Frank Skinner
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2010
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway is the comedian Frank Skinner.
As a football-obsessed comic whose stand-up routines were peppered with details of his personal life, he became the poster-boy for the 'Loaded' generation. Beneath the surface, though, he seems to be full of contradictions. He was expelled from school when he was a teenager - but went on to gain a masters degree; he has long been obsessed with Elvis Presley - but now says he feels a tingle when he goes to the opera. Although he had long enjoyed entertaining his friends, he was 30 before he realised where his future lay. "I was an unemployed drunk going nowhere," he says, "And then comedy turned up. Comedy saved my life"
Record: The Fall Book: Teach yourself French Luxury: A ukulele.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:06.0 | For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast. |
| 0:10.0 | For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:17.0 | Radio 4. My castle My castaway this week is Frank Skinner, comedian, writer, TV host, and it would seem |
| 0:40.2 | walking contradiction. He was expelled from school as a teenager yet he went on to get |
| 0:45.2 | a master's degree in English. A staunch Catholic, he's unmarried and childless, sharing |
| 0:50.7 | with audiences the most intimate details of his many sexual adventures. |
| 0:55.0 | An opera buff, he once paid 11 grand adoption for a shirt worn by Elvis Presley. |
| 1:00.0 | He was 30 when he going nowhere, he says, and then comedy turned up. |
| 1:09.0 | Comedy saved my life. |
| 1:11.0 | It began saving your life on December 9th, 1987. How did that go? That was the first gig. |
| 1:17.3 | I must say I sound absolutely fascinating from that. I'm looking forward to this. Good, that's what people are meant to think. |
| 1:24.0 | Don't disappoint us. |
| 1:25.0 | The first gig was horrendous, |
| 1:28.0 | but you know, first gig should be for a comedian |
| 1:31.0 | because you have to learn the terror of dying on stage and anyone |
| 1:36.8 | who experiences that basically you either get better or you get out and I decided |
| 1:41.7 | to try and get better. |
| 1:43.0 | And you say you have a choice of either sort of getting better or getting out of it. |
| 1:48.0 | Have you ever considered getting out of it since that first gig? |
| 1:51.0 | No, because I, in my foolishness, when I decided I wanted to be a comedian |
| 1:55.0 | I immediately booked a room at the next Edinburgh festival |
... |
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