Frank Skinner Autobiography (11 page)

Buffalo Bill's Western Annual
, with its colour plates of Daniel Boone killing a bear at point-blank range with an old musket, and a bowler-hatted Bat Masterson gambling on a Mississippi riverboat, was much more appropriate. I quote these examples, but I lost my
Buffalo Bill
many years ago and am relying totally on memory. It's surprising what lingers in the memory, though. Writing this book has opened doors in my subconscious that would otherwise have probably stayed locked forever. Writing the description of my garden-screaming, for example, was quite harrowing. It was like I could actually feel now what I felt then.

I remember the first time I tried magic mushrooms. I guess I was about twenty-five. I was at a friend's house in Edgbaston, Birmingham, and had already been drinking cider and smoking dope all day, which gave me the courage to try the mushrooms. Their effect manifested itself in two specific ways. Firstly, in my head I got a very clear image of an old black-and-white photo from a children's encyclopedia that was knocking around the house when I was a kid. That night, twenty years later, I could see it before me in all its detail. It was a photograph of some sort of microbe-type thing, all circular and emanating light. Up until that point I had forgotten the existence of the encyclopedia, let alone the microbe picture, but I sat on my friend's bed and tried to describe this vision to my mates. For some reason, they were absolutely fascinated. I've been in show business for thirteen years, but I've never had an audience as captivated as they were that night. I believe someone actually said ‘Wow!'

The second effect was that my friend played a Fripp and Eno album, and I decided it was the best thing I'd ever heard. I stayed the night at the flat and made the major mistake of listening to it again the next morning. Let's just say I revised my opinion. It is for this same reason that one-night stands are always better if you know the number of an early-hours cab firm.

About five years after that mushroom-crazed night, I came across a copy of the children's encyclopedia in a second-hand bookshop in Quinton. This was remarkable, not just because it involved the re-discovery of a very old, out-of-print book, but also because the merest idea of being in a second-hand bookshop nowadays fills me with horror. For some reason, second-hand bookshops, classical music and Radio 4 all make me think of death. Anyway, there I was. I opened the book, and, after flicking through a few pages, there was the microbe, almost exactly as I had remembered it. Except that it was a picture of the solar system. The circles, the light, all there but scaled down rather than up. I thought this mis-remembrance was really interesting but I never got round to buying the book. The reason for this was even stranger.

As I stood looking at the ex-microbe, I heard a man's voice from the other side of the bookcase. He was chatting to the shop's owner about Nazi war atrocities. He said he had a massive collection of books on this and related subjects, and went on to say that he had been at a party at someone's house recently and their collection was even ‘better' than his own. However, he explained to the attentive shop-owner, this ‘better' collection was very much enriched by books about Vietnamese war atrocities. He had now resolved to move his collecting in this direction and told the shop-owner to keep back any such books and he would buy them. I was starting to feel a bit uneasy when the conversation was suddenly interrupted by a distorted man's voice, clearly coming out of some sort of radio or walkie-talkie. No, it couldn't be. I peered through a gap in the books. It was true. The war-atrocities book collector was a fucking copper.

Anyway, what I do remember about the
Buffalo Bill's Western Annual
was that I loved it, as I loved all things ‘cowboy'. I had a cushion folded over the arm of the settee, which acted as a saddle. I straddled the settee-arm and rode the prairies of my imagination. It sounds tossy but I can't think of a better way of putting it. My mom got very confused when the little girl next door asked her if Davy Crockett was coming out to play. It was the first time I had given a girl a false name. My dad must have been very proud of me – after all, it was a lot more inventive than Len. And I bet he'd never convinced one that he'd died at the Alamo, either.

However, I made the mistake of showing the girl next door my Daniel-Boone-killing-the-bear picture. This sounds like a gag but it's absolutely true. She never brought teddy out into the garden again. Not that I had a musket, but I did carry quite a tasty white plastic rifle. This was where Mr Parkes came in. Mr Parkes lived next-door-but-one where he spent all day sitting outside his garden shed (he only had one!) watching the world go by. Whenever I was out with my rifle, Mr Parkes would stick a matchbox on top of the open shed-door and invite me to shoot it off. I rarely missed. Only quite recently did I work out that he was tapping the door with his foot when I shot. However, what was brilliant about this was that every so often he'd have me miss. I suppose he was trying to give me an early lesson in life.

The little girl who lived on the other side of my house was not really party to my cowboy world. I didn't have much to do with her until one day when she was standing on the fence that separated the two gardens. Land, I had learned from the cowboys, was special. Special enough to kill or be killed for. I told her to get off the fence. She wouldn't. I told her again. Nothing. Couldn't she see the rifle? The first shot was over her head. She laughed. So I fired twice, straight at her. Somehow, I missed. Then I saw a half-housebrick lying in my garden. Half-enders we called them. I put down the rifle and picked up the half-ender. I threw it as hard as I could. Suddenly, she was covered in blood. There was silence, more than you'd expect, and then tears – from both of us. She needed stitches. There were arguments. I was very scared.

But what if I'd killed her? Imagine how different my life would have been. I guess I was too young for prosecution but I'd have been marked for life. Do you think you'd be reading the autobiography of a much-loved, successful, highly paid entertainer who'd killed a little girl when he was five? I don't think so. Even if I'd got that far, the tabloids would have made mincemeat out of me once the story filtered out. Do you really want to laugh at the evil killer freak-kid? Do you want to watch the cowboy murderer pretending he's cured now? My stomach is churning just writing this. She was fine, not even a scar, but what if the half-ender had caught her a bit differently?

Is that what life and death are all about? Who knows which decision is going to be the one that changes your life forever, for better or worse? Like when Roger Milford didn't book Gazza for that first challenge in the 1991 FA Cup Final and Gazza was crippled on the second challenge and England didn't qualify for the 1994 World Cup, or when Jeffrey Archer wrote in his diary: Monday – Stayed in and chatted to my lovely wife, who I'm very loyal to. Tuesday – Spent the whole day definitely not giving money to a black prostitute. Wednesday – Bought this diary.

You never know when you're picking up the half-ender that will change your life. It's a scary thought. My dad never hit me for throwing that stone. He could see how terrified I was. But justice took many forms in the Wild West Midlands.

One night, a few months later, I was playing in the street outside my house. Some of the bigger kids were taking part in this game, which involved leaning a flat stick on the edge of the kerb, placing a stone on the lower end, and then stamping on the raised end to make the stone fly high in the air. I thought I'd give it a go. In fact, I was so enthralled that I stood directly over the stick to get a really good view. I stamped on the stick as hard as I could. There was a loud thud and my mouth hurt. The Wife of Bath, in Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
, had a gap between her two front teeth, which, the poet says, is a common sign of wantonness. Suddenly, that night, I went wanton. The stone smashed into my teeth and created a gap at the bottom which is there to this day, though it's now more of an upward slant than an actual gap. My lips almost instantly swelled up to about five times their normal size and the kids started calling me Mick Jagger. I walked into my house, holding back the tears. Sticks and stones . . . and Stones.

I suppose my don't-cry policy was based on the cowboy thing as well. Every Western seemed to have a scene where the hero had to grit his teeth while a bullet was prised out of his hide with a Bowie knife. Pain was there to be borne in silence. My teeth weren't really fit for gritting but I stuck with it. Thirty-five years later I was on a ranch holiday in Montana. Yes, the old urges were still there. I'd swapped the settee-arm for a real American quarter-horse and a small group of us were inching our way down the side of a canyon, a steep and scary ride where we had to relax the reins and trust the horses. The genuine cowboy who was leading the party was keeping his eye on stuff. My horse stumbled and was propelled into racing downward through a narrow gap between two trees. My leg was forced against a thick branch which eventually snapped under the strain. The pain was pretty severe and I yelled out in agony. ‘Frank,' said our still-totally-cool party leader, ‘cowboy-up a little.'

If you can't tolerate football, feel free to skip this bit. I have a certain amount of respect for people who don't like football. Even though, as you know, my dad always said, ‘Never trust a man who doesn't like football,' I prefer such a man to the dabbler. You know, the one who watches the odd England game and usually claims to support Arsenal. He who hates football is a man who must have experienced football in an emotional way or it would not have triggered such a strong, albeit negative, emotion. The dabbler is a man who has experienced football in a third-gear, quite-like-it kind of a way. This is beyond me. To encounter football is to meet with something big. It requires love or hate. Anything in between is an insult. I hope you will have, up to now, found me to be quite a genial, mild-mannered chap. I think this is a fair summing-up of my general demeanour, but football tends to bring out the mouthy git in me.

Anyway, West Bromwich Albion are in the Division One play-offs. We're only three games away from the Premier League. Trust me, this is massive. We play Bolton Wanderers at the Hawthorns, West Brom's home ground, next Sunday. Sunday is also the BAFTA Awards ceremony, in London, of course. Let me make one thing absolutely clear. If there is a choice between Dave and me winning a BAFTA for
Unplanned
or West Brom winning the play-offs, it's a no-contest. West Brom, or Albion as I would normally refer to them, are the great love of my life. I've loved them literally as long as I can remember. I care about them. I was at a home game against Coventry City in the late seventies when Albion's veteran midfielder, Tony ‘Bomber' Brown, stuck one in from thirty yards. I rose to my feet with fists clenched and I remember very clearly thinking to myself, ‘This is as happy as it's possible to be.' Of course, women and work have made me elated, but always that elation is slightly scarred by fear of losing, or betrayal, or humiliation or the burden of responsibility. You know, the usual stuff. But Bomber's goal was joy in its simplest, purest form. Forgive me for sounding like Mr Showbiz, but, as I sang on the B-Side of ‘Three Lions '98':

On the other side of the football-coin, I cried like a baby when Albion got relegated to Division Two. We haven't been in the top flight for fourteen seasons. In all the time I've supported them, they've won two major trophies, the last one in 1968! I don't often use an exclamation mark, but that last sentence really deserved one. If any job had put me through the misery that Albion have, I'd have walked years ago. If any woman had done it, I'd still be in prison. But I remain totally loyal to them. I do not even lust after other teams and commit adultery in my heart. There is a chant that begins, ‘We're Albion till we die . . .' This is one of the few opinions I hold that I know I will hold forever. There is another chant that goes, to the tune of ‘Land of Hope and Glory', ‘We will follow the Albion, over land and sea, and water.' This one, I've never really understood.

Despite all this, I was quite a late starter as far as actually going to the games was concerned. I didn't see Albion play live till I was ten. It was December 1967, the Saturday before Christmas. We were playing Southampton at the Hawthorns and it pissed down with rain from start to finish. My brother Terry took me and sat me on the wall at the front of the Smethwick End of the ground. I had my legs tucked behind an advertising hoarding but I still got drenched, totally, utterly drenched so that my vest was stuck to my back and the blue dye from my overcoat had run into the white cuffs of my shirt. What's more, it was a goalless draw. And, guess what. I was hooked. It remains one of the most exciting days of my life, the best Christmas present I ever had. I became a regular after that and although I miss some games because of work, I'm a season ticket holder thirty-four years later. And counting.

Unfortunately, we live in the age of the celebrity fan, many of whom are phoneys who couldn't, at gunpoint, name three members of the first team. They turn up in the Directors' Box twice a season and get interviewed before the Cup Final to discuss ‘their team'. I pay for my season ticket and sit in the stand with ordinary fans like myself. Mind you, before I sound too purist, I love a freebie at away games. Why put money in
their
pockets?

The great thing about being a season ticket holder is that you end up sitting with the same people every week. Some you speak to, some you don't. There is an ageing ex-marine who sits next to me. He goes up for every header and crunches in to every tackle. At first, this got on my nerves. Sometimes he virtually pushed me out of my seat, but I've grown to like it. It reminds me of watching boxing on the telly with my dad. He threw every punch and sat bobbing and weaving on the sofa till the fight was over. I once grabbed a towel and started fanning him between rounds. He laughed, but I'm not sure he was actually aware of his synchronised shadow boxing. It came from somewhere deep down, a dim echo of some three-rounder in a school hall in West Cornforth. A forgotten dream that he could have been a contender.