Following Absolute Radio’s decision to cancel Frank Skinner’s radio show six months ago, it was announced today (Monday 7th October 2024) that the show will return as a twice-weekly podcast in partnership with Adelicious, with a first new episode dropping into podcast feeds on Friday 11th October. Running for 15 years, the award-winning radio show, The Frank Skinner Show, which won four gold awards at the ARIAs for Best Speech Programme (2011 and 2014), Best Entertainment/Comedy Production (2017) and Best Community Programme featuring Al Gore (2018), attracted over one million listeners per week, achieved over 100 million podcast downloads since launch, making it one of the most successful radio podcasts in the UK, and saw Frank inducted into the Radio Academy’s Hall of Fame in 2015. In May 2024, in the week after it was cancelled, the radio show was nominated for the Best Comedy award at the ARIAs. Frank Off The Radio, The Frank Skinner Podcast will feature two episodes (on Friday and Monday) each week. Listeners can look forward to Frank reuniting with trusted co-hosts: broadcaster, author and podcaster Emily Dean, alongside acclaimed comedian and writer Pierre Novellie. Existing fans and podcast followers will see new episodes appear in the Frank Skinner feed. New fans can search Frank Skinner Off The Radio wherever they get their podcasts. The critically acclaimed Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast, which regularly reached the top podcast charts nationwide, will also return in partnership with Adelicious with more information in due course.
Frank, Emily and Pierre return to the mic, bringing their signature witty banter, sharing stories from their lives, discussing the news, and reacting to listeners’ contributions*.
Frank Skinner said, “It’s like in those old movies when the kids get rejected by the big theatre and one of them says ‘why don’t we do the show right here in the barn?’ I think the barn will suit us fine.”
Frank Skinner Off The Radio, The Frank Skinner Podcast, produced by Avalon, will be available from 11th October. You’ll be able to listen and download on all mainstream podcast platforms.
*Show listeners can contact the show through Frank’s socials and Frankofftheradio
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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. In 2023 he was appointed an MBE by the Princess Royal, Anne, for his services to entertainment.
Frank is currently on a nationwide tour with his already extended and critically acclaimed stand-up show ’30 Years of Dirt’. The Autumn tour extension follows a third West End extension at London’s Gielgud Theatre with a three-week run over the summer. This comes after two sold-out London runs at the Lyric and the Gielgud Theatre. 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 previous stand-up show, Showbiz, which was a sold-out national tour and subsequent sold-out residency at the West End’s Garrick Theatre.
The Frank Skinner Show (BBC & ITV), was widely credited as setting the tone for the modern comedic chat show and ran for nine years, attracting 11 million viewers at its peak. Frank also hosted seven series of BBC1’s Room 101 and seven series of Portrait/Landscape Artist of the Year for Sky Arts. 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). In 2018 he wrote and starred as Johnny Cash in Johnny Cash & the Ostrich – a one-off special forming part of the successful Urban Myths series airing on Sky Arts.
Frank, alongside David Baddiel and Lightning Seeds, wrote and recorded the iconic football anthem Three Lions, the only song in existence to have become the UK number one on four separate occasions by the same artists. With two one-week stints in 1996, three straight weeks in 1998 for the remake, and again in 2018 during the World Cup. As England made their Euro 2020 final showdown with Italy at Wembley, it shot once again to the Number 1 spot in the Official Big Top 40. A reworked, festive version of the anthem was also released ahead of the 2022 men’s World Cup in Qatar.
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 ninth 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.
Alongside his Absolute Radio show which ran for 15 years, 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.
What the press said about the Frank Skinner Radio Show ending:
“The beloved DJ has been ousted after 15 years – and he seems just as shocked as the listeners…Surely Absolute knew it had a national treasure with Skinner. So what were they thinking? If news of his removal was a shock for the DJ, then it was for his loyal listenership, too. His show really had become appointment listening, even among those who rarely strayed from the Beeb.”
Nick Duerden, i news
“It’s a baffling decision… The Frank Skinner Show has won three Radio Academy Gold Awards – the Oscars of the wireless – and saw him inducted into the Radio Academy Hall of Fame in 2015. His show is (according to Absolute) the single most successful podcast in commercial radio. So why kill these golden pigs?”
Tristram Fane Saunders, Daily Telegraph
“The sacking of Frank Skinner is a loss to British comedy…The recent news that comedian Frank Skinner had been sacked from his job at Absolute Radio after fifteen years as presenter feels like a misstep to say the least.”
Robin Ashenden, The Spectator
For further information and interview requests, please contact Lucy Plosker – [email protected]
