Quotes from Frank Skinner

I don't like taboo subjects and I don't like elephants in the room. If there's an elephant in the room, I really want to absolutely examine it.

I can't remember ever being desperate for money, even when I didn't have any.

You can spend your whole life trying to be popular, but at the end of the day, the size of the crowd at your funeral will be largely dictated by the weather.

Well, I think that the most exciting stage of any tour is getting the tour together. Because when new material works, there is no other feeling like that. It's just brilliant. And for the first half of the tour, you're still often finding the extra stuff in that material. You're exploring it every night.

Sometimes a poem appeals to me technically, just because of the way a line feels on my lips. Sometimes it is because it says something I have felt, or sometimes something that I suddenly recognise. Other times it can change the way I see something.

There is a sense that if you're not on the telly then you might have died. I'm aware that's how people largely judge you.

You have more freedom on radio. When people used to tell me they preferred radio to TV, I always thought they were making the best of things because they couldn't get any telly work, but now I understand, sort of.

Fame changes you and I suppose I stopped biting my lip for a while. I started to point out when people weren't doing their job properly.

I'm quite testosterone intolerant, I just don't like it.

I suppose when I started out I didn't know the kind of comic I wanted to be at all. So in a way, the audience wrote my act. I went in and did stuff that I would have done in the pub, and some of it they liked, and some of it they didn't. And I kept what they laughed at.

I have seen pretty horrible blokes thinking they can do pretty much what they like over the years, not just in showbusiness but in ordinary jobs and in pubs and stuff.

Dad was a keen Roman Catholic, but I left the church when I was 17, not because I'd stopped believing - it was more doctrinal stuff, like that there was no biblical mention of purgatory. I went back when I was 28, just before I gave up drink.

My dad had a dominoes team, and there was a Frank Skinner in it. When I was a kid I used to look at the team card and think it was a brilliant name, so that's what I went for.

Neuromancer' by William Gibson is a cyberpunk classic.

There is a period in your life when you need your parents and a period in your life where you only think you need your parents. Something clicks, there's a little switch that goes and your parents, who had been the wind beneath your wings, through no fault of their own can start to oppress a bit, can start to stop you doing stuff.

On radio there's an obligation to be funny or interesting, and ideally both.

I read comic books when I was a kid. Now I have a passion for art and galleries that I think came from that. I didn't read a book without pictures until I was 21.

The second gig I did was New Year's Eve at the Birmingham Anglers Club, and that started with booing.

I think, as I've gone on, I've got a sense that there are some laughs I want, and some laughs I don't want.

I wish I had started to play the ukulele much earlier in life.

I did a few mainstream clubs in Birmingham when I started out. Racist comedy was absolutely the norm. Every act was doing it and when blokes talked about their wives or women in any way it was always derogatory.

I used to do homophobic material that I didn't recognise as homophobic. It's the only stuff I really look back on and think, 'I just wouldn't do that again.'

Alcoholic is a big word, but I'd have a hard time defending myself against it in court.

I grew up on Laurel and Hardy. I'm aware from my own experience that comedy has got quite a fierce sell-by date, but that doesn't seem to apply to them; they made films I can remember laughing at when I was five that I'd still happily watch today.