Top 60 Frank Skinner Quotes

You have more freedom on radio. When people used to tell me they preferred radio to TV, I always thought they were making the best of things because they couldn’t get any telly work, but now I understand, sort of.

My mum, Doris, was a source of unalloyed love. She lived for her family and would literally give you her last pound. I think she’s made me a kinder person, because I think: Do I want to help this person? If my mum was around, she would have.

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.

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.

On radio there’s an obligation to be funny or interesting, and ideally both.

Being a comic is the best possible job.

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.

I’ve always been wary of anyone who calls themselves a ‘shock comic.’

I’m prepared to stand by what I say.

The first live gig I ever saw was Johnny Cash at the Birmingham Odeon in 1971. I was 14 and went with my dad.

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.

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

I haven’t had fun since the 1980s!

I think Jimmy Carr is very funny and probably the most industrious comedian I know and I really respect him for that.

I’m not a man with many plans, but offers come in and I think this one or that one will be really interesting, so I say yes.

I think when anyone says you look like a famous person you fiercely deny it, and then go around hoping other people will say it, too.

I quite like being a ‘comedy elder statesman.’ I am a big fan, I go to watch loads of new comics, and I like the fact that they don’t go, ‘Why are you here?’

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.

Scarily, I was only about 11 or 12 when my mum pointed out my resemblance to Stan Laurel. I know he’s the ultimate loser, but I was happy to hear it.

Being on your own in a gallery is the biggest treat, as long as the lights are switched on.

I love touring. Not just the shows, I love hotels. I love motorway services at three o’clock in the morning. I like long car journeys, so I like all the trimmings basically.

I actually like – if I may use the F word – fame. I like people stopping me in the street and saying, ‘Can I have a photo?’

There is a sense that if you’re not on the telly then you might have died. I’m aware that’s how people largely judge you.

You can be funny about your kids without being unkind.

I can’t remember ever being desperate for money, even when I didn’t have any.

I have spoken to many broadcasters about bringing poetry to television and they’re usually not keen.

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.

I would like to talk about poems like I talk about football.

I don’t know anything about politics, so I don’t do political material.

I stopped drinking on 24 September 1986.

I don’t like taboo subjects and I don’t like elephants in the room. If there’s an elephant in the room, I really want to absolutely examine it.

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.

After I became a professional comedian, I took to listening to Cash’s classic hit ‘Ring of Fire’ before I went on stage. I always found it completely exhilarating.

I don’t think that I’m a misogynistic person at all.

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

Alcoholism and country music are both tremendous aids to self-dramatisation.

I read comic books when I was a kid. Now I have a passion for art and galleries that I think came from that. I didn’t read a book without pictures until I was 21.

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 can’t tell you why, but I feel like I’m more me on radio than on television. It’s because I’m more relaxed. The reason I feel that way is a mystery to me, mind you.

Throughout the day I suddenly get bursts of excitement about not very much at all, like those things in public toilets that puff out air freshener.

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

I used to do homophobic material that I didn’t recognise as homophobic. It’s the only stuff I really look back on and think, ‘I just wouldn’t do that again.’

I think part of being human is jokes.

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

Dad was a keen Roman Catholic, but I left the church when I was 17, not because I’d stopped believing – it was more doctrinal stuff, like that there was no biblical mention of purgatory. I went back when I was 28, just before I gave up drink.

I’m quite testosterone intolerant, I just don’t like it.

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.

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

I can’t swim. I’ve got better, but I can’t go out of my depth. As soon as I smell chlorine my heart starts racing.

My comedy is my life turned into jokes. I think a lot of people wouldn’t like that because you end up talking about stuff where you don’t always come out so well. You have to be prepared to say, ‘This is me, being a prat.’

I think I was probably a 60-year-old man in waiting for most of my life. Even as a child I had something of the man in my sixties about me.

One of the most exciting things about supporting West Bromwich Albion was watching Johnny Giles play in the late ’70s.

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.

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

I’d got into Cash after I’d used my pocket money to buy his ‘Live at San Quentin’ album, just because I liked the cover. It turned out I liked the record inside even more.

I grew up on Laurel and Hardy. I’m aware from my own experience that comedy has got quite a fierce sell-by date, but that doesn’t seem to apply to them; they made films I can remember laughing at when I was five that I’d still happily watch today.

I think it is a humanising thing, comedy.

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

If you strip a lot of performers to the core, you find that urge to show off.

I think I’m quite broad-minded.