“A comedian so funny that it’s almost obscene. 30 Years of Dirt is a sparkling tour de force from a craftsman with exquisite control of his art.” ★★★★★
Dominic Maxwell, The Times
It was announced today (Wednesday 23rd October) that comedy legend Frank Skinner will be adding an extra performance at the Opera House in Manchester to his already extended and critically acclaimed stand-up tour, “30 Years of Dirt.” With his show on 30th November already sold out, an additional performance is now scheduled for 29th November at the Manchester venue, bringing his total to four shows in the northern city. This includes his already sold-out show heading to the Lowry on 9th November plus a previously sold-out show at the same venue back in May. 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. The current tour extension finishes on 10th January at Dorking Halls.
Frank said, “I’m really chuffed to be able to add another show in Manchester. And I’m much cheaper than Oasis.”
This month, Frank also announced his new podcast, “Frank Off The Radio,” following Absolute Radio’s decision to cancel his radio show six months ago. The podcast features two episodes each week, released on Fridays and Mondays, reuniting Frank with his trusted co-hosts: broadcaster, author, and podcaster Emily Dean, alongside acclaimed comedian and writer Pierre Novellie. The first episode released on 11th October reached No.1 in the Comedy category.
Tickets for the Manchester Opera House are on pre-sale on Thursday 24th October at 10am from Ticketmaster and ATG and on general sale on Friday 25th October at 10am from www.frankskinnerlive.com
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’. 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. 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.
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 Frank Skinner’s 30 Years of Dirt
“Frank’s still the king of carefully crafted filth… it’s hard to think of another comic more at ease with his audience… He’s a consummate comedy craftsman – one man and his mic, no frills but plenty of thrills.”
Mark Wareham, Mail on Sunday
“a supernatural sureness of touch…just plain funny in a way that few other comics can touch… supremely fast-witted in his interactions with the crowd…exquisitely vivid in some of his turns of phrase: you can sense Skinner the poetry lover in lines”
Dominic Maxwell, The Times
“To deploy the cliché ‘he makes it look effortless’ can’t do justice to how instinctive the mechanics of stand-up are to Frank Skinner… Brilliantly spontaneous crowd work seems to arise as naturally as breathing, which he weaves seamlessly into his material. Without ever seeming to break out of natural conversation, he will build a story with pithy turns of phrase and a perfectly timed symphony of pause, build and release to have you snorting with laughter.”
Steve Bennett, Chortle
“Skinner is never less than beadily alert…you come away happy that after 30 years Frank’s still dishing his dirt, and happier still that he can dish plenty more besides.”
Brian Logan, The Guardian
“immaculately constructed…Skinner’s crowdwork is as sharp as ever…he can spool out a yarn every bit as entertainingly as prime-era Billy Connolly.”
Bruce Dessau, Evening Standard
“brilliant quasi-traditional jokes, with long set-ups and clever punchlines that put me in mind of vintage Billy Connolly… What really works, with even the most innocuous material, is his timing and the mischievous nuance in the voice”
Veronica Lee, The Arts Desk
30 Years of Dirt – Thursday 26th September til Sunday 10th January
For more information and interview requests, please contact: Lucy Plosker – [email protected]
