Frank Skinner: 30 Years of Dirt – Gielgud Theatre, London

Frank Skinner: 30 Years of Dirt has the 1991 Perrier Award-winning comedian marshalling an appreciative audience through a relaxed evening of stand-up.

The crowd are warmed up by Pierre Novellie, who begins with some self-effacing jokes about his globe-trotting childhood but builds into a funny exploration of his relationship with fried chicken and his delight in ‘waltzing with the colonel’s daughters’. It’s relaxed, warm and good preparation for the main act.

If 30 Years of Dirt has a theme amongst the gentle meandering of anecdotes, puns and jokes, it’s about being in the position of a man who is approaching seventy but best known as a stalwart of ‘90s lad culture. He wants to be a respected playwright, or an esteemed novelist but childish knob-gags haunt him always, never leaving him alone. This set features numerous knob-gags, with the aforementioned appendage invading cute stories about puppies or a discussion of footballer Renaldo’s shelf-like abs.

There’s a little nostalgia for the old days when all a comedian needed to do was find the heaviest, bluntest, crudest joke possible and start hammering, but he’s not one of those people who resent having to use a little more finesse to make an audience laugh. There’s a great anecdote about a retired priest who has no idea the ideological hole he’s digging and he displays a very gracious recognition when it dawns on him that a man’s partner is not a woman at home but the man sitting next to him.

Skinner does a great job at involving the audience in the night, playing with those on the front rows and bringing them back into the conversation throughout. A moment of anti-heckling, where an audience member gushes with praise, is impressively damped down, turned into a joke and moved on from.

Skinner’s a noted fan of Samuel Johnson, but the evening takes a more Tristram Shandy progression, with stories spiralling into other stories, some returning but others never being seen again. It feels like he has a loose journey to travel but is perfectly happy to wander off and pick the flowers, never building to any sort of climax but chugging on with a lot of charm.

At one point he tells the audience that they are very lucky, as they’ll either have a very nice evening or be able to tell their friends they saw him crash and burn. It’s very unlikely that the second will happen. Skinner is too skilled and experienced for that. He has a fondness for actual gags, which he describes himself crafting like the village blacksmith. Another time, he talks about how he loves pure gags that emerge in life, ones that need no dressing up… easy gags.

30 Years of Dirt is a set that’s unlikely to fail with any audience. Both because of the expertise and skill of the performer, but because it never sets its sights on anything beyond being an easy good time, knob-gags and all.

Runs until 13 February 2024