Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Frank Skinner - Page 2

For me personally, being a comedian is having funny ideas and saying them: it's not just saying them. I need the complete process.

Well, I think that the most exciting stage of any tour is getting the tour together. Because when new material works, there is no other feeling like that. It's just brilliant. And for the first half of the tour, you're still often finding the extra stuff in that material. You're exploring it every night.

That's the way I like my posh people, up front. I like the fact that Jack Whitehall will talk about being posh, or David Mitchell.

There's only one thing more embarrassing than the celebrities talking about politics; and that's politicians talking about anything other than politics.

Neuromancer' by William Gibson is a cyberpunk classic.

I never mind people who can't stand football. It's the ones who say 'I quite like it' that get me. Because for me it's all-encompassing.

People are a bit surprised if I say anything bright but I've probably brought that on.

Now that I've met posh people, I think you meet some you like and some you don't.

I don't think I'm in love with television. I think I'm in love with stand-up, and I'm in love with radio. And then, television is my employer.

It is so rubbish when comics belittle their children in the misguided belief that it makes them look cool.

Not being a naturally-good-looking-ladies-man type of bloke, I hadn't had a tremendous amount of success with women. So when celebrity opened the door, I went a bit barmy.

I suppose when I started out I didn't know the kind of comic I wanted to be at all. So in a way, the audience wrote my act. I went in and did stuff that I would have done in the pub, and some of it they liked, and some of it they didn't. And I kept what they laughed at.

I did a tour of Sweden with Eddie Izzard in our early days, and he said, 'I'm thinking of talking about being a transvestite on stage. You should talk about being a Catholic.' I said, 'I think audiences will be more accepting of you being a transvestite than me being a Catholic.'

I think, as I've gone on, I've got a sense that there are some laughs I want, and some laughs I don't want.

I have never managed to find a sport I'm good at - I love sport but I just can't do it.

One of the nice things about becoming a stand-up, one of the great things about becoming a stand-up, is you realise you haven't been wasting all those years you thought you'd been wasting.

If you earn a lot of money you should pay a lot of tax.

I stopped drinking before I became a comic; one was a replacement for the other.

I was pleased Melissa Leo won Best Supporting Actress for 'The Fighter' at the Oscars. I hope that her outfits are maintained in some cinema museum.

I don't want a Lamborghini. Even if I was given one, I'd be like one of those people who won the speedboat on 'Bullseye' and have it in Exchange & Mart within 48 hours.

Alcoholic is a big word, but I'd have a hard time defending myself against it in court.

I'd rather be looked down on than beaten up.

The second gig I did was New Year's Eve at the Birmingham Anglers Club, and that started with booing.

Fame changes you and I suppose I stopped biting my lip for a while. I started to point out when people weren't doing their job properly.

My dreams are things like: I'm in the supermarket, I queue, and then I leave the supermarket. It's basically my life but I happen to be asleep.

Sometimes when you start improvising on stage, which I do a fair bit of, obviously you haven't planned it. But to be honest, it's not like I'm one of these blokes who is sitting at home pouring it all out and then does a different thing on stage.

As you get older, your injuries don't come with an anecdote any more, they just come.

If you can stop thinking, it's like rebooting your brain.

I think I'm quite broad-minded.

I remember when I turned 30 and I started doing sit-ups, I split with my girlfriend and stopped drinking and all sorts of things. It was a very weird time. But 60... I like it.

There is a period in your life when you need your parents and a period in your life where you only think you need your parents. Something clicks, there's a little switch that goes and your parents, who had been the wind beneath your wings, through no fault of their own can start to oppress a bit, can start to stop you doing stuff.

When I started earning, a lot of me didn't need worrying about anymore, so I had scope to worry about someone else. Money, I think, has made me kinder.

You can be funny about your kids without being unkind.

I'm enjoying Channel Four's '10 O'Clock Live.' I like the idea of putting together a dream team and seeing what happens. I also like 'Not Going Out,' the sitcom starring Lee Mack. It's a sitcom packed with jokes. Not many of them as frowned upon as lacking kudos.

If I'd have had kids in my 20s it would have been nightmarish.

I have this JPM thing: jokes per minute. I've worked out that I should get in about 12 punchlines in five minutes. I need them all. It's like when you walk down a road, if there's a lamp post that's out, it's fine if you can see the next one's alight, but if there's two out, that's a period of frightening darkness.

The edge of inappropriate is the spiritual home of the best stand-up comedy.

Poetry has always been this completely alien art to me. I am the sort of bloke who, when he gets into things, generally tries to have a go at doing them. But I've never thought I could write poetry.

I'm prepared to stand by what I say.

I like to turn up my collar when I'm leaving the theatre and feel like I'm some heroic comedian figure.

I honestly thought my marriage would work because me and the wife did share a sense of humour. We had to really, because she didn't have one.

You can spend your whole life trying to be popular, but at the end of the day, the size of the crowd at your funeral will be largely dictated by the weather.

We're always hearing about risk-takers whose risks paid off, but they are no braver than those whose risks end in ridicule.

Cider was my drink because I liked the taste and it made me stupid.

How do I relax? 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.

Professional footballers - those virile young stags of our modern culture - are near perpetual fountains of sputum.

So, Arsenal have signed Arsene Wenger because his name sounds a bit like the club. How long before Man Utd sign Stefan Kuntz?

A dog is not intelligent. Never trust an animal that's surprised by it's own farts

I'm world-famous in West Bromwich.