Interview with Frank Skinner prior to his '30 Years Of Dirt' show at the Gaiety Theatre on Sunday, November 4
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00:00We're here today with English comedian and presenter Frank Skinner who is bringing his
00:04show 30 Years of Dirt to the Gaiety Theatre on Sunday November the 3rd. So how are you doing,
00:09Frank? I'm fabulous, thank you. I've never actually been to the Isle of Man before,
00:16so it's quite exciting for me. Right, okay. I thought you would have been at some point,
00:21maybe on one of your other tours at some stage, but... No, this is the first time. I want to...
00:27I'm very keen. There's a George Ford statue, isn't there? Yes, there is, yeah, yeah.
00:33Yeah, I must come and pay homage to that. Yeah, great. I was also going to ask you about,
00:38because I know you're into your poetry, and obviously T.E. Brown is the famous Manx poet.
00:43I didn't know if you knew any of his poems as well. No, sorry, what's his name again?
00:49T.E. Brown, I think it's Thomas Edward Brown. No, I don't know T.E. Brown. Oh,
00:55God, I want to go and look him up straight away. I'd like to discover someone I haven't heard of
01:01before. Forgive me for not knowing a Manx poet. No, no, that's fine. He's had some quite famous
01:07poems. I'm not really into poems, so I don't know what he's done specifically, but yeah,
01:12it might be worth checking out. I think he's quite famous. Oh, no, definitely. Was your fourth
01:16sentiment school as part of your cultural experience? Yes, yes, but it quickly left my
01:23brain. It didn't stay with me long. I'm 23 now, so about 15 years ago. I wanted to ask you
01:32to tell us a bit about your show. Obviously, you'll be touring around the UK, but yeah,
01:37it'd be great to hear sort of what the show entails. Well, I wish I had a big elaborate
01:43theme I could run by you, because I know that has become the way that comedy shows,
01:48that people say, yeah, it's all about, you know, meeting my grandfather after 53 years.
01:54Yeah. I mean, the only real theme to it, hence the type of 30 years of dirt, is I've been doing
02:00stand-up comedy now for about 30 years, just down to it. And for some reason, my stand-up act has
02:08always been considerably ruder than the rest of my work. And I've never quite worked out why that
02:16is, although I grew up with those kind of jokes, certainly at school, in the factory, in the pub
02:22and all that. And so I've made some attempts in recent years to get a bit more sophisticated,
02:29but anyone who comes to the show will see it's been largely a failure. Yeah. Am I right in saying
02:35that Terry Wogan advocated for less swearing at one point? Has that got something to do with it?
02:42Um, I don't remember that, but a few people, uh, said that. Yeah, yeah. I've worked with Terry,
02:49uh, Wogan, um, a lot in my early career. Yeah. And, um, he used to give advice saying, don't,
02:57don't worry about what you say, or, you know, on the show, or how it goes, because no one's
03:02really listening, everyone is just, you know, going on in the background in people's homes.
03:07Yeah. A little bit cynical, but he's been doing it a lot longer by then. But he was very nice to
03:14me. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember if he said that, but, you know, the mainstream, of course,
03:20it's a much bigger gap in those, uh, in mainstream entertainment than when you are on stage and then
03:27you are off stage. Yeah, yeah. And for me there isn't that big a gap really. Yeah. Has the show
03:32been successful so far? I know you've added more dates, which I think the Isle of Man is part of,
03:37uh, in the autumn, but... Yeah, it's been joyous. I must say, um, I don't like to brag, but you have
03:44asked me, but a lot of the shows that we've added, it's because we've done places and then sold out
03:49sort of immediately. Yeah. And so there's always that nagging feeling there might be more people
03:55there who wanted to come. So I've ended up doing, like, you know, four shows in Birmingham and three
04:00shows in Liverpool, three shows in Manchester and so on. Yeah. Um, and then adding places that I
04:07haven't done already on the tour and in some cases I've never done. So, uh, yeah, it's been, uh, I
04:14couldn't have asked it to be much better. Yeah. Do you incorporate the crowd into your show as well
04:19or is it all strictly set? Not very much so. Yeah. To me there would be no point in doing live stand-up
04:24without incorporating the crowd because I've never been what I would call a bedroom mirror
04:31comedian, you know, it just goes up and does it. There's a load of people looking at me,
04:36I need to speak to them and it makes every night a bit different and it just, you know,
04:41you never know what's going to be said and what's going to come up and that is exciting. Yeah. Um,
04:47but about the Isle of Man, I wanted to ask, um, will you be doing any sightseeing while you're
04:52here? I know the show is on a Sunday night. I don't know exactly what time you get here, but,
04:55um, is it a case of just doing the show or are you going to look around a bit as well or?
04:59Well, I always love to look around. I like historical sites. I mean, I don't know much
05:06about the history of the Isle of Man. I have a memory of, I think at the end of the Civil War,
05:13it was one of the, there was a castle that was one of the last places to actually surrender
05:18to the parliamentarians. Is that, does that ring any bells from your...
05:22It rings a bell, yeah. It rings a bell, but I couldn't tell you as a fact.
05:28Yeah, so there's a famous, um, a sort of aristocratic woman who refused to give up
05:35the royalist cause. Right. That has gone on. So I'd love to go and see that place, I must say.
05:41I mean, my geography of the Isle of Man is obviously non-existent, so I don't know how
05:47far that would be from the Gaiety. Well, I can, I can tell you that...
05:52At some point go into a new place if you're not going to show the options.
05:56Yeah, of course. Yeah. I can tell you that, um, the place you're performing at the Gaiety,
05:59it's on Douglas Promenade, which has got quite a lot of nice restaurants and things like that
06:04in the area and things. So it might be nice to, I don't know, explore down that, down that
06:07promenade and have a bit of a look. Uh, but obviously it's entirely up to you and it's,
06:11it's, yeah, it'd be a nice night on a Sunday night. So, yeah.
06:14I want to come back thinking I've got a proper, um, I've got a bit of max in me, you know.
06:19Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a lovely, it's a lovely holiday destination, so I hope you,
06:23I hope you like it. Um, I, I, I'm assuming that 30 Years of Dirt is, is a spin on,
06:30obviously, 30 Years of Hurt, which is from, uh, Three Lions.
06:34Yeah. Yeah. I, I wanted to ask, do you sometimes get a bit blown away by how
06:38popular Three Lions is after all these years? Well, it's odd because it's, it's, it's a lot,
06:47it became a lot more than, if it had been a very, very successful song, you know, I would have been,
06:54um, thrilled and surprised. I thought we'd get to number one when we first brought it out.
07:00Because in those days, the official England song tended to get to number one.
07:05Yeah. Um, but now it's carried on, it became loads of memes, that phrase, it's coming home,
07:13you know, became a thing in its own right. And also it, it feels like people sort of stopped
07:21making football songs. It's almost like it was the full stop that people thought we can't follow
07:29that. So I don't think England even bother with an official song for tournaments anymore,
07:34which I suppose is a compliment in itself. Yeah. Yeah, of course. It does seem to resurface every
07:41time England do well at a tournament, doesn't it? So every, every, um, I mean, whether we do
07:48anything, you know, even if we don't release it or anything else in any publicity, suddenly there
07:54is a game in the charts. I mean, it's always been very dependent on the performance of the team,
08:01but I like to think it has a few merits of its own. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah.
08:08Um, I wanted to ask as well about the fantasy football league, um, while you're here,
08:13uh, unfortunately, if you, if you come on a Sunday night, you're going to miss the absolute
08:17splendor of Manx football on, on, on a Saturday afternoon. Um, it's, it's, it's very much amateur,
08:22but, um, it's, it's also very entertaining. Um, so I wanted to ask, um, sort of the fantasy
08:30football league, do you still have a team yourself? Do you still get involved in those
08:33sort of things or is it just a case of going to watch West Brom? I, um, I don't have a team. I
08:41always struggled in the days when I had a fantasy football team because I felt a bit affected. I
08:48mean, I'm a West Brom fan, but the Premier League is not really our business. Yeah. But I always,
08:53I found it affected the way I watched the game. So I wanted, um, certain people to do things.
09:00Yeah. I get that as well. And it's like I never bet on football anymore because I would bet on
09:07someone and think that they would score and I'd think, oh no, I don't want, I want him to be the
09:11last scorer. That's my bet. Yeah. And then the whole game would be me getting anxious about it.
09:17And I'd rather just watch football as a pure sort of emotional thing, rather than trying to
09:24calculate my, whether my players get points or whether I'm going to win 50 quid. Yeah. Yeah. Of
09:30course. Um, you say West Brom aren't involved with the Premier League, but they could be next
09:34year after the start they've had. Um, have you, have you been to watch? Yeah. Have you been to
09:39watch recently? Did you still go to the games? I haven't been this season. I went, um, last time
09:44I saw him was the playoff semi-final. Oh yeah. Which didn't go so well. But, um, we've got a
09:52brilliant manager. As long as we keep him there, I think it's fine. At the same time, getting into
09:59the Premiership is a, it's a mixed blessing. So, you know, when you get promotion, you celebrate
10:07for about half an hour and then you remember what the Premier League is like.
10:11Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, thank you very much for speaking to us,
10:16Frank, and best of luck with the show. Um, I hope you're excited to come to the Isle of Man
10:19for the very first time. It should be exciting. Thanks very much. I am excited. I'm really
10:24looking forward to it. So, um, yeah, it'll be brilliant. Great. Thanks, Frank. Thanks a lot. Bye.