INTERVIEW
With a new stand-up show in the West End, comedian Frank Skinner, 67, talks finding happiness in later life and how becoming a dad aged 55 changed him
Frank Skinner is tentatively trying on a pink velvet tuxedo. A stylist tells him that it’s just like the one Daniel Craig chose for the world premiere of No Time to Die. ‘Daniel Craig,’ he says dramatically, ‘nicked my cleaner.’ It’s delivered with the impeccable tone and timing of a stand-up comic, but this isn’t the preamble to a gag.
‘I had a celebrity cleaner who would say to me, “I can’t do Tuesday, I’ve got to go to a film premiere”,’ he continues. ‘Eventually, it was: “I can’t come any more because Daniel Craig’s offered me extra hours”. He might not have realised she’d have to choose between us but I like to think Quantum of Solace was the Bond film no one ever remembers because I put a formal Catholic curse on him after that.’
He’s joking about the curse, but there is a lot of the real Frank Skinner in that story, too. He is wildly successful, wealthy, has a lovely life in an arty part of north London, and is a devout Catholic who wears a Rosary ring so he can say his ‘Hail Marys’ whenever he wants. Plus, he’s funny even when he’s only got an audience of one, such as today. He has been famous for more than three decades, thus far mostly as the eternal lad. Yet he’s just turned 67, and despite his boyish looks (‘I haven’t got a portrait in the attic, if that’s what you’re suggesting’) he loves the fact being bus pass age has – finally – brought him joy and fulfilment both at home and work.
His latest stand-up show, 30 Years of Dirt, is enjoying a newly extended run in London’s West End before he takes it out on a UK tour in March; his eponymous Poetry Podcast (Frank has been both anchored and set free by poetry his whole adult life) is back for another series; and his Saturday morning show on Absolute Radio bags a million listeners a week.
If that’s not enough, he is settled with his partner of 23 years, Cath, 54, who’s in artist management, and their 11-year-old son Buzz, who’d quite like his parents to get married. (Cath has turned down Frank’s proposals so many times he’s stopped asking –‘If I asked now she’d think it was a tax thing.’) ‘Some people despair when they get old,’ says Frank. ‘They look back to their teens as a golden time. Psychologically, I think I was already an old man when I was about 12. It’s like I had a jacket in my wardrobe that I really liked but that didn’t fit. Then I finally tried it on one day, and thought, “Yeah, I feel very comfortable in the old man role”.
‘The best thing about it is people accept excuses for you not doing things. You can say stuff like, “I’ve got trench foot” or “I’ve got rickets, so I can’t make it tonight” and t
