Frank Skinner Autobiography (8 page)

So it was when, one Saturday morning in 1963, he asked my mom to put a bet on for him. Mom said she was too busy and he should ask Terry. Terry claimed he was too busy as well. My dad was slowly inching towards the end of his tether. The bet was never placed. The first horse ran. It won. The second horse ran. It won. My dad's thirst took a turn for the worse and he decided to go to the pub after all.

Even as a small child, I could smell trouble. When Dad returned at about 3.30 that afternoon, he had sorted out the thirst problem, but his anger at the unplaced bet had grown out of all proportion. Apparently, some of his other unbacked horses had also done quite well. He didn't say much. He took off his jacket and walked into the garden. Keith, my mother, and me decided against following him, but watched him through the window. He stood, centre stage, and took a deep breath. Clearly, he had set himself a task but we had no idea what it might be. Then he sprang into action. The first part of his task seemed to involve pulling down the garden shed with his bare hands. He was holding the bottom of the shed and apparently trying to drag it off its foundations. Bear in mind that the shed contained a work bench complete with vice, plus garden and work tools and, as Keith pointed out, his school cricket bat. Incredibly, the shed slowly began to move. My dad, legs braced and head pulled back till he was looking at the sky, dragged the whole thing into the middle of the garden. We looked at each other in some confusion. I think my mom put her arms around us. Dad's temper took many forms but never before had it manifested itself in landscape gardening. There was another shed, a little smaller than the first. Working-class men in the West Midlands loved a shed. There always seemed to be trucks knocking around the neighbourhood, carrying sheds, sometimes a greenhouse, but usually a shed. My dad was very good with his hands and he had built this second shed from scratch.

He was a great builder of sheds, cucumber frames, chicken houses, chicken runs, goalpost-type structures for runner beans or sweet peas, all sorts, but I never ever knew him to buy any wood, or timber as he always called it. Thus, he was always on the lookout for free stuff. My old man's endless quest for timber lasted for most of his life. Doors and floorboards from derelict houses, wooden fixtures and fittings in skips, any timber he could find. He would wait till it was dark and then tap one of his sons on the shoulder, mutter something about timber, and off we'd go to help him carry it back home.

Anyway, the second shed, which contained other garden tools including the lawnmower, was now making its way to join the big shed in the middle of the garden. I don't think Keith, my mom, or me actually said ‘Not the pigeon loft' but I'm pretty sure we were all thinking it. The pigeons, thankfully, were not in the loft; they spent most of the day flying in a close formation which included a strange tumbling movement when, for a second or two, they looked like they were falling out of the sky, then resumed flying normally as if nothing had happened. These pigeons were known as ‘tumblers', I presume because they appeared to tumble as they flew.

Once the pigeon loft had joined its fellow wooden structures in the middle of the garden, Dad actually stepped inside the second shed. Surely now he'd finished his re-arranging of the garden the effort had used up his temper, and when, after some calming deep breaths, he emerged from the shed, he'd be ready for a couple of cheese and onion sandwiches and an afternoon nap? Yes. So why had he now emerged carrying a large tank of paraffin? We watched in frozen silence as he prepared the sheds and pigeon loft for cremation. Within a few minutes, all I could hear was the crackling of flames and a child's voice, muffled by tears, saying ‘cricket bat'.

My old man stood back and watched what was, it has to be said, a fairly impressive sight. The flames were reaching, I would say, about twenty-five feet and our next-door neighbour, Mrs Weston, said the next day that her lace curtains had singed in the windows. I'll never know at what stage in the afternoon, or how many pints of mild it took, before my dad thought to himself, ‘I've lost money because neither my wife nor my son would place a bet for me. What should I do? Oh, I know, I'll make an enormous bonfire of all the wooden structures in my garden. Sorted.'

Coincidentally, it was carnival day in Oldbury, and as my dad purposefully strode past on his way home from the pub families were lining the pavement to see all the colourful floats and people in giant papier-mâché heads. As it turned out, those families who lined the pavement in our road were a bit disappointed because the carnival had to re-route to avoid the two fire-engines parked outside our house. We had a carnival of our own right there in the back garden.

I'm not sure that gambling on the horses really brought out the best in my dad. On another Saturday afternoon, we were watching a very exciting end to a race on the telly. My dad's chosen horse was neck-and-neck with another with only a couple of furlongs to go. Then the TV reception started to go a bit wonky and the picture was replaced by loud interference. At this point, my dad decided to add a bit of loud interference of his own. He picked up the telly and gave it a good yank to rip the plug out of the wall. We all sat looking at the space where the telly had been. It was a warm day and the kitchen door that led into the garden was open. My dad, the ex-footballer, after a short run-up, took a throw-in from the back step and the telly ended up about ten feet up the garden. We all heard the sound of it land and then implode, but no one looked. Dad went to bed. The telly, of course, was rented. My mom phoned the shop on the Monday and explained that Keith and I had been ill in bed, and while she was bravely struggling up the stairs with the telly so we could have some entertainment to take the edge off our terrible illness, she had fallen and the telly had been irreparably damaged. The TV shop, God bless 'em, took pity on the brave mother and sent a replacement telly the next day.

Unplanned
live at the Shaftesbury seems to be going pretty well, but we had a bit of a hiccup just before the second show. Dave and me got picked up at 7.15 for the show at 8. I sat in the front with our regular driver, Gerry, and Dave sat in the back. When we got in, Gerry chucked Dave the London
Evening Standard
I don't read in cars. It makes me feel sick. So I was chatting to Gerry about West Brom's promotion hopes while Dave devoured the newspaper. I say ‘devoured' because Dave has a flair for speed-reading that, I think, could always get him a job in the circus if the comedy work dries up. I once showed him a very long and complimentary article about me in the
Independent
. After about fifteen seconds, he handed it back. I was pissed off that he couldn't be bothered to read the whole piece and told him so. He got me to ask him loads of detailed questions about the article. He hadn't missed a thing. He'll read a novel in a day, no problem. As I've explained, I don't read novels but, on average, a book takes me about four to six months. In fact, just about the same period I have to WRITE this one.

Anyway, even though Dave was sitting behind me in silence, I suddenly became aware that he was upset. Don't ask me how this works. I was once talking to the Jordanaires, Elvis's backing group for the first half of his career, and one of them said that there was a door at the back of the studio in Nashville which was completely silent. Elvis would occasionally come in through this door, and even though no one heard him enter, the Jordanaires would feel his presence and all turn to greet him. Singing together for all those years must have opened up a few spiritual doors between them. The whole nature of harmonising seems to be about tuning in to another person, and not just musically.

I sang a song with the Jordanaires myself, and it really felt like being gently lifted up and held aloft. We did a song called ‘Peace in the Valley' and I never sang it that well before or since. It was as if their voices wouldn't let me go wrong; like those old stories of ghost dogs escorting strangers through dangerous places. The Jordanaires had sung together so many times that their voices had become one. I found myself in the middle of that special place their voices created. Maybe years of doing comedy together has a similar effect. Dave is the ghost dog who's led me through many a nob-joke minefield.
Unplanned
is a very particular bonding process and our previous series,
Fantasy, Football
, was another. So, whatever the method, I knew he was upset. An emergency light went off in my head and, as it flashed, it said BAD REVIEW. BAD REVIEW. BAD REVIEW.

My own policy is that I never read reviews until after a project is over. I think good ones make you complacent and bad ones just drag you down. I don't get hung up about reviewers and want them all to get cancer, but one thing that does get me about a bad review is the urge to read it about seventeen times. To be honest, I've been pretty lucky on the reviews front. Dave, certainly during his Newman and Baddiel days, had some really nasty ones. He and Rob were just too cocky and too successful. The critics, especially the broadsheet ones, couldn't forgive them for it. As time has gone by, I've become less bothered by reviews and Dave has, I think, become more bothered. I knew he wasn't enjoying this one. I would tell you what was in it but I won't let myself read it until after the run. When we got to the dressing room Dave was a bit quiet, except when he wanted to read me a couple of bits from the review. I wouldn't let him. I started messing about. Doing silly gags and showing off, just like in that commercial break in the first TV
Unplanned
. Only, this time I was trying to do a Lazarus-job on Dave's confidence.

Dave is an incredibly gifted comic. In fact, ‘comic' doesn't really seem a sufficiently all-encompassing term. I'm a comic. I make jokes. So does Dave, but he does a lot more than that. When we write together he has a comic understanding, a comic overview that's exciting to be in the presence of. He just
knows
what comedy is about. Whenever he made directorial points about sketches or other set-pieces on
Fantasy Football
, which he did often, they were always on the button. If he fancied it, he could be a big-time comedy director, no problem. Anyway, all this gives Dave massive self-belief in regard to comedy, but on those rare occasions when he sinks downward, it can take a lot to raise him up again. Eventually, I got a couple of laughs out of him and then he started to join in a bit. By the time the show went up he was ready to rumble. Teamwork.

That night's show was particularly interesting in that there was a bloke in the audience who knew a woman I'd had a one-night stand with several years before. She was a pretty girl and, apparently, a very good footballer. I believe a trial for England was mentioned. Anyway, she stayed the night in my hotel room and we had a long post-coital chat about the merits of playing 4-4-2 and the decline of the orthodox winger. The next day I dropped her off at the station and that was that. But the bloke in the audience was now telling me that two months later she became a lesbian. Of course, I suggested that her thoughts must have been, ‘Well, nothing's gonna top that', but, in truth, it was a strange tale. Needless to say, the audience and Dave liked it a lot. I said I should have guessed she was on that road, firstly because she was a lady footballer, and secondly because while I was having a cigarette after, she smoked a pipe.

On the way home that night, I remembered she had told me she was hoping to become a marine biologist. Looking back, it was probably a euphemism.

When I was five years old, I developed the urge to shout as loud as I possibly could; to really roar and scream and holler until I couldn't roar and scream and holler anymore. I can still remember the feeling of wanting to do it but knowing that my parents, understandably, would go crazy if I did. This was where having an outside toilet became a distinct advantage. Our kitchen, which operated as a living room, was at the back of the house, with a door leading into the back yard and garden. Just across the yard was the outside toilet. It had no light, so going at night involved a good deal of guesswork. In the winter it was bitterly cold. In the summer, spiders. In the early hours, it was a long scary journey to have a mere wee. Hence the piss-buckets. On a good day there was toilet paper, on a bad day there was newspaper. My dad had, with the aid of some acquired timber, of course, built a sort of lean-to between the toilet and the wall of the house, which housed my mother's ‘maid' and tub.

David Baddiel always says that when I talk about my childhood, he becomes convinced that I grew up in the nineteenth century. Here goes. In my early childhood, my mom would wash our clothes with a maid and tub. This tub was a metal barrel about forty inches high with a diameter of about two feet. Mom would fill the tub with water from the kettle and several saucepans, add soap-powder and then stick in the dirty clothes. The ‘maid' worked like a pestle in a pestle and mortar. It was basically a broom-handle with a big lump of wood at one end that my mom would grind into the clothes to clean them.

Outside toilets with newspaper, clothes washed outside in a big pestle and mortar. Y'know, I can see what Dave means.

Anyway, about my urge to shout as loud as I possibly could. One night, I went to the kitchen door as if I was off to the toilet. It was dark outside. The air smelt sweet. One wall of the outside toilet was hugged by an enormous honeysuckle bush. I never really noticed the scent during the day, but at night it was intoxicating. To a five-year-old, it made the back yard a magical place. I walked through that back yard and into the garden. The only light source was from the kitchen window. I could still hear the sound of the telly and the voices of my family. As I walked further and further into the garden, both grew dimmer. It was dark at the end of the garden. I stood still and listened to the night. Distant mumble from our kitchen, almost inaudible traffic sounds. I waited, and even these sounds seem to fade like the stage was being cleared for me. It spooks me out a bit that I can still remember it so clearly. I stood very still. I mean, weirdly still. And then I started. Not with a big breath and an equivalent roar, but with an increasing murmur, slowly reassuring myself that it was OK to interfere with the silence. The sound developed from an ‘Urrrrrrrrrnnnn . . . ,' to an ‘Aaaaarrrrrrrgh . . .' This was the sound I was searching for. Once I'd found it, I let it get louder and louder. I stopped for breath. And then went again with the ‘Aaaaaarrrrrrgh . . .', thrilled at how loud it was. I spread my arms and leaned my head backwards into the darkness. I repeated my call about five or six times, then I stopped, very still again, and listened to remind myself what the night sounded like without me. Then I went back into the house. They'd heard nothing over the sound of the television.