thing is, Frank is equally funny in person. An hour-long interview with him is like being treated to a command performance – to an audience of one. It is a delightful experience spending time in his company, and you emerge at the end of it feeling upbeat and uplifted.

Frank, who has over the years won numerous awards for his stand-up, including the prestigious Perrier Award in 1991, begins by underlining how much he has enjoyed returning to the stage. “I know that the memory can play tricks, but I honestly am enjoying performing now more than I ever did before. If you’ve ever done yoga, they say to you, ‘Relax your shoulders’. You think, ‘But they are relaxed. Actually, they were tense, and I haven’t realised how stressed I was’.

“In the same way, I used to think I was relaxed on stage, but on this tour I have found a whole new level of relaxation. I don’t know if it is to do with age or exhaustion. You know how the contents of a cereal box settle during transit? Maybe my nervous system has finally done that. Anyway, it’s a very special feeling!”

Frank adds that he also revels in performing live comedy because, “It’s so different from other stuff. I like the sense that it’s not being recorded. Even when you come to record your DVD, no matter how much you fight it, you feel that you’re wearing a slightly smaller suit. It feels a lot more restrained.

“So much stuff is recorded these days. Small stand-up clubs will often have a camera at the back of the room, and you never know where the footage will end up. In the end, memories will be completely closed down. YouTube has already totally killed the anecdote. It provides anecdotes for the illiterate: ‘Here’s a funny thing – look at this!’”

The other aspect about live comedy that Frank delights in is the terrific rapport that he enjoys with his audiences. “I love interacting with the audience,” affirms the comedian, the proud father of a young son called Buzz. “When it goes well, suddenly I feel like I’m part of the audience as well. That’s very exhilarating. Last week a woman in the front row had an American accent, and I asked if she was from the US. She replied, ‘No, I’m from Iraq’. I’d made the wrong-est guess anyone’s ever made and my life flashed in front my eyes – but the audience laughed about it for at least a minute.

“Those moments are very precious because they’re not repeatable. They happen so quickly that you’re not even aware of the process. During my last tour, a guy came up to me and told me he had been doing comedy for eight months. He said, ‘You know when you come back to the audience really quickly – how do you do that?’ I replied, ‘I don’t know’. ‘Come on, it would really help me. What difference would it make to you?’ ‘I’m honestly not keeping anything from you. It just happens’. I don’t know how you could rehearse those exchanges – unless you practiced with your partner. But she doesn’t always appreciate my comebacks! Anyway, those moments on stage are very pleasurable indeed.”

What makes Frank's live work so special is its unalloyed candour. As he ranges over such a varied subjects as relationships, religion, rows with your partner, filth, salty popcorn, Prince Charles, long black leather coats, the yard of ale, giving to the homeless, the Tube and taste, he delivers his material with an admirable sense of honesty.

This makes sense from a comedian whose first autobiography was simply entitled Frank. “Honesty is vital,” reflects the comedian, whose Absolute Radio show was downloaded 2.8 million times last year, making it both Absolute and commercial radio’s most successful podcast.

“Everything I do is autobiographical. When I’ve strayed from that and tried to write a novel in the third person or sitcoms, they have not been great. I’m essentially an autobiographical writer. I once read a biography of Jack London. It revealed that he wrote by buying a story from someone and then developing that into a novel. His justification was that his gift lay in expression, not invention. I suspect I’m the same.”

So just how much of Frank’s material in Man in a Suit is lifted directly from his own life? “You’d be amazed! I embroider very little. I never completely invent anything. I think it would lack conviction if I did. It feels more real when it is true.”

One thing that has changed about Frank’s act over the years is that it now features far less blue material than it did in the past. The comedian, who also penned Frank Skinner on the Road, which chronicled his 2007 sell-out return to stand-up, explains that Man in a Suit is merely an account of who he now is. “There’s a bit of filth, but not much. When I do Room 101 or my radio show, I’m very me. I don’t feel phoney. I’m very clean because it's eight in the morning. David Baddiel said to me recently, ‘When I think of ‘your funny’ off stage, I don’t think of you doing knob jokes. I think of you talking about John Updike.’ That’s more who I am off stage these days.

“I’ve done a lot of knob jokes in my time, but maybe I’ve emptied my supply of them now. Your comedy should be a reflection of what’s in your head, and I just don’t think of sex as much as I used to. When you get into a long relationship, sex is no longer the dominant thing.”

All the same, 57-year-old Frank adds, “I still have to do a bit of filth on stage. If I didn’t, that would be like Bernie Clifton not performing with his ostrich. So I go through a process of negotiation with my audience – 'let me read you some haikus, and I’ll trade you that for some knob gags later on.' I think that’s a fair deal. I'll talk about Plato, and I'll then give you a knob gag. It's like training a dog: you have to sit while I say my bit, but then I'll reward you with a chocolate biscuit afterwards.”

Frank, who had a number one hit on three separate occasions alongside David Baddiel and The Lightning Seeds with their football anthem, “Three Lions”, continues that his current cleaner act mirrors the present state of comedy. “In the past, people would always laugh at the rude stuff because they were getting something they couldn’t get elsewhere. When I did my first tour in 1991, that was certainly true. 

“But now 8 out of 10 Cats is much ruder than my stuff was in 1991. So people don’t have to go to live comedy to get that anymore. That means I’m able to do more stuff that I like. It’s great because it keeps my show fresh. When I’ve done the live show 40 times, I don’t feel, ‘Oh God, here we go again.’ Maybe that’s because I’m doing stuff that is not so much on the button anymore.”

Frank, who has recently published Dispatches from the Sofa, a collection of columns he wrote for The Times over a two-year period, muses that he is enjoying this tour so much because it is a very accurate portrait of who he is now. “I’m enjoying this tour more than I did in 2007. Then I was still feeling a strong obligation to be who I was in 1997. I'm never good at playing a version myself. I like being me and reflecting where I am at that time.

“That’s why I don’t like greatest hits albums. I like to hear a particular slice of time and know where a band were when they recorded an album – ‘This is where The Kinks were when they brought out Village Green Preservation Society’. Man in a Suit is very much about where I am at the moment.”

Frank is equally excited about the release on 1 December of the Man in a Suit DVD. It boasts an extra that he is particularly proud of. “The extra is a documentary profiling me that ITV made a few years ago,” he explains. “I go back to my old school and interview some old friends. I think it’s very good.

"I say a few things I might not say now, but I didn’t want take any of them out. I enjoyed watching it again. I think it’s a really interesting extra. Normally for the extras, you just get shots of the comedian in his dressing room. This is something a bit different.” 

At the same time, a box set of all Frank’s live DVDs will be released. The comedian is pleased that his shows have been memorialised in this way. “It’s a history of my stand-up from The Perrier award-winning show to the current one. I haven’t watched them back yet – I’m worried in case I’m doing jokes from 1991 in my current set! When you have children, you start thinking, ‘A DVD is a nice souvenir for them to remember me by.’ That’s the good thing about being an older parent – you start building an archive when your children are very young!

"A few comics have said to me, ‘I remember watching a VHS of your live show when I was at school’. I don’t think, ‘Oh God, I’m so old!’ I think, ‘Oh God, I’m so funny and influential!’”

Another recent landmark for Frank was starring in an episode of perhaps his favourite TV show, Doctor Who. He describes the experience of working on a show he has loved since he was a little boy. “There is a place within ones inner being which represents childhood excitement. You assume you left that behind when you became a sexual being and found new levels of thrills.

“But I found that place of childhood excitement was still vibrant within me. On the set, I was like a little boy gripped by wee-inducing excitement, coupled with some trepidation that everyone else on the show seemed to be brilliant actors. It hadn’t occurred to me that that might be an obstacle!”

Frank continues that, “When I arrived at my hotel in Cardiff, I jumped up and down on the spot for 30 seconds out of sheer excitement. Then almost immediately I began to wonder if I could be completely removed from the edit if I was rubbish. On the set, I had a look I would describe as ‘competition winner’. I’m not sure if that helped with me being taken seriously, but I think I got away with it!”

The feedback on his performance in Doctor Who has been very positive. “The internet response was good,” Frank confirms. “But obviously I kept digging until I found the bad stuff – that’s just the nature of being a comedian.

“A woman came up to me in Edinburgh during the summer and said, ‘Tonight was the second time I’ve seen you live. The first time I was in my mother’s womb’. My first thought was, ‘How come you haven’t been since then?’ And my second thought was, ‘When you were in the womb, did you have a sense of how the gig went? Could you hear muffled laughter?’”

Frank’s only regret is that his Doctor Who episode, which contained a very frightening mummy, was too scary for Buzz to watch. The comedian reveals that his son, “Does enjoy Doctor Who, but the thing he’s been most excited about as a spectacle recently is baggage reclaim. When he saw one the other day, he was actually jumping up and down with glee. Doctor Who is not quite up there yet!”

As if he wasn’t busy enough, Frank is also presenting The Rest is History, a tremendous new six-part comedy discussion show on the subject of history that starts on Radio 4 in December. The comedian, who recently also really enjoyed co-hosting with Joan Bakewell Sky Arts’ fascinating series, Portrait Artist of the Year, comments that, “I like the idea of doing a panel show on Radio 4 because I can say anything as far as cleverness is concerned. If people don’t know something, they'll be angry with themselves, rather than me. On my Radio 4 comedy, Don’t Start, one section was largely based on Androcles and the Lion. That would’ve been harder to pull off on The One Show. In fact, the last time I was on The One Show, I did a CS Lewis joke and I said to them, ‘I bet that’s the first time you've had a CS Lewis joke’.

“I thought I’d like to do a panel show where I could talk about anything to do with history. I love history, but I haven’t studied it. So I thought, ‘I’ve got two choices – Google or a radio show. Well, I might as well get paid for it!’ So the aim of the show is to teach me about history – you can listen too if you like! I’m hoping this will be one of those Radio 4 shows that lasts for 50 years and that my son Buzz will present it when I retire!”

Frank closes by returning to the subject of how he has relished performing live once more with Man in a Suit. “I’ve always had the showing off gene. I see it now in my son. The other day he did an impression of me doing the impression of Louis Armstrong, and I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder! So on stage I want to show off. If the audience are laughing, I want to make them laugh even more. Above all, I really care about the audience having a very good time indeed.”

And there is no doubt in my mind that that is exactly they will have.

Frank Skinner brings Man in a Suit to Hull City Hall on Saturday 19 December.

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