Frank Skinner finds the funny side to political debate, interview Topical chat on TV is all the rage at the moment. Frank Skinner tells Benji Wilson why he's adding his pennyworth.
By Benji Wilson
15 Apr 2010
telegraph.co.uk
Just when political discourse on television was supposed to be going the way of red phone boxes, all of a sudden everyone – not just our political leaders last night – wants to talk about current affairs.
Audiences for Question Time have gone through the roof in the past 12 months. Nearly four million tuned in during the MPs’ expenses bunfight last summer, the programme’s best figures in a decade. Then a massive 7.9million saw Nick Griffin’s appearance on the programme in October. The BBC’s youth channel BBC Three commissioned Dermot O’Leary’s First Time Voters’ Question Time on the back of all the interest.
Then there’s the funny side of the chat. Have I Got News for You remains a perennial BBC One hit, while Russell Howard’s Good News recently served up more than a million viewers, making it the biggest new show on BBC Three all year. On the radio, The Vote Now Show and The News Quiz are currently playing for laughs and getting audiences queuing round the block – back in the Sixties there were full-scale ructions when the BBC broadcast political satire during the run-up to an election. No longer.
And now Frank Skinner has entered the fray. The comedian is back on TV after an absence of five years to present Frank Skinner’s Opinionated, an audience-led, topical ramble that, with perfect timing, just happens to be hitting our screens the night after the first leaders’ debate reminded us that po-faced political ping pong can be a little bit draining.
“Basically, I just thought, ‘What do I like doing best?’,” says Skinner. “Last year I spent a lot of time doing what I called the Credit Crunch Cabaret at the Lyric theatre [in London] in which I did topical material every week. And I really liked doing that. And I really liked messing about with the audience. And I found that I really liked working with other comedians.”
So Opinionated will feature all three elements – it’s Skinner, two other comics and a live audience picking two or three stories from the news as starting points and running with them. The emphasis is on the light-heartedness, he says, rather than facts and figures. “If you are trying to be funny the only way you can deal with politics is through the human angle. It’s more interesting if Gordon Brown’s a bully than if he’s going to introduce a new taxation policy as far as a comedy show goes.”
It’s the audience, he stresses, that is the show’s secret weapon. “I really want the audience to be a big part of the show,” he says. “The only time you see it on telly is on straight programmes like Question Time. And even then, they never really use them very thoroughly. I’m the sort of comic who uses the audience a lot and I don’t know why that’s not on television.”
An equally valid question might be why Skinner, one of the sharpest wits and most natural performers we have, hasn’t been on TV for so long either. “I got a bit jaded about TV shows, he says, “and I didn’t want to be doing anything that I don’t really care about.” He quit his own chat show and a reported £3m deal, in 2005. “I just did other things. I went to the World Cup, I wrote some books. I tried to write a novel after the chat show ended.” [He got to 60,000 words and gave up.]
And then began what he calls his “I need to prove what an intelligent man I am” phase. Skinner, a born funnyman, started cropping up in some redoubtably unfunny corners such as Panorama, Newsnight, Question Time and This Week. “I think I got delusions of grandeur that I was becoming a social commentator,” he says. “I’ve slightly got that out of my system now. Maybe I’ve got something to say but I’d rather make people laugh.”
Part of what took him back to comedy was watching a large part of his savings disappear, courtesy of AIG. “I was a victim of the credit crunch and basically half my life savings went,” he says. “That was quite good for my motivation.”
With Skinner back on television an enticing prospect emerges. There is, of course, about to be a vacancy for a gifted comic interviewer on BBC One. So go on, Frank. Fancy stepping into Jonathan Ross’s shoes? “I would have definitely said no to that before August of last year,” he replies. “But I interviewed Russell Brand on a one-off show and I really enjoyed it. I was very happy to be the second most important person in the show, trying to bring out the best of Russell. I’d forgotten – when you get people you want to talk to, it’s actually quite an exciting job.”
That sounds just a little like the coyest of job applications. And Friday Night with Frank Skinner does have a ring to it. “Well I haven’t had the call. Put it that way,” he says. At least satisfying the nation’s newly copious appetite for topical discussion will be enough to keep him busy till the phone rings.
Frank Skinner’s Opinionated begins tonight on BBC Two at 10.00pm
Frank Skinner fears his death could be short on gags
Jan 15 2012
sundaymercury.net
Frank Skinner has revealed his greatest fear about dying – that some of his gags might go unheard. At 54, he fears he will die with hundreds of jokes still left to tell to his fans.
Frank, from Oldbury in the Black Country, said: “Eric Morecambe died at 58 and it makes me think I’d better get out as many jokes as I can in the time remaining. I don’t want to be dying with a lot left over.”
Speaking candidly about confronting the challenge of middle age, he said: “I have the comic’s combination of self-doubt and ridiculous self-confidence. But I’d say the latter dominates. People generally want celebrities to be unhappy, or the whole thing is terribly unfair, isn’t it? You want a battle with the bottle, or a broken heart. With me, it was the former. When I drank, my default destination was the pub – unless I was going to a football match – and then I went before and after. Since I stopped drinking, I’ve seen London, where I now live, as an enormous Fisher-Price activity centre. It’s the zeal of the convert.”
Frank, a keen West Bromwich Albion fan, said: “It’s hard to achieve something truly wondrous unless you’re prepared to sit alone in a room for hours on end. I work to a strict schedule. Work starts at 10am and finishes at 6pm, with a meat pie in the middle. I’ve done some dull jobs in my time, like carrying broken glass around a glass factory and tipping it in a large hole. I told myself that if I ever got a job on my own terms, I’d put everything into it. I don’t want to have paid more respect to a job that I hated than to one I love. Also, I worry that the comedy bird may fly away if you don’t feed it.”
Frank said: “I find I am unable to work from home. Actually, I am able to work – but unable to stop; if the laptop’s there, I carry on. When I open the office door it’s work time and when I close it, I stops. I guess I’m quite driven. I think celebrities should have special dispensation to look ridiculous; I possess a range of hooded tops. But when I turned 50 I started to worry about it. What I don’t want to do is adopt a kind of ‘midlife crisis chic’, so I am slowly ticking off things I can’t wear.
“Having seen author, humorist and theatre director Jonathan Miller, who is 77, wearing jeans, I don’t think I can ever go there again. I don’t want to be seen as clinging on. I used to attend a lot of red carpet events until I realised you just end up cradling a glass of Vimto, talking to someone from EastEnders. I’ve started to like staying in. I put on clothes with no zips or buttons. Everything is held together by fleeciness and elastication, a middle-aged man’s Babygro – and watch TV.”
Frank will host a new series of Room 101 starting on BBC1 next Friday (Jan 20) at 8.30pm.
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