Frank Skinner
Hammersmith Apollo, London W6
Since 1997, when we were still whistling 'Three Lions', Frank Skinner has hardly been hibernating, but a decade on chat-show sofas seems to have made him surprisingly feral. As he demonstrates how he ran everywhere at high speed as a child, thereby escaping the paedophiles (unlike the obese youth of today), Skinner seems less a middle-aged man than an animated rodent.
Not that he doesn't exploit his age (he's 50) to crack some gags about his sexual performance - which he acts out at length. And not that he hasn't noticed that he has new competition, most notably Ricky Gervais, whose 10-metre image greets the audience as we enter the Hammersmith Apollo.
Perhaps it's the increasingly politically incorrect focus of comedy that makes it hard to be as shocked by Skinner he would like. When Gervais mentions the Terrence Higgins Trust, the audience wait for a joke about Aids; when Skinner mentions it, it's because he's done a charity walk. But he makes up for it with seemingly spontaneous pace and something like charm. And a commitment to harmless filth of the kind that never quite goes out of date.
