‘Clever as well as rude’ - Frank Skinner lifts the lid on his 30 Years Of Dirt tour

Virgin Radio

5 Jul 2024, 12:59

Frank Skinner chatted to Chris Evans ahead of his 30 Years Of Dirt tour stand-up tour, which continues next month, following two sold-out runs in London’s West End, and off the back of a sold-out 41-date national tour.

Joining the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with webuyanycar, the comedian, writer, author, actor and presenter explained: “The theme is that I was known as a very rude comedian throughout my career, and then I thought, in recent times, as I've got older, I should get more sophisticated and try some cleverer stuff, because I am, like, really clever as well as rude!

“And I can't quite get rid of the rude stuff as well. It's so ingrained in me. Honestly, when I was growing up, factory, school, and all that, that was how we communicated, the dirty joke. You know, that was our lingua franca.”

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He added: “When it's a good one, it's so funny, and everybody gets it, because it doesn't matter if you're the king or if you're working in a pub.”

The tour starts up again on Monday 5th August, with a three-week residency run in London's West End, and then a set of dates which will see Frank performing until December, all across the country. “Generally speaking, it's gone brilliantly since I started with it in Edinburgh,” he said.

“There was a time that once I got the show sort of bulletproof, it would stay exactly like that until the end. I mean, obviously there's always messing about with the audience and all that, but as I've got older, my boredom threshold has gone down, so I get fed up with some of the stuff, so I change it around.”

He added: “George Bernard Shaw said, breathing is easy until you start thinking about it. It's a bit like that. If you think, ‘I'm gonna stand for an hour and a half with a mic in my hand and just make people laugh and laugh and laugh,’ you’d think, ‘No that is utterly impossible. Nobody could do that.’ And the next thing you know, you're walking out there to the audience!”

Frank’s comedy career began in 1987, when he spent £400 of his last £435 booking a room at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He told Chris: “When I booked that room at the Edinburgh Festival, I had never done a second of stand-up in my life. I'd never been on stage doing comedy.”

Regarding how his early shows went, he said: “When I did decide I should do some stand-up comedy, the first two gigs I did went so terribly that I think I would have quit. But I thought, ‘I can't quit, I've spent 400 quid,’ which was my life savings. ‘I can't quit. I've got to carry on.’

“I'm a bit of a daydreamer by my nature. I honestly thought when I did that first gig, I thought I'd be on the telly in a week! I swear to you, I'm not making this up, I thought it would just go across the nation that this guy had arrived!”

However, he admitted: “In the first gig, I didn't stuff I'd written myself, and it absolutely bombed.”

After a second performance that “went even worse”, Frank began to find his voice and of his third gig, he says: “I absolutely stormed it. I absolutely ripped the place up.”

Recalling that moment, he said: “I'm feeling it now. I can feel the blood in my face. It's like when my dog gets a ball and it looks like a different dog. I thought, ‘I think I can do this.’

And things grew from there. “The big deal was, I started doing these two regular clubs in Birmingham…. and within six weeks, I had a bona fide cult following. 

“I was like, world-famous in Birmingham, and I don't know if I've ever quite recaptured the thrill of that, because that's when I thought, ‘I can definitely do it. I can do this.’” 

Frank was appointed an MBE in April 2023 for his services to entertainment, and is a published author. Alongside David Baddiel and The Lightning Seeds, Frank created the one of all-time greatest football anthems, Three Lions.

Former Fantasy Football co-host David joined him this morning to talk all about it. Read it here.

30 Years Of Dirt tickets are available via frankskinnerlive.com.

For more great interviews listen to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with webuyanycar weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.