Frank Skinner by by Frank Skinner

Author:by Frank Skinner [Frank Skinner]
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780099426875
Publisher: London : Arrow, 2002, c2001.
Published: 2002-05-01T23:00:00+00:00

And so my drinking continued. By the time I was sixteen, I had graduated to cider. I could actually taste that last line. That's a worry isn't it? Anyway, cider was my drink because I liked the taste and it made me stupid. I was already getting a reputation as one of the heavier drinkers of the bunch. I don't really know why. I suppose the fact that my dad, Terry and Keith were all heavy drinkers made it seem sort of inevitable. And also I really liked it. I liked the fall-about, laugh-till-you-cry, 'Mamma-Weer-all-Crazee-Now' euphoria of it. Getting pissed with your mates. It doesn't get much better than that.

I think I'd better shut up. All this is starting to slow down the wagon to the point where it's starting to look safe to jump off. Eric Clapton told me that if I'd quit drinking through a proper Alcoholics Anonymous programme, I wouldn't still yearn for it now. I saw in the Millennium with my arm around Eric as we sang and he played guitar to 'Auld Lang Syne', at his teetotal New Year's party. I learnt something that night. I used to think that the worst thing about not drinking was being sober when everyone else was drunk. I was wrong. No one drank at that party, and I realised that the worst thing about not drinking was just being sober. Full stop. Still, seeing in the twenty-first century duetting with a guitar-legend took the sting out of it a bit.

I was also getting into music, big-time. I still loved Elvis, but now I was being dragged along to lots of heavy-metal gigs by my mates. Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, all the usual suspects. I guess this started to have an influence on me because I let my hair grow long. As it grew, it sort of fell into waves and ringlets I never knew I had. I was starting to look cool. In fact, I would say that this eighteen-month period, around the age of fifteen to sixteen, was the closest I've ever got in my life to actually being cool.

We formed a band, a few mates and me, which at first was absolutely appalling because no one could actually play anything. We didn't know a chord between us. My mate Tim whose spare bed I pissed years later, had an electric organ and somewhere to practise. Fez bought a bass. Another mate, Mick, got some drums, and we were off. I sang, of course, because I was nearly cool. We even made a tape of this mess and played it to Tim's mom. Tim's family were a bit posher than the rest of us and his mom, I think, slightly disapproved of Tim's grubby friends. 'Well,' she said, having heard the tape, 'the only tuneful thing I can hear is Timothy's organ.' We all giggled because it sounded slightly like a nob-joke and because she was so unashamed in her maternal favouritism. When we said we hadn't got a name for the band, she suggested 'The Timaloes'.

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