Watching Frank Skinner perform his latest one man show at the Gielgud Theatre reminded me of what it must have been like back in the dying days of variety. By the late 1970s and early 1980s cheeky jokesters and all-round entertainers such as Tarby, Brucie, Doddy and Manning were feeling the heat from a new breed of alternative comedian vehemently opposed to the old guard’s reliance on tedious stereotyping and shallow observation. Now in their mid-fifties (considered ancient back then) many took the hint, hung up their dickey-bows and retired to Bexhill; others struggled on in tatty end-of-the-pier shows in front of dwindling geriatric audiences. Mystifyingly, Sir Bruce Joseph Forsyth-Johnson CBE continued his wearisome nice-to-see-you shtick right up until his death in 2017 aged 89.
There are very few comedians who will admit to having any religious belief
While it’s reassuring to know that Skinner can still sell out a West End venue, much of his new act feels like an apology for his previous incarnation as Britain’s filthiest comic, once seen as a badge of honour. His 1990s output must appear as dated to Gen Z comedians as Manning’s set must have seemed to the likes of Ben Elton and Alexei Sayle. For all the shouty knob gaggery, Skinner’s 1990s persona comes from a more innocent age when all a comic had to do to pack out Wembley Arena was out-filth the competition.
But the Loaded generation’s favourite comedian has grown more winsome with age, reflecting on his mid 1990s heyday with a degree of embarrassment, aware that younger, more censorious audiences have no truck with the sort of leery, beery humour for which he and his ilk made their name. For them, Skinner’s earlier output feels creepy and discriminatory especially towards women and minorities – indeed Skinner has spoken of his shame regarding the time his comedy partner David Baddiel decided to black-up during an episode of Fantasy Football. ‘I still don’t know why one or both of us… or someone there didn’t say, What the fuck is happening?’
He recalls his relentless pursuit of ever more debauched material as being akin to playing that vintage carnival attraction where the harder you hammered the more likely you were to hit the gong. Fans that once lapped up his lad-mag musings are now in the latter stages of respectable middle age so his act has had to adapt accordingly. Skinner himself is a stooped 67 year old which, for those of us who still see his generation as pioneering, is hard to contemplate.
Keen to avoid any whiff of reactionary old-fartism he qualifies concerns about cancel culture by insisting that the ‘you-can’t-say-anything-these-days’ crowd is really just missing being racist. For such an astute comic this felt more like the now obligatory nod to progressivism that every comedian must make at some point during their act. But reassuring fellow comics that his politically correct halo hasn’t slipped feels out of place in front of a largely provincial, possibly Brexit supporting audience.
Of course worrying about halo slippage is what makes his comedy so interesting. As a devout Catholic, he has always struggled to make sense of his fascination with filth. The God-fearing side of him wishes he could write a clean act presumably to make weekly confessionals less toe-curling but he simply cannot resist a well placed knob gag however hard he tries. That said I only counted a handful of F-bombs, a cleverly deconstructed use of the C-word (for which he apologised) and a smattering of mild (by his standards) sexual references.
While there’s no doubt he remains a consummate comic, as he enters his twilight years I would love to see him expand his repertoire into more serious terrain. There are very few comedians who will admit to having any religious belief so it would be fascinating to see him debate someone like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris. Conversely it would be a tragedy to watch his popularity as a comic wane to such an extent that he is eventually relegated to the end of some godforsaken pier, riffing on the good old days before comedy was consigned to the memory hole and when championing the ability to speak freely didn’t necessarily mean you were a closet racist.
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