Comedy: Frank Skinner

Coming to town with his new show Man In A Suit, the former Fantasy Footballer shares a few details about it

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 is looking forward to returning to the stage. “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.”

The other aspect about live comedy that Frank revels 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 one-year-old 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 before my eyes – but the audience laughed about it for at least a minute.”

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.”

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 relishing the prospect of 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 Skinner: Man In A Suit, Brighton Centre,
Sun 1 June, 7pm, £27.50

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