The Frank Skinner Show - Not The Weekend Podcast

Episode Date: May 19, 2010

Frank, Gareth and Laura Solon have a rather surreal conversation about stuffed animals.

I've got about 10 seconds to tell you how to get two-for-one tickets for top draw comedy nights near you thanks to our friends at the TV channel Dave at absoluteradio.co.uk. Also, I've got to tell you about how you can win prizes while you're there too. I've run out of time though. Frank Skinner on Absolute Radio. Absolute Radio. Welcome to Not The Weekend Podcast. Frank Skinner is here. That's me.

And Gareth is here. Wednesday. What? Wednesday. That's the attempt at a jingle for Wednesday. It's alright, we've got one here. Wednesday morning! See, we've already got one. And Laura Solon is with us today, not with here. And Laura Solon is with here today.

With us today, not with here. With here. I'm with here today. Oh, good. With hair today. Yeah. With hair. Don't start that up. No.

Laura Salon. Yeah. So, yes, we're all assembled. Emily is still away. In Mauritius. Mm. She certainly is. OK.

I was on the radio this morning. They were talking about the election. And somebody said... This was on Five Live. Somebody said... Historically, how important is this political moment? And I thought it's quite a difficult question, isn't it, to work out?

You have to sort of weigh up the amount of historicalness. And travel forward in time as well, so you can look back with perspective on it. I always think with these things, it's like after a football match, and they say, how upset were you when that goal went in? And I always want to say, what, out of 100? It's very hard to grade it, isn't it? So I'd say historically, if one could measure historicity,

I'd say seven would have been my answer. Is that out of ten? Well, let them guess the gauge if they're going to ask those kind of questions. That's how it would have gone with me at the beginning. I went to a wedding last weekend. How historic was that wedding? It was more hysterical than historical. I enjoyed it.

I didn't make the ceremony. I wasn't... You know, nowadays... You just went for the food. Well, everyone who's said... I would have loved to have gone to a ceremony, I'll be honest with you. But every wedding, though,

is planned with a sort of a friendship league table in mind. So you get the three levels of love. So the people who are very close, they get to go to the ceremony itself. And I'd like to have been at the ceremony, because the bride went down the aisle to the test match

cricket theme. You know that... She has to walk quite quickly. I think she just um is she quite red and leathery does she have like a woven section around her middle do you know did um a man in white rub her against his crotch well not actually at the ceremony later on but yes you at the end when they normally say you make his bride said you may rob the bride up and down against your crop and leave a mark yes exactly um so anyway so i i you know i i've known they're very dear friends of mine who i you know i love a lot but i i realized now i'm in the second

division of their friendship because you weren't but it might have been because of because you they're very small sometimes places. I realise that, but nevertheless. You're not that big, you could have fitted in. Yeah, uncomfortably. But anyway, I didn't feel bad about it. It's the way of the world now. There were some people, I mean I went to the sit down meal

after the speeches, some people weren't invited until the party in the evening. So, you know, count your blessings. Well, invited to the meal, I think the meal is like a higher thing than the service. So, you know, count your blessings. Well, invited to the... I think the meal is like a higher thing than the service. Yeah. People might have traded you. People might have traded you their seat in the ceremony and tagged out.

Some people feel the ceremony is the bit that drags. Yeah, but you don't want to be invited. I was once invited to a wedding in Nottingham, where I was invited to the ceremony, so I qualified as First Division, but not invited to the sit-down where I was invited to the ceremony, so I qualified as First Division, but not invited to the sit-down meal,

but invited to the party. So we came out of the church, we went to a local chip shop. I sat on a wall with a flower in my lapel and a suit and ate fish and chips on a wall and then wandered around. We weren't even in the city centre, there was nothing to do, wandered around until I was allowed to go into the party.

You had an interval to the wedding. I mean, it's basically apartheid is what goes on at weddings nowadays. It's all so... You can come this... You can't come to that. What if someone had just... What if I'd turned up at the ceremony? Would I have been turned away? They have a list.

They might have known. They might have bouncers. When me and Laura were first married and lived in Cardiff. When you were first married? How many times have you been married? You would have asked people to renew your vows. No, if you renew your vows, it seems like something bad has happened. Yeah, it does.

Let's start again. Who are you trying to convince? I think a marriage, whether they renew their vows, is a bit like when you switch a computer off and then switch it back on again. It's like rebooting. Or re-grouting your bathroom. You're basically saying this marriage, it's crashed. We're going to have to switch it off and switch it back on again.

It's not a good thing. Anyway, in Cardiff, one of Laura's friends invited Just Laura to their wedding. Isn't that the name of a hairspray? Just Laura, not you? Only Laura, not me. That's unbelievable. Could have been worse. She could have

invited Laura plus one. Plus a different one. Plus one in brackets. In brackets, not Garrett. Not Garrett. There was this guy who was in a double act. This would be early 60s, maybe late 50s. I'd better not name them.

But they were a comedy double act together. And let's call them for the sake... Let's call them Duke and Earl. Duke and Earl. Right. And I'm calling them that because it was their name. Oh, right. And Duke, at the end of their comedy...

They were a knockabout comedy act. You know, popular, not massive, but, you know, working well. And at the end of their act, Duke used to sing... You know, in the old days, the comedians would end with a song. He got a nice singing voice, Duke, so he would sing this rather sad song at the end. And he brought it out as a as a single and it uh it charted you know it was it was it was billed as duke and earl on the label because you know they worked together and it was it was nice so anyway they were invited to do the um the royal the royal command performances it was called then

which was a massive massive gig in those days. And apparently on the invite, this massive invite, because I did the Royal Variety Performance once, and you get a big elaborate invite, you know, beautifully done. And it said, Her Majesty the Queen requests the presence of Duke and Earl at the Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium, blah, blah, blah. And then in beautiful copper plate handwriting it said, Earl need not attend. What, an embossed gold leaf? No, just in, you know, in fountain pen.

Need not? Need not attend. Why mention him? Why mention him on the thing at all? They got their numbers wrong and they were looking at how many canapes they had and they had to cut 30 people. It's a difficult thing to invite them if he doesn't do the song.

Is he going to sit there like Julianne Bruce at the O2 watching Simeon's Gifts? No, I haven't got over it! Maybe the Queen didn't want to... Because neither of them were a Duke or an Earl, were they? No. She probably thought both was a bit much. There were enough of those idiots who weren't even...

She thought they were imposters. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why Queen never played the Rava Rite of Performance. They thought there'd be a bit of a mix-up. And they might get the car home. They could have got in the cosies for Queen. And then you've got the Queen comes out.

Where's my car? What do you mean? Or Prince. Or Prince. Queen and Prince. Let's not keep at it. Just saying titles. Dukes of Hazzard.

What about Beatrice and Eugenie, who I think travel in an open-top boss to make room for their faces? I like them. That's not very nice. No, I actually like them. They haven't done anything wrong. They haven't. I'd take that back. Well, we don't know that. They haven't done anything publicly wrong.

Probably been covered up because they're royals. Well, there was that thing. I'm not saying they did anything wrong. She had her student flat donned, didn't she, on taxpayers' money. But to be fair, she was staying in a palace, so it probably would have got done anyway, one of them. They seem nice girls to me. I take back what I said. I would

kiss both of them without wincing. How many rows could you say that about? I'll tell you what there was at the wedding. There was cupcakes. We had cupcakes at our wedding.

Instead of a cake because we don't like fruit cake. When was it there was cupcakes. We had cupcakes at our wedding. Did you really? Instead of a cake, because we don't like fruit cake. No, that is... When was it that the cupcake made its big comeback? Because the cupcakes were a very minor, very minor part of the cake world, weren't they? Until quite recently. I think it was Sex and the City made them popular.

I've never seen that. What happened on there, then? I think there was a later series, or there was a shop or something, and they became like a fashionable... Like so many things from television becoming real. Like when Delia Smith, if she used...

White wine. Yeah, well, I think white wine was quite popular. If she used goat fat... No, before Delia, no-one drank white wine. Didn't she use goat fat on something? Goose fat? I think it was goat fat. Goat fat was sacrifice.

Yeah. Can you use goat fat? I know you've put out in my mind that it might have. I think it was goat fat. Did it come in a horn? So the animal's fat. The animal is born and develops a receptacle for its own fat that will fit into a horn rack.

You know those horn racks that you get in kitchens? Next to the spice rack. Yeah, which are the fats of various animals contained within their own horns. Yeah. They hollow out the horns and put... You know, take your stuffed owl that you've got, Laura. Don't you think that if you could get the head to screw off of that, that'd be a lovely biscuit tin?

It would be like those cow cookie things that moo if you try and get a biscuit out of them. Yeah. To remind you not to eat too many. A bit hooted. I don't think you'd get a hoot out of it, though. Not now it's dead, no. Well, I imagine the vocal cords go...

Botched. They've gone the way of Julie Andrews. I imagine that they must be discarded in the taxidermy process. Yeah, they get frozen out. It's a pity because I think if you had a job generally stuffing owls it'd be worth keeping

the vocal cords. But they don't actually stuff them. What they do is they create a full scale model of the animal and then put the skin round it. So the stuffed is a bit of a red herring because they don't stuff the skin with sand. They make a model. So it's like part sculpture, part art, part weird men covering models with animal skin.

OK. Did you say you've got a stuffed red herring? No. I just threw that into the mix. That's interesting. So when you see a big fish in a glass case, or is it aquarium, is that what they call it? You know when you see what I would call it, let me call it a stuffed fish just for the purposes of this argument. They've opened the fish, they've built a fish. They carefully remove the skin and then they take tons of measurements from the head to the side. They take loads of measurements of it and they create a 3D model of every, like, you know, from the head to the side. They take loads of measurements of it

and they create a 3D model of that, like a sculpture. And then they carefully put the pelt or skin or hide back on. So it's very impressive. I didn't... Laura is fascinating. Me and Laura once had a long conversation about the... It's not a long one. Not as long as hair scrunchies. This is short. This was... It's putting a long one. No. Not as long as hair scrunchies. This is short.

This was a... It's putting years back on your life. It was about the moral wrongs and rights of taxidermy and about whether it was all right to... Obviously, it wouldn't be right to kill an animal, but if you collected roadkill, would it be all right to construct an animal from various parts of other animals?

And we never really got to the bottom. I think we thought it would be alright if it was a private hobby. Yeah. It would be alright if it was the same animal. Yeah. But you don't want a badger with like one horse leg. I do. I do. Oh do you? Yeah. Well I've got one. As it turns out. I mean I didn't just

cut that out of the air. I've got one. Same discussion about amateur taxidermy. You can't really be an amateur taxidermist it's a skill you have to be very good at or not do it at all because you don't want to see amateur taxidermy well now you've told me the method I have an idea of that

I think I could be an amateur taxidermist you thought it would be stuff that would leak yeah I thought the stuffing would be difficult but if you just have to build a model and then put the skin on it what I'm thinking of doing i'm thinking of say if i in my house i decided i wanted a a stuffed alsatian yeah what i would do is go out i'd obviously i'd case the local area until i found two local alsatians one slightly larger than the other what What I'd do is I'd kill them both, and then I'd cover the smaller one in the skin of the other.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. In fact, what I might do is I might not kill the smaller one. You'd just freeze it for later. No, I might leave it alive, but cover it, but stitch the other one's pelt over it and their head. So the dead one is, to all intents and purposes,

still knocking around in the air. And people are saying, where's my Alsatian gone? Not knowing that it's inside the other Alsatian. What a prank. It'd be like a Russian Alsatian or a wolf in wolf's clothing. Yeah, well, I mean, I wouldn't have the time to carry this out, but if there was lots, say cats, and there's more cats than Alsatians, generally.

Say if you could get, say, a dozen. You need a team a team of people to help yeah if you've got a dozen we've got the absolute listeners i'm sure that we'll set our pictures by next week of this well we'll do on the website we can put size categories and we can get cats over a range you know of size starting with a kitten and then a bigger cat we could have a cat with sites 12 cats inside it well like you start with a fly and then a spider and then a bird cat. We could have a cat with 12 cats inside it. Well, like you start with a fly and then a spider and then a bird. Yeah, I'd be less happy with that. I like the idea of having a kitten at the base, at the core of this cat structure

because the kitten would grow. As it grows. It would grow into its skin, wouldn't it? Well, what it would do, it would have to shed its inner skins. So, you know when cats go... Hairballs. And a hairball.

What would that be? A big cat skin. A cat skin would come out. Imagine the consternation of the local children when that happened, when a cat coughed up an empty cat. Anyway, I don't think that's enough of that, is it? I think we've gone too far. We have an email, don't we?

Please don't do that. Please don't. We were just joking. What? Please don't. Oh, no, don't do it. No, if you're listening to that, don't. Oh, no, it's too late.

We've just had one delivered. Oh. Oh, no. Well, that's not bad, though. What they've got mixed up, they've tried to get the Alsatian inside a cat. The laws of physics have forbidden it. The whole nine legs are out.

They rushed it. They rushed of physics have forbidden it. The whole nine legs are out. They rushed it. They rushed it. To be fair though, they did turn that around pretty quick. It's good. Held together with hair bands, I think. Or they're scrunchies. Let's not go back. The last weekend we had a... We had a hair band. Yeah, keep headbutting that microphone. Stop it.

That's not our equipment. Do we have an email? We do have an email. Thank goodness for that. From Kelly. I feel really devised from the external world. Kelly Leeson. Kelly. Jelly J. Does anybody know Kelly? K-E-L-L-Y

Anybody know Kelly? Kelly from the Isle of Man. Is she from the Isle of Man? She doesn't say. Well, it could be her. She says it's called Shenanigans and Dictator Cats. That musical. It's by Julie Andrews

and her daughter. By Julie Andrews and her daughter. Dear Frank, Emily... I'll start again. No, I liked that. I liked that. I liked that.

I liked that. I liked that. I liked that. I liked that. It was better. I find words sometimes they're limiting. Why not just make noises and let people put their own interpretations on it?

Dear Frank, Gareth and Emily, or is it Laura Solon this week? It is. Oh, they've planned ahead, these people. Morning all, I always think of things to write into you about after the fact, such as being famous at school. Oh, yeah, that was one of our phone-ins one week. Do you think Kelly's American? After the fact is an American phrase.

It could be R. Kelly. I hadn't thought of that. And also, he's complaining about the fact that he's missed previous phone-ins. He's basically saying, if I could turn back the hands of time. It is R. Kelly. This is a bit of a moment.

And he's talking about flying. He's talking about being famous as well. He's talking about flying? You're reading ahead of me. I don't even know that. Don't spoil it for me. That's before the fact. In brackets, her being famous at school. I'm going to go with it.

We'll stick with it. It's a her. Okay. You don't think it is R. Kelly? No. Just shoot me down. why don't you? I flew across the school field when the hurricane picked me up and threw me up in the air in 1987.

He flew across the school field? Can that be true? It could be if they were living in Kansas or somewhere with... No, that's tornadoes. That's why I think it might be American, because hurricanes are very big things over there. They're not so big over here. No, but 1987 was the year of them.

Well, I thought it was 1989. What year did this happen? 1987. I think the great storm of where Gordon Kaye got the plank in his head was 88 or 89. Oh, yeah, Gordon Kaye. Poor Gordon Kaye from A Low Alarm. René Artois. He, um, Poor Gordon Kaye from A Lower Love. René Artois. He was walking past an enormous billboard, a big advert on it,

and during those high winds, a piece of the advert, look, a big piece of wood off the big advert, hit him on the head, and I think a nail... Yeah, went into his head. So the wood the big advert hit him on the head. And I think a nail... Yeah, went into his head. So the wood didn't just hit him on the head, it stayed on his head. So at least when they turned up, they knew what had happened. Because it was still there. Who says that no publicity is bad publicity?

But yes, but this isn't Gordon Kay, is it? No, I don't think so. So she was blown across. I think it could happen. You do get rogue ghosts. Hmm. Yeah. What else does Kelly have to say?

I'm liking Kelly, though. She's adventurous. Also, she has an allegation to make. She says in the Halifax ads, where the supposedly real Halifax employees, you know... Like the Radio Halifax thing and all that. Yeah, and Howard, who gives you extra... Howard's not in it anymore, is he?

No, I think Howard's... No. Howard's end. Indeed. Happened. They aren't, and I have proof. So she says they're not real Halifax employees. I was re-watching... No, no, I think they are.

Isn't that the whole point of those adverts, that they're actual members of staff? Well, she's got proof. Yeah, well, she says, I was re-watching Prime Suspect 6 and thought that... Who re-watches that? Fans of Helen Mirren. We know the end, yeah?

No, you probably can't remember because there's so many of them you forget. Well, there's only six going to... I thought there were about nine. There's only 16. Maybe there's more. Just carry on. And thought she recognised an actor playing a homeless man and thought he looked familiar in Prime Suspect 6. I did some research and found that he is the man

on the most annoying Halifax advert, the Issa Issa Baby one. His name is Finlay Robertson and he has been in loads of stuff. So he is an actor. This is quite a serious allegation. Can I say that we distance ourselves from this allegation? She says, or maybe I'm wrong in the acting career. Go and see R. Kelly if you've got any.

R. Kelly's had worse allegations to go with,'s face it let's not go into that he did try to turn back the hands of time well was that ever proven um it was wasn't it i don't know let's just say leave it alone we don't think so i like him actually i don't like him much i think his music's rubbish but you know he's good enough to email him. He can show him a bit of respect. Well, that's a shock. Now she comes to mention, I think I did see Howard in Bergman's The Seventh Seal.

Howard's in Police Academy 3. Is he? Yeah. Oh. Well, there you go. Then the whole thing is bogus. And she next says, I understand. It's a three-parter. I understand why this next subject

may be something you decide not to read out. Oh, dear. It could be controversial. Oh, dear. Although it is very funny. Is it controversial? It's not too bad. Oh, OK.

Have a look at this website, catsthatlooklikehitler.com. It made me laugh so much. Is that wrong of me? Yes, I've seen this website, actually.looklikehitler.com. It made me laugh so much. Is that wrong of me? Yes, I've seen this website actually. Yeah, I have as well. It's pictures of well, cats that look like Hitler. I've started

one, it's dictators that look like cats. I don't know if you've seen that. So obviously there's meow, say tongue. That's good. He's on there. Poor pot. Poor, but that's I don't know if you've seen that. So obviously there's Meow, Zaytong. That's good. He's on there. Poor Pot.

Poor... But that's... Poor... Oh, but they've taken the names. They've taken... Because they're cat-like. They're pun-like dictators. They've taken the name. Pussalini is on there.

Yeah, but they all look... They all look feline as well. Pussalini was always bringing in Stalin. Yeah, I hate it when he did that. He tortured that poor thing. So, yeah, I've seen that website, and it is funny, because it's cats basically with... Well, some of them have just got little black moustaches,

as you'd expect on a Hitler-look-alike thing, but some of them actually have that swept-across-hair thing. That's the best one. The ones that have the hair to. That's the best ones. The ones that have the hair to match, that's my favourite. I have to say, I'm suspicious. I am a little bit suspicious about those. I think maybe they've been... There's an element of stars in their eyes about them.

Tonight, I'm going to be... Well, it's not their choice, is it? It's the owner's choice. Yes, I think that if people who want to get on that website, they get the cat and say, come here, you, and they make it look like Hitler. I did it with a cat I had. I mean, this was post after he'd shot and burnt himself in the bunker. So I made my cat look like that.

I meant to do it outside. Obviously, I joked. And, well, you know, it wasn't even printed after all that. What's the internet for? If you can't put up pictures like that? If you can't put what is essentially a charcoal pet.

I don't know. It's... Oh. Frank Skinner on Absolute Radio. Absolute Radio.