“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 (Thursday 25th July) that comedy legend Frank Skinner will be adding a third consecutive performance at Birmingham’s Hippodrome to his already extended and critically acclaimed stand-up tour ’30 Years of Dirt’. With shows on 11th November and an extra one on 12th November already sold out, an additional homecoming performance will now take place on 13th November at the Birmingham venue. This brings the total to six performances in Birmingham, as Skinner previously sold out three nights at The Alexandra back in May. The Autumn tour extension follows a third West End extension at London’s Gielgud Theatre with a three-week run from 5th-124th August. This comes after two sold-out London runs at the Lyric and the Gielgud Theatre. Due to popular demand, a third extra date has also been added at the Manchester Opera House on 30th November and a new date at Aberystwyth Arts Centre on 3rd October. The upcoming tour extension will kick off on 26th September at Guildford’s G Live and finish on 10th January at Dorking Halls.
Tickets are on sale now from www.frankskinnerlive.com.
Notes to editors:
Frank’s award-winning radio show, The Frank Skinner Show, 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 him inducted into the Radio Academy’s Hall of Fame in 2016. In May 2024 the radio show was nominated for the Best Comedy award at the ARIAs. 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.
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.
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 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.
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]
