Quotes from Frank Skinner

I don't know anything about politics, so I don't do political material.

I stopped drinking on 24 September 1986.

I think part of being human is jokes.

For clothes I usually go to Ben Sherman.

I suppose that every relationship I have been in has had a lot of arguments. I find it very hard to keep things at the bickering level.

People are a bit surprised if I say anything bright but I've probably brought that on.

I've always been wary of anyone who calls themselves a 'shock comic.'

My dream has always been to live somewhere in London where the chimneys look as if they could have been used in 'Mary Poppins.'

My dreams are things like: I'm in the supermarket, I queue, and then I leave the supermarket. It's basically my life but I happen to be asleep.

One of the most exciting things about supporting West Bromwich Albion was watching Johnny Giles play in the late '70s.

I was pleased Melissa Leo won Best Supporting Actress for 'The Fighter' at the Oscars. I hope that her outfits are maintained in some cinema museum.

One of the nice things about becoming a stand-up, one of the great things about becoming a stand-up, is you realise you haven't been wasting all those years you thought you'd been wasting.

I'd got into Cash after I'd used my pocket money to buy his 'Live at San Quentin' album, just because I liked the cover. It turned out I liked the record inside even more.

I would like to talk about poems like I talk about football.

For me personally, being a comedian is having funny ideas and saying them: it's not just saying them. I need the complete process.

I don't get many compliments on my looks.

I did a tour of Sweden with Eddie Izzard in our early days, and he said, 'I'm thinking of talking about being a transvestite on stage. You should talk about being a Catholic.' I said, 'I think audiences will be more accepting of you being a transvestite than me being a Catholic.'

I can't swim. I've got better, but I can't go out of my depth. As soon as I smell chlorine my heart starts racing.

Now that I've met posh people, I think you meet some you like and some you don't.

That's the way I like my posh people, up front. I like the fact that Jack Whitehall will talk about being posh, or David Mitchell.

I have this JPM thing: jokes per minute. I've worked out that I should get in about 12 punchlines in five minutes. I need them all. It's like when you walk down a road, if there's a lamp post that's out, it's fine if you can see the next one's alight, but if there's two out, that's a period of frightening darkness.

My mum, Doris, was a source of unalloyed love. She lived for her family and would literally give you her last pound. I think she's made me a kinder person, because I think: Do I want to help this person? If my mum was around, she would have.

Sometimes when you start improvising on stage, which I do a fair bit of, obviously you haven't planned it. But to be honest, it's not like I'm one of these blokes who is sitting at home pouring it all out and then does a different thing on stage.

Alcoholism and country music are both tremendous aids to self-dramatisation.