From alcoholism and TV stardom to touring by train for his recent return to stand-up, award-winning comedian and Waterloo resident Frank Skinner tells Rebecca Gooch about the journey so far
It has been 22 years since Frank Skinner had his last drink and transformed himself from an aimless alcoholic into a millionaire with his own prime time TV chat show. Now the Godfather of sex ‘n’ soccer lads’ comedy has a new addiction. “Give it up? I couldn’t handle that,” he says sheepishly as he tells me more about this new passion: playing the ukulele.
“I play George Formby songs over and over again,” he says with a smile, revealing an extra sparkly grin thanks to the gilded molar that was a 50th birthday gift to himself last year. “On the last tour I started playing it on stage, and now I play it for hours—I’ve even had to see a physiotherapist for the pain it’s caused in my shoulder. It has become a complete obsession.”
The man cheerily strumming “When I’m Cleaning Windows” in his riverside home near London Waterloo seems a world away from the chap who beat Jack Dee and Eddie Izzard to win the 1991 Perrier award with a routine that was not so much near the knuckle as approaching the armpit. His first TV appearance, in 1988, drew gales of laughter from the studio audience—and 131 complaints from viewers, including then Cabinet minister Edwina Currie. His subsequent chat show attracted 10 million viewers.
Yet life has changed for Frank since he hit 50. He spent a decade busying himself with such series as Fantasy Football League, The Frank Skinner Show and the no-script, seat-of-the-pants Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, as well as co-writing the platinum-selling soccer anthem “Three Lions” and being acclaimed for acting stints in the West End. But last year he returned to live stand-up with a sell-out tour that played to more than 100,000 people.
His new book, On the Road: Love, Stand-up Comedy and The Queen of the Night (Century, £18.99), tells of the trials and tribulations of regaining his stand-up mojo. A keen rail-lover, he wrote it from a journal he penned as he took the train across the country from gig to gig. “I really like travelling by train—it’s a very pleasant way to go places,” he affirms. “I particularly like it on Sundays. I buy three or four fat newspapers and sit there and have a fabulous day out. When I told one friend I was getting the train, she said ‘How Harry Potter!’ But for me, the longer the journey the better. My carbon footprint’s like the delicate scratch a sparrow might leave on snow.”
Born Chris Collins in 1957 (he called himself after a member of his dad’s dominoes team as there was already an Equity member with his name), Skinner grew up in the West Midlands, where he shared his father’s passion for football and West Bromwich Albion. He also inherited his dad’s liking for a pint. The drinking started at 14, and by
the time he was approaching 30 he was “an unemployed drunk going nowhere”.
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