Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English comedian Frank Skinner.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
Christopher Graham Collins, professionally known as Frank Skinner, is an English comedian, actor, presenter and writer. At the 2001 British Comedy Awards, he was named Best Comedy Entertainment Personality. His television work includes Fantasy Football League from 1994 to 2004, The Frank Skinner Show from 1995 to 2005, Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned from 2000 to 2005, and Room 101 from 2012 to 2018. Since 2009 he has hosted The Frank Skinner Show on Absolute Radio, broadcast live on Saturdays and later released as a podcast.
My mum, Doris, was a source of unalloyed love. She lived for her family and would literally give you her last pound. I think she's made me a kinder person, because I think: Do I want to help this person? If my mum was around, she would have.
I don't think that I'm a misogynistic person at all.
My comedy is my life turned into jokes. I think a lot of people wouldn't like that because you end up talking about stuff where you don't always come out so well. You have to be prepared to say, 'This is me, being a prat.'
I stopped drinking on 24 September 1986.
I thought I used to be as 'me' on stage as it's possible to be, but on the radio show I found it's possible to be more 'me.'
Alcoholism and country music are both tremendous aids to self-dramatisation.
Throughout the day I suddenly get bursts of excitement about not very much at all, like those things in public toilets that puff out air freshener.
After I became a professional comedian, I took to listening to Cash's classic hit 'Ring of Fire' before I went on stage. I always found it completely exhilarating.
Being a comic is the best possible job.
I actually like - if I may use the F word - fame. I like people stopping me in the street and saying, 'Can I have a photo?'
I read comic books when I was a kid. Now I have a passion for art and galleries that I think came from that. I didn't read a book without pictures until I was 21.
I'd got into Cash after I'd used my pocket money to buy his 'Live at San Quentin' album, just because I liked the cover. It turned out I liked the record inside even more.
I think when anyone says you look like a famous person you fiercely deny it, and then go around hoping other people will say it, too.
I haven't had fun since the 1980s!
I have seen pretty horrible blokes thinking they can do pretty much what they like over the years, not just in showbusiness but in ordinary jobs and in pubs and stuff.
I would like to talk about poems like I talk about football.
I don't get many compliments on my looks.
The Daily Mirror called me a 'money-grabbing reptile' once. I could cope with the reptile part, but 'money-grabbing' hurt.
Now, although I did some jobs that I really hated doing, my God, they really make you appreciate it when you get a job that you love doing.
I can't swim. I've got better, but I can't go out of my depth. As soon as I smell chlorine my heart starts racing.
This might sound slightly ridiculous but I play the ukulele for at least an hour a day and I find something really blissful about it.
I suppose that every relationship I have been in has had a lot of arguments. I find it very hard to keep things at the bickering level.
The first live gig I ever saw was Johnny Cash at the Birmingham Odeon in 1971. I was 14 and went with my dad.
You have more freedom on radio. When people used to tell me they preferred radio to TV, I always thought they were making the best of things because they couldn't get any telly work, but now I understand, sort of.
One of the most exciting things about supporting West Bromwich Albion was watching Johnny Giles play in the late '70s.
I don't know anything about politics, so I don't do political material.
I was a very happy but quite solitary kid. I spent hours playing on my own, mainly with toy soldiers, and played entire World Cup football tournaments in the garden with commentary in my head.
Sometimes a poem appeals to me technically, just because of the way a line feels on my lips. Sometimes it is because it says something I have felt, or sometimes something that I suddenly recognise. Other times it can change the way I see something.
I have spoken to many broadcasters about bringing poetry to television and they're usually not keen.
I used to do homophobic material that I didn't recognise as homophobic. It's the only stuff I really look back on and think, 'I just wouldn't do that again.'
On radio there's an obligation to be funny or interesting, and ideally both.
I don't like taboo subjects and I don't like elephants in the room. If there's an elephant in the room, I really want to absolutely examine it.
If you strip a lot of performers to the core, you find that urge to show off.
I like proper jokes. I don't like people who get applause because the audience agree with them.
There is a sense that if you're not on the telly then you might have died. I'm aware that's how people largely judge you.
I did a few mainstream clubs in Birmingham when I started out. Racist comedy was absolutely the norm. Every act was doing it and when blokes talked about their wives or women in any way it was always derogatory.
Dad was a keen Roman Catholic, but I left the church when I was 17, not because I'd stopped believing - it was more doctrinal stuff, like that there was no biblical mention of purgatory. I went back when I was 28, just before I gave up drink.
I love being able to talk about anything.
I think it is a humanising thing, comedy.
I grew up on Laurel and Hardy. I'm aware from my own experience that comedy has got quite a fierce sell-by date, but that doesn't seem to apply to them; they made films I can remember laughing at when I was five that I'd still happily watch today.
I think I was probably a 60-year-old man in waiting for most of my life. Even as a child I had something of the man in my sixties about me.
My dad had a dominoes team, and there was a Frank Skinner in it. When I was a kid I used to look at the team card and think it was a brilliant name, so that's what I went for.
I must have been one of the few New Lads who was teetotal.
I don't know what new laddism was really.
I'm not a man with many plans, but offers come in and I think this one or that one will be really interesting, so I say yes.
I can't tell you why, but I feel like I'm more me on radio than on television. It's because I'm more relaxed. The reason I feel that way is a mystery to me, mind you.
It's important that comedians talk about difficult and dangerous subjects; you have to be very careful that you don't just hear the subject heading and think, oh, this is bad, they shouldn't be talking about that. You have to hear what's being said.
I've always been wary of anyone who calls themselves a 'shock comic.'
I think part of being human is jokes.
I can't remember ever being desperate for money, even when I didn't have any.
My dream has always been to live somewhere in London where the chimneys look as if they could have been used in 'Mary Poppins.'
Scarily, I was only about 11 or 12 when my mum pointed out my resemblance to Stan Laurel. I know he's the ultimate loser, but I was happy to hear it.
I have a buoyancy about me, so no matter what happens, even when my parents died, I don't go under.
I think Jimmy Carr is very funny and probably the most industrious comedian I know and I really respect him for that.
For clothes I usually go to Ben Sherman.
I wish I had started to play the ukulele much earlier in life.
I quite like being a 'comedy elder statesman.' I am a big fan, I go to watch loads of new comics, and I like the fact that they don't go, 'Why are you here?'
Being on your own in a gallery is the biggest treat, as long as the lights are switched on.
I'm quite testosterone intolerant, I just don't like it.
I love touring. Not just the shows, I love hotels. I love motorway services at three o'clock in the morning. I like long car journeys, so I like all the trimmings basically.