“His love for the poems he talks about really shines through, in a juicy, funny, and hands-on podcast that goes deep into how poetry intertwines with life and what it can do.”
Charlotte Runcie, Daily Telegraph
“Skinner’s conversational, unpretentious style is a pleasure to listen to”
James Marriott, The Times
It was announced today (Tuesday 5th November) that Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast will be returning for a 10th series. Following Bauer Media and Absolute Radio’s decision to cancel both this critically acclaimed podcast and his award-winning radio show six months ago, the new series, now in partnership with Adelicious, will once again see Frank dive into more of his favourite contemporary and classic works, reading extracts, analysing works, and dissecting the best verses of familiar and lesser-known poets in weekly segments.
Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast was launched to widespread critical acclaim in April 2020 and regularly reached the top podcast charts nationwide. The new series will include poets and poetry both past and present from the likes of Dylan Thomas, Rebecca Hawkes, Seamus Heaney, Frank O’Hara and Ruth Padel to name a few.
Commenting on his return with the 10th series, Frank said, “Making the poetry podcast is one of my deepest joys and I’m told there are thousands of people out there who actually listen to it. I’m very happy to be presenting them with Series Ten.”
A busy month has also seen Frank announce the launch of his other new podcast, “Frank Off The Radio”. 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.
Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast, produced by Avalon, will be available from Wednesday 13th November. You’ll be able to listen and download on all mainstream podcast platforms.
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What the Press Said About Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast
“Skinner’s passion and enthusiasm are as infectious and enlivening as ever – a great way to discover new poetry”
The I
“A charming, slightly wonky surprise. His choices were sprightly: Stevie Smith’s Not Waving but Drowning and William Carlos Williams’s Danse Russe. Like a revered but unpredictable sixth-form teacher, he offered line-by-line analysis. But there was also something raw, brave and intimate about the self-insight abashedly offered…. I’ll tune in for Skinner’s edgy English class again.”
Patricia Nicol, The Sunday Times
“A very welcome new addition to the cultural landscape: a simple idea without any fancy production presented by someone who brings insight and enthusiasm to an art form that is enjoying a resurgence in popularity.”
Will Gompertz, BBC Entertainment & Arts
“Getting into poetry is an absolutely excellent thing to fill your lockdown hours with, but actually ‘getting into poetry’ is a lot more daunting than you’d think. Where do you start? Let Frank Skinner guide you… his passion comes through in his drily funny half-hour episodes.”
Esquire
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. The current tour extension finishes on 10th January at Dorking Halls.
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.
Off the back of the Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast launching in April 2020, 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.
For further information and interview requests, please contact Lucy Plosker – [email protected]
