REVIEW: trademark charm and filth on a brilliant night with Frank Skinner

The master was at the top of his game on a brilliant night in Southampton – so effortlessly likeable and so endlessly crude, naughtiness always with trademark charm.

Skinner immediately started to make the front row his accomplices, finding out their names, retaining them and using them hilariously (though absolutely never unkindly) throughout the night.

In between times he riffed endlessly, creating always the impression at least of total spontaneity as his quick wits took him anywhere and everywhere, often with an underlying theme of getting older – from cutting down on the price of roses to the increasing infrequency, perhaps even ultimate extinction, of certain shared practices; from the horrors of the lateral flow test to the rather surprising discoveries Naked Attraction brought him; from an unfortunate encounter with Tim Rice to the bizarre choreography of receiving his gong from Princess Anne. Plus plenty of fabulous one-liners, maybe above all the reaction from the publisher when Roget turned up with his thesaurus.

Skinner was marking 30 years (well, a bit more than that) of dirt. The years clearly haven’t wearied him. Quite the opposite in fact. One of the loveliest things was that you couldn’t help but sense his enjoyment at simply being there. Great stuff from one of the greatest.