Frank Skinner Autobiography (37 page)

I went to 7 o'clock Mass in Osaka this morning, at the Cathedral of Santa Maria. As I walked in the back door with Bernie, also a papist, the first thing I noticed was a massive stained-glass window on the side wall showing St. Francis Xavier bringing Christianity to the Japanese. He stood there, in a blue robe, with his arms spread wide. At his side, but slightly behind him, was a man in full samurai-warrior gear, wearing a crucifix. The church was full of morning sunshine.

Bernie and me crossed ourselves with holy water from a massive sea-shell next to the door, and then I followed her to a pew. Dotted around the church were lots of nuns dressed in white, each one standing alone at least five or six feet from the next. I suppose they didn't want to be distracted from their oneness with God, but it meant that in order to get to a seat, you had to pass through a sort of ‘nun slalom'.

I was glad Bernie had led the way, because it meant that the fact I'd ended up standing behind a leggy Japanese schoolgirl in a very short grey pleated skirt was purely accidental. Because, and I'm generalising here, Catholic women have a tendency to be better-looking than Protestant ones, this is a regular dilemma when attending a Catholic church. Usually, wherever I go – pubs, restaurants, football matches, public transport, crematoriums – I always like to position myself so that I have at least one attractive woman nearby who I can gawp at in a strictly non-intimidatory way, but in church this just doesn't seem right. I have, accidentally, found myself with a good view of an attractive woman in church, and I don't really enjoy it. I can't help but think of Matthew 5:28, ‘But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.' Well, that's no good, is it? Not in a church.

And where does Matthew 5:28 leave all the millions of women I've lookethed on over the years? You can't commit adultery on your own so, presumably, they've all committed adultery with me, without even noticing. Poor Zola Budd.

Anyway, my point is that I try not to commit adultery in this way when I'm in a Catholic church. Which is a shame, really, because I've always thought that a Catholic church is, in fact, a fantastic place to pull girls. There's a black girl who goes to one of my local churches who is absolutely to die for, but I'd never dare approach her in or around church, I mean if I was single, because it seems, well, improper. And yet I know that we already have one massively important thing in common. She would be one of the few girls I've been out with who didn't think my Catholicism was seriously weird. At the same time, even if I saw her in another context, in a bar or something, I couldn't go up to her and say, ‘Hello, we go to the same church,' because modern prejudices against Christianity have forced so many of us into the closet that her friends would probably say, ‘What's that? You go to church? You fucking weirdo. Don't hang around with us anymore,' and she'd hate me for exposing her. Mind you, I probably wouldn't approach her, even if she was on her own, because I imagine that practising Catholics don't put out. I mean, I know I do, but that's because I'm spiritually flawed.

Nevertheless, there I stood, at seven o'clock in the morning in a Catholic church in Osaka, behind a leggy Japanese schoolgirl in a very short grey pleated skirt, trying hard not to commit adultery with her.

I'd like to add a small technical point here, Japanese schoolgirls in their school uniforms are everywhere in Japan. It's not like in Britain, where school uniforms seem to slowly fade into street clothes as kids get to about fifteen. There are seventeen- and eighteen-year-old girls in school uniform all over the place. This is, it has to be said, a very good thing, especially in regard to socks. Many of these girls wear baggy white socks that look a bit like leg warmers. Phil, who has researched this subject, told me that the girls wear these because it makes their legs look slimmer, and that they glue them to their shins to keep them in place. This sexy-schoolgirl thing has been made worse (or is it better?) by one particular social phenomenon. Because of a Westernisation of diet in recent years, Japanese schoolgirls are much more curvy than older Japanese women. The latter tend to be often beautiful, but also very slim-hipped and flat-chested. Thus, the girls look like women and the women look like girls. I'm keeping out of it, but Japanese blokes must get very bewildered.

The schoolgirl in the pew in front had gone for the baggy white socks, but the effect was spoiled by the fact that her legs were a bit hairy. This was the first hairy Japanese woman I'd noticed. I wondered if, maybe, she was a feminist. But what would a feminist be doing in a Catholic church? In fact, this poor girl had got it bad. She even had thick black hairs coming out of the collar of her skimpy white cardigan. And when she turned to the side, I could see that she also had sideburns, and stubble, and a wig, and was a bloke. I whispered to Bernie, ‘This schoolgirl is a bloke,' but she didn't seem at all bothered. I think she was trying hard to be all grown-up and broad-minded about it, but I was really shocked. Thank God I hadn't committed adultery on this occasion. It would have been a double whammy.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't have anything against blokes dressing up in women's clothes if that's what they like, but a middle-aged man in a schoolgirl uniform? In church? Maybe he had in mind Matthew 18:3: ‘Verily, I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.'

Then it came to the bidding prayers. These are prayers in which the congregation join together to pray for others: the heads of the church, the poor, the sick, and so on. The first of these was read by a nun, in Japanese of course, but there was a pamphlet which had the prayers translated into English. Her prayer was ‘Send messengers of love and compassion to countries suffering from drought and hunger, into slum areas, and among the poor and neglected.' And we all replied, ‘Lord, your kingdom come.' Then an old lady read a prayer, ‘Send messengers of peace into army barracks, weapons factories and rocket warehouses, strongholds of rebels and private armies. And so we pray.' Amidst the response, I thought, ‘Wow! That's what I call a prayer.'

Then the hairy transvestite spoke. I stood, mouth slightly open, as a middle-aged man in a schoolgirl uniform offered, in a voice deeper than mine, this prayer to God: ‘Lord, send messengers of tenderness to the dead-end streets, the furnished or unfurnished rooms of the lonely, and the attics of the abandoned in our cities. And so we pray.' My ‘Lord, your kingdom come' was said with a tightening throat. I imagined him, lonely in his furnished or unfurnished room, a figure of fun to most people, but embraced by this small Catholic community happy to encourage his active participation in the Mass, regardless of his bizarre appearance. I felt humbled and slightly ashamed. I suppose I had dismissed him as a freak, but he was, it seemed to me now, a brave and very honest man.

Japan is eight hours ahead of Britain, so when you're next out, living it up, at eleven on a Saturday night, remember that, in a Catholic church in Osaka, there's a middle-aged man in a schoolgirl uniform and wig, listening attentively amidst the whirr of electric fans to the word of God, and offering up his prayers for the lonely and the abandoned.

Malcolm had got me a second gig. This was an amazing thing in itself, but there were two things about it that made it even more amazing. Firstly, it was back at the Portland Club, and secondly, I was getting paid. Fifty quid for half an hour. I was to supply the comedy for the club's New Year's Eve Extravaganza. After my grim debut at the same venue, I decided that I would write a completely new set, and even chuck in a few old mainstream gags to get the audience on my side. I was glad I was going back to the Portland. It was like getting back on the horse that had thrown me. It would exorcise the devils that still lingered after December 9th.

When Malcolm and me arrived on New Year's Eve, the party was already in full swing. All the audience, which ranged from twelve-year-olds to old-age pensioners, wore paper hats and blew little cardboard trumpets that made a high-pitched shriek. The DJ was playing sixties classics and everybody looked like they were up for a good time. I had learned a lot from my first gig. Now it was time to put those lessons into practice.

I stood in the wings and listened as the DJ faded out Herman's Hermits' ‘I'm into Something Good' and told the audience that I was a ‘very funny local lad'. Then, in a much louder voice, he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Collins,' and I bounded forth, on to the stage, to much applause and cheering. I went straight into my brand new opening gag: ‘I bought my girlfriend a lovely engagement ring for Christmas, but she dropped it on the floor and the dog ate it. And we've been just going through the motions ever since.'

How quickly an audience can turn from summer to autumn. There was mainly silence and some groans. Not just casual groans, but groans of profound disappointment and indignation. I hurried on to the second lamppost. ‘The manager told me to keep it short and sweet tonight, so I've spent the last half hour sitting in a bath full of ice-cream.' Silence, except for a couple of cardboard trumpets. No groans. This was good. I was on an upward curve, but the street was still very dark. I decided to try and engage the audience on a more personal level. I turned to a bloke at a table near the front. ‘Just think, mate,' I said, ‘in an hour's time, it'll be 1988. Doesn't time fly when you're going bald.' I think he said, ‘Fuck off,' but I couldn't hear him over the shrill chorus of the now-deafening cardboard horn section. I looked into the wings. Malcolm, the DJ, and the manager of the club, were standing, shoulder-to-shoulder, frantically gesturing me towards them and mouthing ‘Come off' with a look of desperation in their eyes. I turned back to the audience. The tenor trumpets had been joined by a baritone chorus of booing.

I knew a few old gags which involved animals, and had written some stuff on a similar theme, myself. This, I felt, would turn them round. ‘I'm going to tell you my ten favourite animal jokes,' I said.

‘Oh no you're not,' said a voice from the back.

‘No, honest, I am. And you'll really like these.'

I could just make out an ‘Oh no we won't' over the booing and trumpeting. I looked into the wings again. Three grown men had passed through asking, continued through pleading, and had now reached begging. They really wanted me to come off. I turned back to the crowd. A little frail old woman stood at the front of the stage. She looked up at me, shook her head in disbelief, and then, slowly and shakily, made her way to the toilet. ‘Well,' I said, still trying to get the crowd on my side, ‘I don't think she'll see another strawberry season.'

I had to hang around in the bar to get my fifty quid. I'd decided against joining in with the ‘Auld Lang Syne'. These people were old acquaintances that I really felt should ‘be forgot' as soon as was humanly possible. As I stood there, with people pointing at me and sniggering, and that was just Malcolm, a young girl of about eleven came over and said, ‘Excuse me, I thought you was alright but my dad thought you was shit.' It was my first-ever review.

On the drive home, Malcolm, predictably, was merciless, but I just couldn't accept that the dream was over before it started.

My first death had been a polite, quiet affair, with a lot of personal anguish but a minimum of fuss, but this second demise had been an act of group-savagery. I had been flayed alive. I never wanted to go through that again. So, I had two choices: get out, or get better.

I've been back in England for just under a week, and I spent today de-Carolining my flat. Yeah, we finally split. One of those mutual things you hear about. I guess you saw it coming. Even the tabloids had started to refer to it as our ‘on-off relationship'. Not good.

We split on Saturday night, just after the results of the
Stars in Their Eyes
Grand Final. Such is the back-drop for modern tragedy. And it got worse. As we spoke of broken hearts and rubbed away our tears, Des O'Connor was interviewing Bradley Walsh about his days as a redcoat.

We were two people pulled apart by love and rage. Even as she screamed at me I noticed how beautiful she was. The argument, as usual, was about almost nothing. She told me that earlier in the week she had been chatted up by Jerry Springer, which pissed me off. And I told her that, coincidentally, he had chatted up my previous girlfriend, which pissed Caroline off. But, of course, that's not really what it was about. For the last six months, we haven't needed much to start a row. In fact, ‘start a row' isn't quite the right phrase. It's been like one long row that never got switched off. We just pressed the pause-button, so it was easy to resume at any moment. We had a love like cancer. The more it grew, the more pain and suffering it caused. But it
was
love, and I miss her already.

I said I didn't want any contact at all. No texts, e-mails, nothing. We've had too many commas. We need a full stop. I'm not sure that ‘staying friends' ever really works. I don't think two people can have a normal friendship if they know what each other's genitals look like.

I've just realised that there's a horrible amount of mixed metaphors in those first couple of paragraphs. I suppose I'm just trying to work this out as I go. I had a feeling that writing about it might be therapeutic, but it isn't, and it's not doing my prose style much good, either.

Anyway, another door closes. We talked about staying together forever and having babies and stuff, but that's all gone now. As she left, she offered me one piece of advice. Get a girlfriend who's deaf. Funny to the last. She could be a fuckin' nightmare but she made me laugh, and she had the softest skin I ever touched.