Frank Skinner - Frank Skinner Review

Overall Rating

few cheap gags, and I felt like he left too much out.

Honest and witty. For a modern biography this is actually quite a good effort, in terms of style and reader involvement. The first half of the book is written well and runs around giving snippets of Frank from his childhood, mischievous youth, and finding his feet in the joyous world of the working class. Much of his popularity comes from his natural ballsy charm, daring to say what we find funny but don't have the guts to voice. He embraces cheek, filth and candor, and understands their use in raising a laugh. He merrily lambastes his own shortcomings as he would others, and it's these honest character traits that allow him a place of friendship amongst fans. A typical stand up guy in both senses. Like most beer swilling, football loving, breast fixated men, we tend to group together, and I'm very much part of his target audience on that basis. I enjoyed all the more his personal 'young Frank' stories for the comparisons I could draw, and I enjoyed his failures for the uncaring way your typical bloke deals with most important tasks. This is very much who I thought Frank would be, and the book confirms it. With my curiosity fulfilled, I was very keen to learn about his rags to riches story. Here the book seemed to change, the personal stories often too brief and rather uncomfortable in their telling. His many travels and achievements condensed into so few pages, it felt like he was writing a CV. In between we had pointless pieces of television script, and stories of tabloid tales from his ex girlfriends, which he doesn't talk about, except for cleverly inserting them in his life story. Not falling for that one Frank. I'm not saying it's not news, but I'm sure he did more interesting things than read other peoples garbage. I don't really want to slate the book, it's really very good, but seemed hurried and poorly edited at times. With the book clearly keen to show Frank the person, I just felt it became too trivial when read in full. He also fell short of his claim of not using swear words for the sake of it. Overall he's clearly a very likable and clever man, a good comic and will hopefully stay around for many years. Maybe he could have another go at a book one day, with a bit more commitment it could have been excellent. I definitely recommend this book if you like his persona.