Frank Skinner Autobiography Read Online Free Page B

someone wearing more than two badges, they’re a nutter. But that’s a personal viewpoint. I went along with the theory that he was a nutter mainly because it enabled me to pun on the popular foodstuff, Jacob’s Crackers.
    On a darker note, my dad told me a story of how a Jewish money-lender he knew of, back in the north-east, had driven a poor woman to put her head in the gas oven because of his cruel interest rates. My dad was not a man to hold back when it came to enforcing a racial sterotype.
    Anyway, I know now that Dave is nothing like the nasty Jew that my dad spoke of. For a start, there is no way in the world that he would ever lend anyone money. But he was a bit scary at first. He was more successful, richer, better-looking, trendier and brainier than me, and when he first shook my hand I sensed he knew this as well as I did. In fact, I half-expected him to bring it up, but he didn’t. He was dressed in blacks and greys, the way fashionable London people did in 1990. His hair was long on top and short at the sides and he wore little round specs. I didn’t know if he actually needed them but I suppose they were easier to maintain than a large flashing sign that said ‘I’ve got a degree’, and served the same purpose.
    We shook hands in the dressing room and he joined me in watching the Ireland game. At first I thought that at any time he might ask if he could turn over to watch a Fellini movie on Channel Four (I presumed there was one) but he didn’t. In fact, he seemed genuinely interested in the game, to the point where he started slagging off Ireland’s use of the long ball game and explaining why the Italian and Brazilian systems were, in fact, more efficient as well as more entertaining. This pissed me off. I was prepared to play the newcomer comic role if I had to, but no toffee-nosed, four-eyed Cockney . . . (In those days, everyone from London and its environs was a Cockney in my eyes.) So we had a row about football. And, although we didn’t agree, it slowly dawned on me that this trendy Jewish intellectual knew about, and really cared about, the game. I was well impressed. My dad had always told me that I should never trust a man who didn’t like football. But if they did, they were alright, you could even forgive them the odd housewife on an unlit Gas Mark 9.
    The next time I met Dave was at the Central TV studios in Nottingham. I was doing an Amnesty International comedy special called the Big 30. Dave was doing the same show with his then comedy partner, Rob Newman. When I bumped into them they were standing among their scary-looking management team from the Avalon agency. Rob had a photocopy of the blurb for the back of their new live video and was sitting with a pen, crossing out every ‘Baddiel and Newman’ and writing in ‘Newman and Baddiel’. Dave sat nearby looking depressed. The Avalon team, including their big boss man, Jon Thoday, gazed about them like it was all in a day’s work. I said hello and made small talk.
    As the day went on, me and Dave got more and more chatty. It’s a weird thing when a bloke makes a new male friend. Men of my generation spend about, I would say, forty per cent of their waking hours demonstrating that they’re not homosexual. The amount of time I spend talking about football and big tits may be related to this, it’s all a bit too chicken-and-egg to work out. Anyway, I sensed I was making a new mate. And a trendy, successful, sophisticated, highly intelligent one at that. And he liked football and big tits. And still no urge to put my head in the gas oven.
    The next day I gave Dave a lift to Birmingham in my Citroen AXGT that I’d bought off Steve Coogan. So there’s me and Dave driving down the A38 in the thickest fog you could imagine. The sort of fog I thought smokeless fuels had seen off for good. The sort of fog you only usually see in black and white films about