Frank’s still the king of carefully crafted filth
Frank Skinner: 30 Years Of Dirt
Gielgud Theatre, London
Until Feb 17, touring until June 9
★★★★★
There’s a career trajectory with comedians that runs something like this: early stand-up career (five to ten years), commercial TV success at height of fame (15-25 years), return to live comedy in declining years (ten to 20 years, depending on life expectancy).
At 67, Frank Skinner is very much in that final stage. TV has long since passed him by, and so he has returned to the stage to do what he does best – telling gags.
It’s hard to think of another comic more at ease with his audience. Pacing the stage in a professorial manner, he’s clearly loving this late resurgence, taking in a two-week West End run followed by three months on the road.
With Skinner there are no surprises. You know what you’re going to get, and that is actual jokes from an old-school club comic, the likes of whom are dying out. He’s a consummate comedy craftsman – one man and his mic, no frills but plenty of thrills. As the show’s title references, Skinner was once a dispenser of eye-watering filth. These days he attempts to keep it relatively clean, acknowledging that ‘you can’t say anything now… I miss racism!’ But try as he might, he’s unable to resist the lure of the knob gag… and the show is all the better for it. He describes his love of a dirty joke as ‘like an illness’ and, true to form, he throws in a Phillip Schofield gag here, some of his finest filthy fillers there.
The gag-packed 90-minute set is loosely a career retrospective, taking in his Catholicism (‘Deal with it!’), his love of football and a smattering of celebrity anecdotes, including a cringing encounter with lyricist Sir Tim Rice. He refers to himself as ‘a once great comedian’ but he’s fooling no one with that double bluff.
You know you’re knocking on a bit when your routine includes a joke about the Red Arrows, but on this evidence, Skinner’s not reaching for the pipe and slippers just yet.