YouSaid · the spoken record

Frank Skinner

lines on the record: 54
first: 2010-06-13
most recent: 2010-06-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“This is difficult because really it should be pen and paper because as soon as I get off the desert island, obviously I want to tour with Frank Skinner's Desert Island tour when I talk about my funny routines about tropical parrots and stuff like that. But I would love to have a ukulele on there because part of my George Formby fandom is that I started playing a ukulele. So I'd love to get really, really good on the ukulele.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I like to be learning stuff all the time. I feel that one should be having actual lessons in something all times. I've done ice skating, horse riding, drawing salsa, tango, many, many things. So I'd like to teach myself French because it's been my New Year's resolution to learn French since nineteen eighty six.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I am a man who is prone to obsessions, and a few years ago I discovered a band called The Fall, and although I was late forties at the time, I was like a fifteen year old again. I bought all their records, I listened to them every day, I saw them on tour seven or eight times and I've continued to do that. I wallow in the fall. In truth, if I went to a desert island, I'd probably take just eight fall tracks, but I decided to be responsible and I just went for this one.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They did, yeah They put a little advert in the paper with a sort of mortar board and a rolled up scroll logo at the top So yeah they were proud of that I don't know how they would have been about my comedy career because I mean we had lived in a house where you weren't allowed to swear in the house and all that and I think they might have been a bit shocked by it but the one regret because I think I would have been I don't know if I would have been quite the same comedian if they had been alive I think I might have been a bit ashamed of my material but I do wish I'd had a few Bob when they were alive but I remember having a dream where I saw my mum and she was on an open top boss tour in the West Midlands and she said I love getting out about and seeing things and I said Well done if you want to go out I'll send you anywhere in the world you want to go you know I'll send you anywhere and she said oh that's brilliant So I started saying all the places they could go and I woke up and I remember thinking why haven't I done this before? And then of course I remember they were both dead so the big regret rather than them seeing me as the big”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you are meeting them, but only enough to give them some painful memories, probably. So, you know, if it happened, I'm not saying it would break my heart, but I don't know if it is responsible to start having children when you're 53.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm not married, but I live with my girlfriend, and it kind of feels like being married. Kids I guess I just found the right person too late, really. So I could end up as one of those, you know those kind of dams you see like American chat show hosts who have children when they're 70. And I always feel without that you're sort of meeting your child at the revolving door of life. They're just on the way in and you're just on the way out.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A compliment, I suppose. But even when you said that then, I felt a tingle because I love that. I went to see George Formby's grave and I expected the big epitaph and it said George Formby in brackets comedian. And I thought that is all I want on my grave. That would make me very, very happy. This particular song as well, I think every man in the world has at some point asked himself this question. It's called Why Don't Women Like Me?”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This number seven is the magnificent George Formby doing Why Don't Women Like Me? I have to say I like seeing myself as part of a British comedy tradition. I like to think that I walk in the same path as Chaplin and George Formby and people like that.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Am I only really get neurotic about my work, I think I get very fretful that one day the bird of comedy will fly away from my shoulder and leave me alone and naked.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mm. But you know, I think that happens to everyone. I think we all know people in a certain edited way. We have a little sense of who they are, which is often mistaken, and and certainly incomplete. You know, I was doing this fantasy football program for the BBC and people used to say to me, God, you get through some beer on that. I always drank water on. I very clearly drank water on it. I spoke in interviews about being a practicing Catholic. I mean, by that stage, everyone knew I'd got two degrees and stuff. But people just thought, oh no, he likes football and he does dirty jokes. He is the king of the lads. And I didn't feel strongly enough to try and fight that because, you know, there are laddish elements to me, but they're combined with all sorts of other things.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the next choice is craft work, I am very much a city boy. And what I love about craft work is they sort of celebrate cities and industrialization and they sound like they're a machine. So I've completely fell for craft work. And this is a song called Neon Lights, which is about as close as they get to romance.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I got a place at Birmingham Polytechnic doing English, and every day I went in and learnt new stuff, and it was amazing I couldn't wait to get in, but the hangovers were getting worse. And I then went and did a master's degree, but I got the flu and I couldn't drink. And I went three days without a drink. It's the first time I'd been three days without a drink for about twelve years. And I thought, well, see if I can keep this up. So there was no pledges, no big moment.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They did talk to me about it, but you know, I mean, who listens to their parents? You know, my dad got in drunk, my brothers had gone in drunk. It was a bit of a family tradition. I think it was just accepted that that's the way it went.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if it was a pie chart, it would be a lot bigger than the reading. I remember I would go to the supermarket and think I'll meat pies twenty four p that's two and a half pints. I'm not paying that. So it became my currency.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably spent it on Cider at that stage. So I went home and told my dad I'd been expelled, and that was one of the few times he ever hit me. And I remember he threw his overalls, that made his dirty work overalls, and said we had better go and get down the factory with the rest of us then. So I think he thought I might do something more special, you know. And I went and worked in a factory, as was predicted. And then I did a series of other factory jobs, which were all quite, you know, grim. So I decided I was going to do evening classes and see if I could get some qualifications. I didn't know why. I wasn't running two. I was running away from.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I found it where they threw the dinner tickets, the used dinner tickets, and then I resold them. Much cheaper can I point out But it never occurred when they add serial numbers on them, and that they would notice things like the money being down. So”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were going brilliantly, I was getting loads of laughs. I wasn't doing any work at all. I didn't even tell my parents I was doing O levels.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh God, I was unbearable in those days because now I have a legitimate outlet for the comedy, but then that was it, so I was never off. You know, I'd be using props and doing all sorts of things. They were my audience, you know, so I gave it the words. And, you know, it's very nice being, you know, known as the funny one in the group.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I started drinking when I was about 15. I think we found a pub that would be prepared to serve us at that age. And I found that it seemed to make me funnier and happier. And generally speaking, a much, much better person.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, this is Johnny Cash. The first gig I ever went to was Johnny Cash. And this song I used to play this song before I went on stage in the dressing room because I find impossible to hear this song without feeling uplifted and happy. It's like taking some sort of drug. This is the happy pill that people speak on.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say that, isn't it? Football was so different in those days as well. The smell of wood vines and meat pies when you went. It was all terraces. As a kid, you know, I probably saw about six goals in about ten years because you couldn't see a thing on the terraces. Kids used to take milk crates and stand on and stuff like that. It felt very much like you were part of something.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But as they were exchanging shirts at the end, they played it over the loudspeakers, and I thought great, and then the crowd really, really sangi. And that was when I knew we'd got something special. And I was with David Badil and Ian Brody, and we'd written it together. And I was saying that this is our magical summer. We have to savour every second of this. We'll never have anything like this again. Because, you know, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a footballer, as many kids do. And I was awful at it. I wasn't even borderline. But this was as close as I was ever going to get to be really, to be part of an England World Cup squad, to have the official song.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean I remember lying in bed and hearing drunks going past, you know, singing it as they caroused at night and it was the end it was in the European Championship in ninety six at the end of the England Scotland game and we just won two one. I'm sorry to bring this up.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I did a very strange thing. It makes me wonder how I got away with it. I'd sort of take my jacket off and then put them under my jacket. So it looked like I had some sort of square coat hanger in my jacket. And then I carry out this kind of self-supporting garment. It's a wonder I mustn't stop really looking back.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is something of a. This is, I love the fact this is on the same program as Mozart. This is the England 1970 World Cup squad singing back home.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that after that I thought that the idea of dying of a broken art is not quite as metaphorical as I thought it was. I think you can just not want to be around anymore.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't see them very often. I probably see them, you know, really once a year or something like that, once or twice a year. We're not a terribly close family in that respect in that they never visit each other even though they live quite close together. They don't even send Christmas cards. And I think when my mum and dad died, the hob of the wheel went.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has really made me and I suppose I'm reticent to talk about him because I don't want anyone to not understand how brilliant he was.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I do am happy to talk about him. I think it's easy for other people to misunderstand because he was in many ways a difficult character. And I think it's easy to think, oh, I can imagine the kind of father he was. But you wouldn't then get a sense of the amount of warmth and love. He was just an incredibly open human being. And his anger poured out, as did his love, as did his joy. And I really liked that. I still know when I watched the FA Cup final, he used to insist that we were all in the room for a bide with me. And I cannot watch that now without crying. When I've been to the FA Cup final and I'm in company, often like, you know, at some celebrity jolly, I think on earth am I going to get through a bide with me? Because I just know I'll think of my dad watching it and I'll think of when he used to talk to me about football and when he used to tell me jokes, when he used to sing. And all...”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My dad would, you know, do things like, say, Grace, but like I say, he would also get drunk and hit people. So, you know, it's all about balance.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this was a song my dad used to sing a lot, and it's called The Volunteer Organist, and it tells a tale of something that happens in a church on a Sunday morning. And this song is, it's got some great turns of phrasing. I very much think of him singing this when I was a kid.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, she would give. They used to have, I mean, their former communication was mainly arguing, and he used to do this thing that they'd have a blazing row about something, and she'd say, I'm going to Ben. He could say, No, you sit there, sit there now. And she'd sit in the chair. And he'd sing two lilting romantic ballads to end the evening. And then that would be it. And he always used to say this thing, there's only one thing I want, if you die on the Monday, I want to die on the Tuesday. And he'd say that after some terrible, terrible row. And when she did die, my mummy died within a year, and really I watched him physically dwindle. So for all the arguing and general chaos, I think there was genuine love there, yeah.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what he did was my mum and my brother refused to take him a bet to the betting office and he didn't go and the horses won. And we had two sheds and a pigeon loft in the garden, and he didn't say anything. He just went up the garden and he started physically dragging all three of them into the centre of the garden, which was quite a feat because they were full of garden tools and indeed pigeons. Such was the inferno that ensued that I remember the next door neighbour her lace curtain singed up the windows. So he had, I think it's fair to say he had a temper.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yea, he did have a temper at home, but I don't used to think it was he wasn't like, you know, beating us up or anything like that. But we knew that when his voice hit a certain register, it was time to start behaving well.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, they worked in a whole string of In the West Midlands at the time, there was so much work and so much industry that you really could leave a job on a Monday and get a new one on a Tuesday.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mum was much quieter and had never drank never smoked, but was quite funny on the sly, as it were. She had a sort of drier sense of humour. My dad was much broader and louder. So for example, they used to my dad used to vote conservative, he was a working class conservative. My mom always voted Labour. So one year they made an agreement that rather than cancelled each other out, they just wouldn't vote at all. It just saved the bother. And we were watching the telly that night with the election results and it says, you know, the polling booths have no clothes, and my mom under a breath said, I voted. My dad went absolutely crazy. So she was crafty.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he had that kind of approach. He's quite a big drinking man and a very much a big character. Football and he loved singing, he sang all the time.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. My dad, if he went to put a bet on, he had to put a suit on. In fact, he used to send my mom to put the bets on because he said if I put a suit and I might as well go to the pub as well. I remember him getting up one day and he got the suit on so I knew he was going to the pub. And he looked out the window and said, what a lovely day for changing a fiver.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I rarely went to the other side of the street. When I walked up and down that road, it never occurred to me to walk on the other side of the street. It did seem like an alien land.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, there is an element of stereotype about us. And also the road that we lived on, there was council houses on our side of the road and private houses on the other. So I had a very early sense of the class war.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right, yeah. I've got two brothers and a sister. And there's quite a gap, the seven years between me and Keith my next oldest. So it was an element of only child even though three of us slept in a bedroom.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one of the things I spent a lot of money on was I bought one of Elvis Presley's shirts for 11 grand. Elvis Presley has kind of been my hero since as long as I can remember. I think my big brother Terry liked Elvis and he gave me this album. I played it, I mean I can't hear how many times. When we play this track now, I'm going to be expecting it to go. In the background, because this really was like someone was in the studio doing eggs and bacon in the corner. And I just completely fell in love with it. I don't just know the words. I know every little grunt. I know every click of the symbol. You know, I listen to this so many times. And I remember that shirt. I wore it on a TV show. It's one of the few times I've worn it in public. Because then I was able to claim it against tax as stagewear. Little tip for anyone who's listening.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is this true? No, really. I drive a very run of the mill car. I do live in a big posh flat. I like a nice view. At the end of two consecutive three-year contracts with ITV, I remember shaking the hands of the Bosser and saying, oh, thanks so much for my flat.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, not I'm not a very extravagant man, really. You know, as long as I've got a season ticket for Westbromidge Albion.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a millionaire for good what it was. Anyway, so first I thought I'd lost it all. And I went home and said to my girlfriend, look, bit of bad news. I think I might be broke. And she said, you know, we'll be all right. You know, you can still get work. You can go back and do the clubs. We can move to a smaller place. And we actually practically dealt with it quite well. I never really had the big panic about it, which I find now very reassuring. But it also gave me my hunger back, I think. It made me think, no, I've got to get out there and do it. And if anything put the mojo back in me, it was the idea that I might not have any money left.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You lost money. I was a victim of the credit crunch. Yeah, I'd been persuaded by my personal bankers that AIG was a very, very safe place to put my life savings. And AIG, as you may remember, had a bit of a hard time. So there was a period when I thought I'd lost it all.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is hard work, but I think I was starting to lose my mojo a little. I mean with the TV things. I felt going through the motions a bit and I felt that I needed to return to the source, as it were. I don't mean to start drinking again. I mean source S-O-U-R-C-E and go back to stand up comedy.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Intimidated because I thought he's probably an expert and he's going to ask me something technical. And he said, did you get the tingle? And I said, did you get that as well? He said, oh yeah, I think most of the people in here would have got that. It is a bit magical. I can't think of anything else like that. I haven't explained that very well, but it blew me away.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it started off and I was a bit bored and then this woman, the Queen of the Night, comes on and does this Arya. I don't think I even knew the word Arya at the time, but she did things with the human voice which I couldn't believe were actually leaving another human being. And I realized that I listened to the whole thing with my mouth open. I mean, it completely blew me away. And it was the first time I thought, you know, there might be something in this opera lark. And then a few weeks later, I went to see Placido Domingo. And he hit a note which I think was a high C, and I felt a physical shiver go. I mean, I moved in my seat. It was like being struck by lightning. And I was in the bar after and a very kind of posh guy in an evening suit came up to me and started asking me if I liked the opera.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I got an office that I write in, and it's very, very close to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. And I didn't really know anything about opera, but I thought, well, as they're neighbours, they ought to go in and see what they're doing. So I went and saw the magic flute. And I just played, like, I didn't get one of these 200 quid tickets. I paid like 20 quid and sat in the opera amphitheatre as it's called.”
2010-06-13 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Skinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source