Frank Skinner Autobiography by Frank Skinner Page B

charity do for the Peter Cook Foundation. The guests included former Stones bassist Bill Wyman, and Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. Ronnie’s son’s band provided the entertainment. The main event ended at about eleven but the band played on.
    Meanwhile, Caroline and I, hand-in-hand, went into the ladies’ toilets and had fantastic bang-bang sex in one of the cubicles. When we returned, hand-in-hand, there were only about twenty guests and a handful of waiters left in the room, at which point, two Rolling Stones decided to get up and jam. People began getting that I’ll-tell-my-grandkids-about-this look in their eyes. Then, even better, they started to play a Stones classic, ‘It’s All Over Now’. Ronnie Wood was on vocals, but halfway through admitted he didn’t know the words and asked if anyone did. When I was fifteen, I sang in a band that played a set which was about eighty per cent Rolling Stones. Of course I knew the words, but I couldn’t get up and jam with Bill Wyman and Ronnie Wood. I just couldn’t. Then, despite my fear, I could feel myself rising from my seat. It wasn’t a sudden burst of confidence, it was Caroline, literally pushing me to my feet. ‘Come on, Frank,’ called Ronnie. Suddenly, I couldn’t even remember what reticence meant. I did ‘It’s All Over Now’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, and ‘Not Fade Away’, by which time I was sharing a mike with Ronnie for choruses and holding up fingers to let my fellow performers know when we were going to end, bring in a solo or whatever. We did ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘Johnny B. Goode’ to add a bit of variety. If only I’d had some rose petals! Yeah, it was a special night. I’d have queued eighteen hours in the rain for that, anytime. And jamming with Bill and Ron was pretty good as well.
    Incidentally, going back to Robbie Williams, I recently took Caroline to see him in concert. Like all other women in Britain, Caroline fancies Robbie Williams. He is, I have to admit it, an excessively good-looking man. I’m not. I am, on a good day, of very average appearance. I have convinced myself over the years that appearance is only part of the package, and that I can make up a lot of the shortfall with charm and wit, or, in later years, with money and celebrity. The charm and wit supplement has been, at best, a bit hit-and-miss. I have often heard it said that it’s possible to laugh a woman into bed, like laughter was some sort of morally acceptable date-rape drug. It just isn’t true. Before I started doing comedy professionally, the normal process was I’d meet a girl, make her laugh until she was doubled-up and breathless, and then, when she had composed herself again, she’d say, ‘Well, I’ve had a fantastic evening, now I’m going home with this physically attractive bloke.’ The whole ‘laugh them into bed’ thing is a myth invented by ugly blokes who think they’re funny and women who want to pretend that they can see beyond mere physical attraction.
    When I was at university, I knew a guy called Mike. He was a really remarkable human being. He was very funny, and so intelligent that other universities were trying to poach him to do a Ph.D at their place. He was a rare combination of very clever and really nice, and not unpleasant in appearance. I once watched him chatting to a girl on a bench in the university grounds. He was turning on the charm to the point where I was nearly falling for him myself. Behind where they sat, there was a bloke digging a hole. He was wearing those jeans and boots that workmen wear. The ones that look as if cement was part of the original design. I mean, he was digging a hole, for fuck’s sake. In soil. There was no cement, except on his jeans and boots.
    Workmen wear this cement-chic so they can walk into pubs and sandwich bars and greasy-spoon cafes, or sit on the side