Frankie Skinner revealed he’s ‘offended’ by his old ‘brutal’ jokes from the 1990s as he is now ‘educated’ by cancel culture.
The comedian, 67, said it was the ‘norm’ to crack racist and sexist jokes when he broke through however, he now feels woke politics has ‘had an effect’ on him.
Frankie admitted his comedy act has not altered due to cancel culture but instead he has ‘changed’ as a person since becoming a parent.
Speaking on The Today podcast, he said: ‘Sometimes even on videos of me from the 90s, I see myself do a joke and I think “oh, I wouldn’t do that now” because it might be a joke I now find a bit offensive.
‘It’s interesting this because the most asked question is “can you do stand up comedy in the age of woke politics” and all that stuff.
Frankie Skinner revealed he’s ‘offended’ by his old ‘brutal’ jokes from the 1990s as he is now ‘educated’ by cancel culture
The comedian, 67, said it was the ‘norm’ to crack racist and sexist jokes when he broke through however, he now feels woke politics has ‘had an effect’ on him (pictured in 1995)
‘But, my comedy is very autobiographical, I don’t make anything up, it’s just things that have happened in my life which I process through my comedy head.
‘So, it’s the other way around, I change and then my act changes.
‘All this recent woke politics of the last 10 years, has had an effect on me, I’ve become a parent during that period.
‘When I was growing up in the West Midlands, I got to be brutal, racist, language, sexist, language, homophobic, it was absolutely the norm.
‘It wasn’t that I wasn’t listening to the alternate voice, there was no alternate voice. I didn’t even question it.
‘But I do question it now and I have questioned it a lot. I think most of us have in recent years, I don’t feel forced or bullied by woke politics – I feel educated by it.’
Frankie explained he didn’t feel ‘bullied’ by woke politics, but has learnt from it and questioned why fellow performers ‘get done’ for historical things they’ve said if they’re willing to learn from it.
He continued: ‘So, I see stuff now and I think I wouldn’t do that now.
Frankie admitted that his comedy act has not altered due to cancel culture but instead he has ‘changed’ as a person since becoming a parent
‘But at the same time, it’s healthy to think that, because I don’t want to think of my life in stasis.
‘This is a problem, I think, when people get done for historical things they said or done.
‘I think the idea that we can improve, the idea that you can re-think your attitudes, there’s no point in woke politics if that doesn’t work.’
Frank said he’s been known as a ‘blue comedian’ during his stand-up career of which ‘a lot’ of it about sex.
‘I don’t talk about my current sex life for the same reason I don’t talk about climbing trees,’ he added.
‘And so I thought it’s time to change and to become more sophisticated and to clean up a bit because older people, and this is definitely ageist, but older people being rude sometimes can be a bit unsettling.
‘And basically I failed in that task.’
Fellow comic Ricky Gervais has been incredibly vocal about his disapproval of the woke phenomenon and more recently Jimmy Carr said he will never apologise for his comedy.
Back in 2021, Ricky slammed cancel culture and described ‘wokeness’ as ‘a weird sort of fascism’ amid calls for ‘the free exchange of information and ideas.’
He said: ‘There’s this new weird sort of fascism of people thinking they know what you can say and what you can’t and it’s a really weird thing. Just because you’re offended it doesn’t mean you’re right.’
Fellow comic Ricky Gervais (L) has been incredibly vocal about his disapproval of the woke phenomenon and more recently Jimmy Carr (R) said he will never apologise for his comedy
The Afterlife star previously said on talkRadio: ‘There’s this new trendy myth that people who want free speech want to say awful things all the time.
‘It’s just isn’t true, it protects everyone. If you’re mildly left-wing on Twitter, you’re suddenly Trotsky, right?
‘If you’re mildly conservative, you’re Hitler and if you’re centrist and you look at both arguments, you’re a coward. Just because you’re offended it doesn’t mean you’re right.’
Meanwhile Jimmy admitted he doesn’t engage with criticism regarding his comedy as he argued that jokes ‘are like magnets, they attract some people and repel others’.
Appearing on The Development by David Podcast, he said: ‘I try not to engage. I try as best as I can to go it’s absolutely valid that people don’t like some of my jokes.
‘Jokes are like magnets, they attract some people and repel others. Some people are repelled by my sense of humour, they do not like it and they don’t come to the shows, or watch the Netflix specials.
‘But when the new Netflix drops a clip will go up online and it will show up in someone’s feed and they’ll watch it and go, “Ban this filth, this joke is so terrible I’ve got to send it to everyone I f***ing know.” But you gotta rightsize that.’
He recalled: ‘I remember James Corden was very sweet last time I got cancelled. He phoned me and went, “What’s happened? No, I’ll tell you what’s happened. You told a joke and some people didn’t like it. That’s it. Let’s go get lunch”.’
In his 2022 Netflix special His Dark Material, Jimmy faced backlash after he joked that the deaths of ‘thousands of Gypsies’ at the hands of Nazis had been one of ‘the positives’ of the Holocaust.
He said: ‘When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy of 6 million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis.
‘No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.’
He then explained why he thought it was a ‘good joke’, saying that it was ‘f**king funny’, ‘edgy as all hell’ and because it had an ‘educational quality’. The joke caused widespread backlash and prompted a debate about racism and free speech.
