Comic legend Frank Skinner makes a highly anticipated return to the Edinburgh Fringe with 30 Years of Dirt. This follows his critically acclaimed, sell out national tour Showbiz and subsequent sell out residency at the West End’s Garrick Theatre. The 1991 Perrier Award winner Skinner will be performing every evening at the Assembly George Square – Gordon Aikman Theatre from 3rd-27th August (excluding Wednesdays). Tickets can be found at edfringe.com.
Praise for Frank Skinner Showbiz
“King of stand-up”
Bruce Dessau, Evening Standard
“Frank Skinner has funny bones…even at the top of the comedy tree it’s rare to see his sort of fast-thinking but slow-talking instinctual wit…”
Dominic Maxwell, The Times
“…the gags just keep on coming. Stand-up’s coming home”
Mark Wareham, Mail on Sunday
“Very funny indeed … the archetypal comic …. irresistible”
Brian Logan, The Guardian
Notes to editors:
Frank Skinner’s live career began in 1987 when he spent £400 of his last £435 booking a room at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Four years later in 1991 he returned to the city and beat fellow nominees Jack Dee and Eddie Izzard to take home comedy’s most prestigious prize, The Perrier Award. He was appointed an MBE by the Princess Royal, Anne, for his services to entertainment in April 2023.
During a non-stop 10-hour radio show, which marked the 10-year anniversary of his hugely successful career at Absolute Radio, Frank announced his last stand-up show, Showbiz, which was a sold-out national tour and subsequent sold-out residency at the West End’s Garrick Theatre. Frank’s award-winning show, The Frank Skinner Show, attracts over one million listeners per week, has achieved over 50 million podcast downloads and saw him inducted into the Radio Academy’s Hall of Fame in 2016.
Away from the stage, the last few years have seen Frank host the Big Hay Weekend on Sky Arts in 2022, and present three mini-series for the channel with author Denise Mina, Boswell and Johnson’s Scottish Road Trip in 2020, Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Romantic Road Trip in 2021 and most recently Skinner and Mina’s Literary Road Trip: Pope and Swift.
In April 2020, Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast was launched to critical acclaim with a sixth series released earlier this year. Off the back of this, the highly acclaimed book How to Enjoy Poetry was published in September 2020. His latest non-fiction, A Comedian’s Prayer Book, was published in April of 2021 and released in paperback in April 2023. In July 2022, the South Bank Show aired an episode in honour of his career.
Frank has written two autobiographies, the first of which, Frank Skinner, was the top selling autobiography of 2002, spending 46 weeks in The Sunday Times Bestseller List. The second Frank Skinner On The Road, chronicled his 2007, sell-out return to stand-up. He also published Dispatches from the Sofa; a collection of columns he wrote for The Times.
Frank’s other TV credentials in 2018 included writing and starring as Johnny Cash in Johnny Cash & the Ostrich – a one-off special forming part of the successful Urban Myths series airing on Sky Arts, as well as hosting seven series of BBC1’s Room 101 and seven series of Portrait/Landscape Artist of the Year for Sky Arts. Frank wrote and hosted The Frank Skinner Show (BBC & ITV), which is widely credited as setting the tone for the modern comedic chat show and ran for nine years, attracting 11 million viewers at its peak. He hosted three series of Frank Skinner’s Opinionated for BBC Two and presented documentaries covering passions including Muhammad Ali (BBC1), Elvis (BBC4) and investigating the life of George Formby (BBC4).
As England made their Euro 2020 final showdown with Italy at Wembley, the iconic football anthem Three Lions, written by Frank alongside David Baddiel and Lightning Seeds, clinched the Number 1 spot in the Official Big Top 40. In the years since its debut, the track has seen multiple releases and is the only song in existence to have become the UK number one on four separate occasions by the same artists: two one-week stints in 1996, three straight weeks in 1998 for the remake, and again in 2018 during the World Cup. A reworked, festive version of the anthem was also released ahead of the 2022 men’s World Cup in Qatar.
Alongside his regular show on Absolute Radio, Frank has carried out exclusive feature interviews for the station with a number of esteemed guests including Nobel Peace Prize-winning former Vice President Al Gore and Russell T Davies, executive producer of Doctor Who and writer of It’s a Sin. Frank has also written and starred in three series of the critically-acclaimed comedy drama series Don’t Start for BBC Radio 4 and has created and hosted two series of his comedy panel show The Rest is History for BBC Radio 4.
More of what the press said about Showbiz
“Skinner is warm, impeccable company and his way with a punchline is masterful… a delight.”
Paul Fleckney, The Guardian
“still one of the best joke-crafters in the business … He has a brain that seems hard-wired to find the funny”
Bruce Dessau, Beyond the Joke/Evening Standard
“This is a terrific, feel-good show… He is warm, relaxed, down-to-earth and properly funny…It is hilarious stuff. This is the work of a seriously skilled stand-up”
The Scotsman
“A beautifully confessional new show. His material continues to improve and this is possibly his BEST SHOW YET”
Stephen Armstrong, Sunday Times
“Real stand-up, real lightness of touch, real joy…”
The Times, Dominic Maxwell
“Skinner is a comic at ease with himself and his career, and Showbiz proves to be a masterclass in owning the room.”
Veronica Lee, The i
“sharp punchlines…a witty, entertaining raconteur”
Steve Bennett, Chortle
“He’s clearly lost none of his mojo”
Sharon Lougher
Other things the press have said about Frank Skinner’s stand-up
“Provocative, remorseless, and very, very funny”
Times
“One of Britain’s funniest men”
Evening Standard
“Man in a Suit’ sees Skinner on fine form: warm, chatty and self-deprecating”
Time Out
“Beautifully crafted return to stand-up”
Evening Standard
“Man In A Suit sees the crown prince of laddism grow up”
Metro
“It’s certainly a pleasure to see him back in action”
Telegraph
“Exquisite and surprising… highly accomplished and very funny”
Independent
EDINBURGH FRINGE LISTINGS INFORMATION
Frank Skinner 30 Years of Dirt
Venue: Assembly George Square – Gordon Aikman Theatre
Date & Time: 3rd – 27th August (excluding Wednesdays) at 8.50pm
Duration: 60 min
Twitter: @FrankOnTheRadio
Follow @livecomedy for news and ticket info. For further information, interview requests or images please contact the Edinburgh press team at edinburghpress@avalonuk.com
