FOR a recovering alcoholic, Frank Skinner’s choice of the Freemason’s Arms as an interview venue might seem something of a temptation.
Yet, without even a glance at the optics, the comic whose day used to begin with several shots of Pernod says the closest he’s come to relapsing recently is sniffing booze.
“I stayed in a flat in Edinburgh a couple of years ago and they had put a complimentary decanter of whisky in there,” he tells me.
“I had a sniff of it every day.
“It smelled great.
“But I kept it at the nose, it never went on the lips.”
We are here to talk about Frank’s new podcasts, but it would be remiss not to ask the Three Lions cheerleader about England’s new German manager.
Frank chuckles as he remembers the last time he backed Teutonic footballing excellence.
It was 2002 and the comic said he hoped his “second-favourite team” Germany would defeat Brazil in the World Cup final.
“The Sun mocked me up in lederhosen under the headline ‘Franz Skinner’,” he says with a laugh.
Fast forward two decades, and both Frank and The Sun are behind Bavarian-born Thomas Tuchel to finally land some silverware for England.
So will Three Lions and “it’s coming home” get a reworking for the 2026 World Cup, with a bit of German thrown in?
“I don’t think we can’t do it again,” the stand-up says.
“Although it’s very tempting because at the next World Cup, it’ll be 60 years of hurt.
“And, as a poetry fan, to get one that scans that well again is very tempting.”
At 67, Frank is far from taking his foot off the showbiz throttle.
His 30 Years Of Dirt stand-up tour, with k**b jokes re-inserted, is still going down a storm across the country (except in the Isle of Man. More of which later).
Self-deprecating Frank loves bantering with the audience in a performance peppered with gags about pornography and masturbation.
The tour did not start out laden with filth.
He said of his routine: “I tried to clean it up.
“But every time I tried a dirty joke, it went uproariously.
“People like it and I like making people laugh.”
The audience also gets an insight into his life away from the stage.
During his act, the dad-of-one admits that his partner of 24 years, Cath Mason, has rejected marriage proposals four times.
When we meet at the pub near his home in the North London suburb of Hampstead, I ask him why she continually says no.
“Maybe it’s some terrible personal reason that I don’t know about,” he says.
“That she doesn’t actually like me as much as I think she does.
“Her parents got divorced, so she got a bit cynical about it and thinks if we get married it would be like a slight curse on the thing.”
He met Cath, 55, when she was working for his management company, adding: “As you get old, ‘my partner’, which is what I tend to call her, sounds like we’re solicitors.
“A man my age saying ‘my girlfriend’ is nearly as bad as a man my age saying ‘my skateboard’.
“There’s not a good word for someone you’ve been with for 24 years when you’re our age — other than wife or husband.
“So I’m going to keep plugging away.”
His son Buzz, 12, born when Frank was 55, has declared that Alan Carr is his favourite comedian.
With a smile, Frank adds: “You know that your kids are going to eventually say some cutting things.
“I didn’t want it to be this sincere and this cutting, to be honest.
“But I can live with it, I guess.”
And, in perhaps the ultimate act of rebellion towards his West Bromwich Albion-loving old man, Buzz doesn’t like football.
In a rite of passage, Frank took Buzz to his club’s stadium the Hawthorns with fellow West Brom celeb fan Adrian Chiles.
He bought his son the full Albion kit and they won 4-1 — but the magic failed to captivate Buzz.
Frank explains: “When he stood up on the chair to celebrate the fourth goal, he went through the seat and we couldn’t get him out.
“Adrian Chiles started trying to pull Buzz out.
“Whichever way he pulled him, Buzz was screaming.
“He was covered in bruises.”
It was like being the captain of a burning ship.
Frank Skinner
Frank’s mix of the personal and puerile in his stand-up tour has had rave reviews — except for a show earlier this month on the Isle of Man.
The comic admitted on his Frank Off The Radio podcast that he will never play the island again after his humour stiffed badly.
He recalls: “There was just one bloke in the audience who was really laughing, but I couldn’t see him — I could just hear him.
“It was like being the captain of a burning ship.
“I knew there was a lifeboat out there somewhere, but I just couldn’t get close enough.”
Now the lone laugher — Lon Pinkerton — has outed himself in local news outlet The Isle Of Man Today, much to Frank’s delight.
In his other new podcast, he dissects the works of famous poets.
Back in the Nineties, not many would have had him fronting Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast.
I suggest to him that many back then might have filed it alongside Alan Partridge’s failed TV commissions, Monkey Tennis and Youth Hostelling With Chris Eubank.
Yet he and Fantasy Football League co-star David Baddiel were always closet intellectuals.
Sporting a Superman watch on his wrist, Frank explains: “I did two English degrees in the Eighties.
“I was already deep into poetry before I became King of the New Lads.
“I had a football rattle in one hand and the complete works of John Donne in the other.
“People have this idea that you’ve got to have a posh accent and have been to the right school to like poetry.
“That is absolutely not true.”
Born Christopher Graham Collins in 1957, the youngest of four children, he grew up in a council house in West Bromwich.
There was a “ps bucket” in the bedroom and just eight books in the house, including the Bible.
He was the first in his family to get a degree. His BA in English from Birmingham Polytechnic was followed with a Master’s at Warwick University.
Then followed three years on the dole, factory work and a disappearance into an ocean of booze.
He started teaching English at the Halesowen College of Further Education in the West Midlands.
It was the college’s head of drama who helped him break into showbusiness after inviting him to take part in a play at Edinburgh.
While in the Scottish capital, he saw stand-up for the first time and finally found his calling.
There was already a Chris Collins in Equity, the actors’ union, so he borrowed the name Frank Skinner from a member of his father’s pub dominoes team.
It’s much easier to say I am an alcoholic than a Catholic.
Frank Skinner
Yet his West Midlands family still know him as Graham.
“Everyone in my family is called by their second name,” he explains.
“If I send them a birthday card it’s ‘lots of love, Graham’.
“But I can’t think of anyone from my London life that calls me Chris rather than Frank.”
And what became of the real Frank Skinner?
He reveals: “Someone very kindly sent me a picture of his grave in a cardboard frame which I had up on the wall for ages, just as a reminder.”
Frank gave up alcohol when his early morning glasses of sherry became shots of Pernod.
Since then, his comedy and his faith have helped sustain him.
He says: “It’s much easier to say I am an alcoholic than a Catholic.
“Alcoholism sounds quite daring, reckless and exciting.
“I have literally sat on wasteground with a friend and passed a bottle of cider to each other at 8.30am.
“And it felt great, like we’re alternative people.
“Obviously it didn’t feel like that five or ten years later.
“Or maybe it did, but it brought too many horrors with it.
“But being a Catholic doesn’t have any of that sort of romance.
“People like the weirdness of Catholicism, but it’s not cool.”
His old comic partner David Baddiel lives not far from the Freemason’s.
Frank says: “I know it’s an old tradition that double acts despise each other but I very much regard Dave as one of my closest friends.
“He’s been a very big influence on my life.”
And the thrill of making an audience laugh remains undimmed.
“I probably would be quite a good retiree,” Frank says.
“I would just read poetry, hang out with the family, watch cricket and football.
“But my mum and dad both retired aged 65 and were dead before they were 70.
“I think retirement is a very dangerous business.”
