Get Out More..............................Comedy Review

FRANK SKINNER (Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath 5 September)

08-09-2007

There was a time when Frank Skinner's appearances at the Hare were the cause of a weekly pilgrimage for The Stirrer. This week Black Country gagmeister went back to his roots as he warmed up for a national tour.

Over the past few days word of mouth and posters announced Frank Skinner was playing two nights stand up upstairs in the recently revitalised Hare & Hounds pub on Kings Heath High Street.

After playing a small venue in Edinburgh, this was further warm up and filming for a DVD for his forthcoming nationwide tour which sees him playing a number of nights at the NIA.

The room only had capacity for 200, with admission a bargain £5 at 6.30pm with the show scheduled for an early start. Having seen Oldbury's finest at the same venue in the late 80s as a resident comic and compere for a weekly show four of us went to queue at 5pm.

Frank refers to one of these shows in his autobiography when he had to rescue a very awkward moment for Sean Hughes who made a joke about the Birmingham Six and got some very angry heckling form many of the audience about the victims of the pub bombings and Hughes froze leaving Frank to diffuse things.

To our relief there were only about 70 people ahead of us but the queue grew rapidly much to the bemusement of passing residents and commuters along the High Street. I reckon anyone arriving after 5.20 would have been disappointed. The hour and half queuing passed quickly thanks to the sunshine and drinks from the bar.

We got in and to our surprise found some seats on the second and third row.

At 7pm Frank came on to wild applause and reminisced about how the place hadn't changed, he also had the stand up's gift of two members of the front row to bounce jokes off. One had a recently broken nose heavily bandaged and the other long hair; beard and nose piercing - cue good humoured references to grunge and begging

An initial joke was about the far too glistening Boulton, Murdoch, Watt statue in Broad Street looking like Star War's C3PO. With Frank now over 50 he mused about getting old and having to google everyday words in case he'd made them up.

Frank decided to appoint one of our friends as his moral arbiter because she wears glasses. So there were constant refrains of "is that ok Sally" as he talked about his past sexual practices and always took the adult humour route.

There was a very funny exchange about one night stands, with Frank's comeback to the danger of infectious diseases being along the lines that it was safer f****** around than going to hospital.

Frank was on stage for an 90 minutes, telling us what great value this was for a fiver, there was an amusing tale of trying to find a party address by walking round streets with his satnav, jokes about his rather gay right hand when he walks and having to run everywhere as a child.

The bulk of the show was taken up by Frank's stories were about his personal sexual stories as he has now forsaken casual sex, it was explicit but funny.

Franks' encore was a banjo ditty about Bin Landen. Overall a great evening, seeing a local hero perform in an proper stand up venue. Another date has now been added at the NIA in November, an excellent venue, but not quite as intimate.