Frank Skinner Autobiography by Frank Skinner

the presence of. He just knows what comedy is about. Whenever he made directorial points about sketches or other set-pieces on Fantasy Football , which he did often, they were always on the button. If he fancied it, he could be a big-time comedy director, no problem. Anyway, all this gives Dave massive self-belief in regard to comedy, but on those rare occasions when he sinks downward, it can take a lot to raise him up again. Eventually, I got a couple of laughs out of him and then he started to join in a bit. By the time the show went up he was ready to rumble. Teamwork.
    That night’s show was particularly interesting in that there was a bloke in the audience who knew a woman I’d had a one-night stand with several years before. She was a pretty girl and, apparently, a very good footballer. I believe a trial for England was mentioned. Anyway, she stayed the night in my hotel room and we had a long post-coital chat about the merits of playing 4-4-2 and the decline of the orthodox winger. The next day I dropped her off at the station and that was that. But the bloke in the audience was now telling me that two months later she became a lesbian. Of course, I suggested that her thoughts must have been, ‘Well, nothing’s gonna top that’, but, in truth, it was a strange tale. Needless to say, the audience and Dave liked it a lot. I said I should have guessed she was on that road, firstly because she was a lady footballer, and secondly because while I was having a cigarette after, she smoked a pipe.
    On the way home that night, I remembered she had told me she was hoping to become a marine biologist. Looking back, it was probably a euphemism.
    When I was five years old, I developed the urge to shout as loud as I possibly could; to really roar and scream and holler until I couldn’t roar and scream and holler anymore. I can still remember the feeling of wanting to do it but knowing that my parents, understandably, would go crazy if I did. This was where having an outside toilet became a distinct advantage. Our kitchen, which operated as a living room, was at the back of the house, with a door leading into the back yard and garden. Just across the yard was the outside toilet. It had no light, so going at night involved a good deal of guesswork. In the winter it was bitterly cold. In the summer, spiders. In the early hours, it was a long scary journey to have a mere wee. Hence the piss-buckets. On a good day there was toilet paper, on a bad day there was newspaper. My dad had, with the aid of some acquired timber, of course, built a sort of lean-to between the toilet and the wall of the house, which housed my mother’s ‘maid’ and tub.
    David Baddiel always says that when I talk about my childhood, he becomes convinced that I grew up in the nineteenth century. Here goes. In my early childhood, my mom would wash our clothes with a maid and tub. This tub was a metal barrel about forty inches high with a diameter of about two feet. Mom would fill the tub with water from the kettle and several saucepans, add soap-powder and then stick in the dirty clothes. The ‘maid’ worked like a pestle in a pestle and mortar. It was basically a broom-handle with a big lump of wood at one end that my mom would grind into the clothes to clean them.
    Outside toilets with newspaper, clothes washed outside in a big pestle and mortar. Y’know, I can see what Dave means.
    Anyway, about my urge to shout as loud as I possibly could. One night, I went to the kitchen door as if I was off to the toilet. It was dark outside. The air smelt sweet. One wall of the outside toilet was hugged by an enormous honeysuckle bush. I never really noticed the scent during the day, but at night it was intoxicating. To a five-year-old, it made the back yard a magical place. I walked through that back yard and into the garden. The only light source was from the kitchen window. I could still hear the sound of the telly and the