Frank Skinner Autobiography (22 page)

So, having now become positively devil-may-care about rhetorical questions: how did it happen? Well, it was like this. The Football Association contacted Ian Broudie at the beginning of 1996, to see if he'd be interested in writing and performing the official England song for the forthcoming European Football Championships, or Euro '96 as it was better known. Ian was the voice of, and the brains behind, the Lightning Seeds, one of the country's top Indie bands, and had written a song called ‘Life of Riley', which was regularly used as background music for the goals round-up on
Match of the Day
, so there was logic to the FA's choice and Ian was keen.

There was a time when football songs were automatically seen as naff, but New Order's ‘World in Motion', England's official song for the 1990 World Cup, had shown that it was possible to write a football song that was classy. Ian, perhaps the most modest pop star ever, was unsure as to whether he could write a football-based lyric – he tended to specialise in bitter-sweet love songs at the time – so he suggested a collaboration with Dave Baddiel and me. Now, whereas the FA's choice of Ian was fairly logical, Ian's choice of us was a bit of a wild-card. He was a fan of
Fantasy Football
so knew we were football obsessives, and he knew we could write gags, but what lyric-writing we did on the show didn't really suggest we could write what one tabloid later described as ‘the new national anthem'.

Perhaps our most elaborate lyric appeared on the first
Fantasy Football
video, when we parodied Dean Friedman's seventies hit, ‘Lucky Star'. Our version was all about our co-star, Statto. We had written the character of Statto, a football-mad statistics bore, before
Fantasy Football
began, but we couldn't find anyone suitable to play him. A few days before the series kicked off, our producer, Andy Jacobs, said that he had met a bloke called Angus Loughran, who did commentary on the first-half highlights package that they showed at half time on the big screen at Arsenal. Andy said that this bloke
was
Statto, no acting required, and it would be well worth us meeting him.

We met him at lunchtime on the day of our first-ever
Fantasy Football League
recording, and he did the show that night. The great magic of Statto (I always think of him as Statto, rather than Angus) was, like Jeff Astle, he had no idea how funny he could be without even trying. Statto was like no one I had ever met. He was the son of the famous classical music conductor Sir James Loughran, and was educated at Ampleforth, the country's top Roman Catholic public school. I met someone who had been with him at Ampleforth and he told me about how one FA Cup Final day, when Manchester United were in the final, Angus, a massive Man U fan, was locked in a cupboard by some other boys so he couldn't watch the match. Thus began, for Angus, a theme of football and bullying which Dave and me continued on
Fantasy Football
. I love Statto. He is a very generous, interesting and entertaining bloke and great company at dinner, only partly because he always insists on paying. But he is, in the nicest possible way, a bit odd. He spends his whole life watching and betting on sport, and will fly anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat in order to do so. We would always rib him about being weird, not having a girlfriend and not seeing personal hygiene as a priority, but he didn't care and he never changed. Now he's a very successful journalist and presenter of horse-racing on the TV, but he'll always be Statto to me.

In order to parody ‘Lucky Star', we had to send the lyrics to Dean Friedman for his approval. What sense he made of them, I'll never know. The song began,

Whether this convinced Ian Broudie of our lyrical skills I'm not sure, but the FA went along with his suggestion and we were approached to write the words to the Official England Song for Euro '96.

I went up to meet Ian at the Liverpool–Leeds United game at Anfield. David couldn't make it because Chelsea were playing at home that night. He supports Chelsea. (Incidentally, I used to do this gag, ‘Me and a bunch of mates went up Chelsea last weekend. Bill Clinton was furious!') After the game, the two of us went back to a dingy little room in a recording studio to talk about the song. Ian played me a melody that he had had kicking around for a while and never put a lyric to. I told him that, as far as Dave and me were concerned, the only idea we'd had was that we liked the slogan on the posters for Euro '96, ‘Football Comes Home'. Ian played the chorus of his melody and we agreed it was good but that ‘It's coming home' or ‘Football's coming home' would scan better than the wording on the poster. Finally, Ian played the guitar and I la-la-la-ed along and I took a tape of that back to play to Dave. Dave and me were new to this sort of thing, but we agreed that the best way to write the song was to say what we really felt about watching England play, and then try and turn that honest reaction into song lyrics. These were our thoughts. We loved the England football team. We were constantly disappointed by their failures. We had seen enough brilliant things from them to feel optimistic about the future. We were sick of hearing people slagging them off. A major football tournament in England, the first since the World Cup of 1966, might just wake up some of the old 1966 spirit in the players and the supporters. We were also very keen to include a reference to a quote by Kevin Keegan when he talked about how proud he felt to play with the three lions on his chest, a reference of course to the badge on his England shirt. We also liked the idea of suggesting the spirit of '66 by a reference to the Jules Rimet trophy. That was the actual trophy, designed by Frenchman Jules Rimet, that England won in 1966. It has since had to be replaced because Brazil kept it for good after winning it three times. A lasting image of that England victory in '66 was the sun catching the trophy as Bobby Moore, sitting on the shoulders of his team-mates, held it high above his head. So we wrote the first verse and chorus.

The FA later insisted that we change the sixth line to ‘But I know they can play' because they didn't want the first verse to be ‘wholly negative'.

The second verse continued the theme of disappointment and hope, but this time referred directly to some actual incidents in England games:

The ‘Terry Butcher at war' line referred to the night England centre-half Terry Butcher got his head split open in a game against Sweden, but insisted on playing on despite the fact he was absolutely soaked in his own blood. We thought this was a brilliant image of English fighting spirit and determination. The FA didn't. They said that any reference to being ‘at war' was a definite no-no because, they said, it conjured up images of football hooliganism, the last thing they wanted to think about with Euro '96 approaching. So the line became ‘Bobby belting the ball', a reference to a Bobby Charlton goal against Mexico in 1966. Anyway, an added undercurrent of ‘Football's coming home' and we were all done. Oh, and a title. We liked ‘Three Lions'.

There was still some tinkering with the lyrics in the recording studio. A middle eight lyric was added at Ian's suggestion, and he also contributed to the ‘It's coming home. It's coming home. It's coming. Football's coming home' bit. Dave and me were quite keen on just sticking with ‘It's coming home' but Ian was very keen that the word ‘football' should be in there somewhere. Not a bad suggestion. We recorded the song with all three of us sharing the vocals, and everyone was very pleased with the results. I went through a brief period of thinking it was shit about halfway through the recording process, but that was just me being a bit moody. Everyone was saying it would be a certain number one, but I imagined that people said that after every recording session.

The record was all done and dusted, but then we had to really lay our balls on the chopping-block. The FA asked us if we'd be kind enough to go to Bisham Abbey, the England training camp, and play the song to the England team. Shit. When Ian, Dave and me turned up, the players were having lunch. We had a ghetto-blaster and a tape of the song and we mumbled that we'd play it to them when they'd finished eating. But Paul Gascoigne couldn't wait. He got up from his meal and started trying to operate the ghetto-blaster, very much in the style of a man who had never seen one before. He looked like my dad with the VCR. But it WAS Gazza, so we gave in and agreed to play the song.

I stood up and gave a short speech about the song. Dave and me were worried they might take the negative element of the lyrics the wrong way, and I made it clear that we three were big England fans and were very confident about Euro '96. I explained some of the ideas behind the song and how it had come about. Anyone who knows any modern-day footballers, especially at the top level, will not be surprised to hear that the players actually didn't give a fuck either way. We played the song and they carried on eating. Then we played it again. Then we thanked them and went away. Our next stop was the manager, Terry Venables. We played him the tape in a gloomy, empty lounge area in the hotel, and as he listened, he tapped along with his car-keys on the plastic table-top next to his chair. At the end of the song, he looked up and smiled. ‘It's a real key-tapper, isn't it?' he said. Compared to the players' response, it was virtually hysteria.

Then the players were asked about taking part in the video for the song. With a few exceptions, the general reaction was they'd do it, but only if they absolutely had to as part of their sponsorship commitments, and that they'd rather get off home straight away, and couldn't they just sign some more footballs instead. As it turned out, Stuart Pearce, Robbie Fowler, Steve Stone and Teddy Sheringham were absolute stars, and the video looked great. Ian, Dave and me, however, all looked like fat bastards and all three of us went on diets and lost loads of weight afterwards, but the horse had already bolted as far as the video was concerned.

So that was it. We were doing some
Fantasy Football Euro
'
96
specials in a few weeks' time, so I went off to America for a quick holiday. I checked into The Royalton Hotel in New York with my girlfriend of the time, and started to unpack. There was a big bunch of flowers in a vase on the table when we arrived, but this is quite common in fancy hotels. After a while, my girlfriend said, ‘Have you noticed that there's a card with these flowers?'

‘It's probably one of those “We hope you'll enjoy your stay” cards,' I called from the bathroom. ‘It says, “To Frank”,' she said. I walked out of the bathroom, opened the envelope and read the card, ‘Record straight in at Number One. 55,000 units sold. Jon.' I'd dreamt of having a number one record ever since my first love, Annette, back at Moat Farm, had chosen the kid who did Freddie and the Dreamers impressions. I couldn't get in the choir at St. Hubert's, I'd pissed about in amateur bands but this was it. Number one. Mind you, I wish Jon could have found a slightly more romantic way of telling me than ‘55,000 units sold'. It sounded like we were selling dishwashers. The following week we were knocked off the top spot by the Fugees doing ‘Killing me Softly'. The week after that, we knocked the Fugees off the top spot and went back to numero uno. A few years later, I was lying in bed with Caroline and she told me that she'd been chatted up by Wyclef Jean, the Fugees main man, but turned him down. ‘Two–nil to me then,' I said.

So, when Euro '96 started, we were number one. They played the song before the opening game against Switzerland and it was great to hear it played at Wembley. ‘This is as good as it gets,' I thought. I was wrong. The second game was against Scotland. I had been quoted in the paper that week, saying that we had written Scotland's next World Cup song. ‘It's called Three Games,' I said, so I didn't hang around outside the ground too much. As for the game, we weren't playing too good and, eventually, Scotland got a penalty. Dave and me, sitting just in front of the press box, watched as Gary McAllister stepped up to take it. If he'd scored, England would probably have crumbled and Euro '96, ‘Three Lions' and failure would have been lumped together in the collective English consciousness forever. But he missed, or rather David Seaman saved it, and soon Gazza was up the other end scoring a classic and England were on their way.

Then it happened. The whistle went and the players did their usual thing of walking around, shaking hands and swapping shirts. The English fans applauded loudly. They were ecstatic. And the guy who plays the music at Wembley had a brainwave. Why not stick ‘Three Lions' on. That weird crowd bit at the beginning kicked in, actually a recording of the Brondsby fans at Anfield done by Ian Broudie on a tiny cassette recorder, and then the piano, the French horn, those samples of commentary, and then the voices, ‘It's coming home. It's coming home. It's coming. Football's coming home.' And not just our voices, but also seventy-odd thousand English men, women and children waving their flags of St. George and singing their hearts out. Shit, I'm crying. I don't mean then, I mean now. I can't tell you how it felt. I'm not a good enough writer.