Frank Skinner Autobiography (23 page)

Had you ever heard a football crowd sing ‘Back Home' or ‘World in Motion'? Had you, fuck. But they were singing this one like I'd never heard an England crowd sing anything before. To stand in front of the press box, perhaps the best view in Wembley, and see the whole place a mass of swirling flags and smiling faces, and to know it was our song they were singing. If I'd never got lucky and found my way into entertainment, if I'd been sitting in a council house in Birmingham watching Wembley sing someone else's song on a rented telly after we'd just beaten Scotland 2–1, I'd still have been ecstatic. But to be at Wembley and for it to be OUR song . . . Well, anyway, it was special.

I was gushing. Sorry, but it's actually quite difficult to describe the most exciting thing that ever happened to you without gushing a bit. A few days later, England beat Holland 4–1, and the crowd were singing the song throughout, no record required. The following Saturday, we beat Spain. The crowd were belting out the song again, all the flags were waving, the sun was shining, and I remember turning to Dave in what had become our regular spot in front of the press box, and saying, ‘Have a good look at this, Dave. This is our perfect summer.'

After the games, we were allowed up into the players' bar and would chat with the lads and their proud parents. The players seemed to like the song a lot better now. I think it had grown on them. Gazza told us they always played it on the team coach on the way to the matches. On one occasion the driver forgot it and Gazza stayed on the coach inside the ground until someone found a tape and played the song to him. I know he's supposed to have an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but I was still chuffed.

On another occasion, David Seaman's lovely girlfriend grabbed me at a do and turned to the big man. ‘Go on, David, ask him.' Seamo looked sheepish. ‘Ask him,' she insisted.

‘Frank,' said the England goalkeeper, in his deep Yorkshire voice, ‘who's Jules Rimet?'

And then we played Germany in the semi-final. The
Sun
had dedicated the whole of its front page that day to ‘the new National Anthem'. It had a picture of Dave and me in our England shirts, with crosses of St. George painted on our cheeks, roaring with excitement. In between us was the scabbiest stuffed lion I have ever seen. He seemed to have eczema all down the front of his snout, and neither me or Dave wanted to get too close to him in the photo session in case we caught something. Perhaps, looking back, the mangy old lion was a bad omen. The headline said ‘Three Lions' and underneath that they printed our lyrics, with a large caption that said, ‘Here's the words the whole nation must sing tonight.' And they did, with gusto.

And then Gareth Southgate missed a penalty and Germany scored, and Germany won, and England lost. I just stood there and stared at the pitch. I was so sure we were going to go all the way, so sure that this was our perfect summer. I was shocked and completely gutted. I found out the next day that the BBC cameras had cut to me and Dave at the end of the game, and for weeks afterwards people would come up to me, like people do to the family at a funeral, and say stuff like, ‘We know how you felt.' I was so sure we were going to win it. Imagine how they would have sung the song at the final. I have, many a time. Football did come home, but someone had parked a big Audi across the driveway.

I'm going to tell you a few ‘Three Lions'-related stories, not because I want to say how great I am, but because I want you to know what it was like for me to be part of this phenomenon. It might be just another football song to you, but no matter what I might achieve in my career, I know there'll never be anything else quite like it for me. Maybe it wasn't my ‘perfect' summer, but it was fuckin' close.

A few months after Euro '96, the Lightning Seeds played Shepherd's Bush Empire. The place was packed, and as the band left the stage at the end of their set, the lights went down and the crowd began to sing, ‘It's coming home. It's coming home . . .' The band walked back out and Ian said, ‘I've got a couple of friends with me tonight.' The crowd went mad and we walked out. We sang the best live version of the song we ever did, and there were a few crosses of St. George in the crowd, just to jog our memories.

Dave and me were at a party at his girlfriend's house one night when someone put ‘Three Lions' on very, very loudly. Everyone sang along, also very loudly, and pretty soon the neighbour was at the door to complain. He was obviously pissed off, but when Dave and me opened the door, he stared for a bit and then burst out laughing.

Strangely, the German fans also took the song to their hearts and it got to number seventeen in the German charts. When the German team went home with the trophy and appeared on a balcony overlooking thousands of German supporters, at the official celebration of their European triumph, the team sang ‘Three Lions'. In fact, Dave and me were invited to sing the song on German television's
Football Review of the Year
in Frankfurt. We spent a long weekend in Frankfurt, and you don't know what a long weekend is till you've spent one in Frankfurt. We did the show in our red 1966 replica shirts and Uwe Seeler, who played for Germany in that final, came over to us and said, with no hint of light-heartedness, ‘I don't like your shirts,' and then hobbled off.

Then we sang the song at the BBC
Sports Review of the Year
for 1996. Dave and me turned up for the rehearsal in the afternoon and then we had time to kill before the real event that evening, so Jimmy Hill, a man we had both watched on the telly since we were kids, invited us back to his hotel room. We ordered chips on room service, took our shoes off, and all three of us sat up on Jimmy's bed with our plates on our laps and watched Chelsea versus Southampton on Sky, with Jimmy doing analysis and expert comment throughout.

Finally, there was a Hillsborough Justice Concert at Anfield. That was the last time I sang ‘Three Lions' live. It seemed fitting that it was at Anfield, where Ian and me had gone on that first night, and, would you believe it, Dave couldn't make it this time either, because he was on tour. I sang the song live in front of 35,500 fans, not all that well, if the truth be told. That's because I'm not a particularly good singer. Dave is one of the worst singers I've ever heard. Just think of all the great singers and bands that never had a number one record. It's very unfair, isn't it?

In 1998, we brought out ‘Three Lions '98'. Essentially the same song but with different lyrics, and with the '96 Wembley crowd joining in on the ‘It's coming home' bit, which always gets the hairs going on the back of my neck. ‘Three Lions '98' was at number one for three weeks, and we did
Top of the Pops
, which we missed out on with the original song, and there was another brilliant video with us all looking much slimmer. But, to be honest, I wish we hadn't bothered. Respect to everyone who bought the '98 version, but ‘Three Lions' was all about a specific moment in time: one hot summer in '96 when England suddenly started playing like winners again, and the crowd had their own, specially written party piece so they could provide the perfect soundtrack.

I'm on page three of the
Sun
today. A lot of people have had to get their tits out to achieve that, but all I had to do was have an argument with my girlfriend. Well, several arguments with my girlfriend. The headline says, ‘Let's be Frank . . . it's over', and then, as a sub-heading, ‘Rows split Skinner and lover Caroline'. Now, you may have picked up on the fact that there have been a few problems, but you know I'd have told you if we'd split up. You've become my confidante, for goodness' sake. We do argue, though. You know that thing about ‘Jack Spratt would eat no fat, his wife would eat no lean.' It's seen as an image of team-work in a relationship: ‘The two of them together, they licked the platter clean.' Nice. The thing is with Caroline and me, if I ate no fat, she'd say, ‘Oh, well that's typical of you isn't it? You're too bloody good to eat fat, I suppose. Of course, you couldn't tell me that before I cooked it.' If she ate no lean, I'd be saying, ‘I can't fuckin' believe that. You'd eat dog shit rather than agree with me on anything. Still, it's alright for you to eat just fat, I mean you don't have to worry about the health thing, what with your heart being made of granite.' So it goes on.

I remember reading somewhere that the poet Milton believed one should be able to divorce one's wife merely by saying, ‘I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee.' I wonder if my neighbours thought we were performing a twenty-first-century version of this ritual when Caroline stood in the hallway at nine o'clock on a Saturday morning and shouted, with some fervour, ‘Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off.' I once screamed at her, mid-argument, ‘Your trouble is the only person you're in love with is Caroline Feraday. In fact, that's the only thing we've got in common.' She continued her point, but I interrupted with ‘Oh, come on, you've got to admit, that was a good line.' She nodded her encouragement, as if worried about losing her arguing-momentum, and then carried on and on. Great legs, though.

Oh, come on, my mom and dad fought all the time but they still loved each other. Caroline is a gorgeous, bright, interesting, funny woman. And she can cook. And it was her who suggested that I include the sex-in-the-toilet bit in the ‘jamming with the Stones' section. How supportive is that? Our only problem is we can't go twenty-four hours without an argument. I was raised on Andy Capp, what d'you expect?

Incidentally, the article was written by a journo called Dominic Mohan who, it's a small world, also did the first kiss-and-tell thing with my ex-wife. That Dominic, he's been with me, man and boy, through all my trials and tribulations. Maybe he should have written the book. He says in the piece that Caroline has ‘decided to move out of Frank's £1 million flat in North London'. Caroline sent me an e-mail this morning that said, ‘The people in our block will be thrilled when they read that their flats have trebled in price. But not half as thrilled as they'll be when they hear that I'm moving out.' I wrote back to her to say that when I get back there I expect to find nine ‘For Sale' signs and a large pile of industrial ear-plugs by the bins. So we're laughing about it. Her main worry was that she thought she looked a bit rough in the
Sun
's picture of us. She should have seen the lion.

Anyway, that's how famous I am.

You know how I'm always going on about those butterfly-crushing moments when seemingly innocent things can have massive repercussions? Well, what about this. It could be said that Johnny Cash made me an alcoholic. When I was fourteen, my dad took me to my first-ever gig. It was Johnny Cash at the Birmingham Odeon, with Carl Perkins as support. I was chuffed because both of these were Elvis's work-colleagues at Sun Records, and I really liked Cash's voice. Nowadays, I also like Johnny Cash because, all through my career, I've tried to come up with a catchphrase and I haven't managed to find one since ‘saft as a bottle of pop'. Which is alright, but not the sort of thing you could open a chat show with. But then I would have said the same thing about David Frost's ‘Hello, good evening and welcome'. You never can tell what's going to catch on, can you? And then, if you do find a catchphrase, what's to stop someone else from nicking it? This is where Johnny Cash's catchphrase, ‘Hello, I'm Johnny Cash', comes into its own. Anyway, I'm rambling. I saw Johnny Cash and he was great. I was telling my brother Terry about this and he said that he knew a bloke who did a great Johnny Cash impression, and a particularly fine Roy Orbison one as well. Orbison was another ex-stablemate of The King's, so I was intrigued. This singer performed regularly at a pub in Smethwick. Of course, if it was in a pub, I couldn't go, could I? Terry said that he didn't see why not. I was fourteen and it was about time I ‘wet my whistle', but it was probably best not to mention it to our mom and dad.

So, the following week, off we went. We nipped in a pub on the way ‘for a quick one', so it was sounding like we were going to have more than one. Blimey! I was a bit nervous but also quite excited about the Johnny Cash man. I wore a black plastic jacket that was pretending to be a black leather jacket, chosen because it looked a bit like the one Elvis wore for his 1968 Comeback Special. My hair was greased back and I could, in dim light, probably pass for about twelve. Terry was twenty-six. I had a brown and mild. Not that I really knew what that meant, but Terry felt that it was quite sweet and would suit my schoolboy palate. I tried to drink it like a man, but the fact that I held the glass with two hands slightly detracted from this. I liked being in a pub, though. Considering I was four years under the legal drinking-age and talking in an unnaturally deep voice, I felt very much at home. It saddens me to write this now. I haven't had a drink since September 24th, 1986, and I've never really managed to find anything to replace it.

Though I've never had an onstage catchphrase, I have many little catchphrases that I use in everyday life. If anyone at work says to me, ‘Are you happy with that, Frank?', which they do quite a lot, I always reply, ‘I haven't been happy since September 1986.'

I like pubs. If you're a non-drinker, a pub is an alien place. You don't have the right to be there. When I was drinking I used to get seriously pissed-off if I was stuck at the bar behind someone who was dallying over half a Vimto. ‘Get out of my way, lightweight,' I'd be thinking or, later in the evening, saying. Still, as Richard the Third said, I go before my horse to market.

In 1971, I was yet to learn all this. We drank up. Terry had had two, and we set off to see the man. Musical entertainment in pubs in the West Midlands, and indeed throughout the country, is, of course, in the main, shit. I saw a guy at Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds Social Club, Smethwick, who was doing karaoke before there was karaoke. He had backing tapes of lots of pop standards and he sang along. He even left gaps so that he could do a bit of banter in between the songs. At one point he said, ‘And who could forget the magic of Mr Buddy Holly?' and then sang ‘I'm a Believer' by the Monkees, thus answering his own question.