A Comedian's Prayer Book

Frank Skinner

• Publisher: Hodder Faith
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781529368956
• eBook ISBN:
  9781529368970
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Television

A Comedian's Prayer Book. The title is a worry, isn't it?...God is a tough audience as far as audible response is concerned, but at least you don't have to explain the references. In this collection of prayers, much-loved comedian, broadcaster and radio host Frank Skinner has tried to retain the bare candour of the rehearsal-room improvisation - to show what faith feels like, from the inside - but infused it with all the production values required to make it a passable public entertainment. In it are his convictions, his questions, his fears, his doubts, his elations - all presented in an eavesdropper-friendly form. Hell, Judgement, atheism, money, faith and the X-Men all feature: it's a bit like reading the Bible, except you only get one side of the conversation, and all the jokes are left in.

GOD. I GUESS you know what I’m going to say in this prayer. And what I’ll say in the next prayer. You know everything I’ll ever pray, including this actual sentence. You also, of course, know what my final prayer will be. Chances are, even I won’t know it’s my final prayer. I’ll just pray as usual, my mind wandering between the divine and the domestic. That person crying on the bus, breakfast, Jacob wrestling the angel, wooden floor against knees. I won’t know it’s my swansong. Pity. I’d have liked a sort of final summing-up, like an after-dinner speaker. ‘It’s been a heaven of a journey’ – that sort of thing. But I’ll just mutter my way through with no sense of specialness. I can’t see a way round that. I don’t think a carpe diem approach would be appropriate. (I like to throw in a bit of Latin, every now and then, just for you.) I can’t pray every prayer as if it’s my last. I’m all for being impassioned, but not on a daily basis. Mortality-driven sincerity is exhausting. I want my prayers to be dynamic but not actually cardiovascular. There has to be light and shade.

Anyway, as I said, you know how this one will go. I won’t waste your time with a spoiler alert. ‘Your Father knoweth what things ye need before you ask for them’ or something like that. So why do I ask for anything? Why do I pray at all? I once read an interview with Johnny Cash, talking about his good friend, Bob Dylan. Cash said he and Dylan were so close they would sometimes fish, side by side, for four or five hours without speaking. (So that’s Latin and now a fish-based anecdote. You see how I tailor these prayers specifically for you.) I’d like to think you and I are at least as close as Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. I can’t tell you anything about me you don’t already know. In fact, I’m the one who needs the feedback. You should be doing the talking. Of course, your voice would be so mighty, like a wind on a mountain, that I’d just get a migraine. I think the answer might be in that Bob-and-Johnny silence.

When I pray, words do sometimes seem a bit cumbersome, even inappropriate. There’s a silent, nearly non-breathing place I occasionally stumble across that feels like it might be close to where you are. Not the same postcode, but, I think, adjacent. And all the hard work of prayer – coming up with neat phrases, innovative requests, jokes even, generally trying not to bore you: yes, I do worry about boring you – seems to melt away. As I said, I’m aware that you know what I’m going to say next, but I still feel I owe it to you to say it as elegantly as possible. I don’t want to be like that slothful servant who buried his talent in the ground, thus offering his returning master no increase. You gave me the words; I’m trying to make the most of them.

I imagine you flicking through Heaven’s super-multiple prayer-channels, listening to all our pleading and praise: ‘my poor wife’; ‘if I could just pass this exam’; ‘hallowed be thy name’; ‘I’m so afraid’. Flicking, flicking, trying to find something that earns more than just a tick for effort or a cross in the ‘be careful what you pray for’ box. I know we’re told to keep knocking at the door, but I’m worried that if the knocking continues in the same dull rhythm, you’ll eventually opt for earplugs. Anyway, all that hard work of prayer is sometimes, not every day, replaced by a yearning to just be. To silently be. It isn’t not-praying. It feels more like being prayed.

I never hear your voice – no mighty wind – or, if I do, I don’t recognise it, but I have sensed you in the silence. And I rest there for just a short time. I sort of know it’s where the glory is, but it’s a place I feel too naked to stay long. I also feel, and I don’t mean to reduce you, that the silence might be the one place that you don’t know what’s coming next, either.

YOU SEEM A long way away tonight. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I don’t want you to hear me too clearly.

OH, MIGHTY, OMNIPOTENT, omniscient, tremendously brilliant God. I, who am worth slightly less than the smeared remains of a gnat on a windscreen, give you praise. Yes, I give you praise. In that sense, I suppose, I’m a traditionalist. Sort of. The truth is I really don’t imagine you’re sitting in Paradise thinking, ‘You know, what I really need is a bit more praise.’ But I could be wrong about that. Maybe praise is something you actually do need. Maybe that’s what we got created for. I know the angels have sung your praise since the old days, but maybe humankind is a supplementary praise-supply unit. If so, I fear our group output is fading fast. If angel-praise is the treble to our bass, the overall sound must seem quite tinny at this moment in history.

I’m not suggesting, of course, that you’re some sort of praise-junkie. I just mean that the praise, to you, might feel like a caress. A cathedral choir or a hallelujah chorus might seem like a full-blown ticker-tape parade when it leaves us, in our near-insignificant smallness, but by the time it reaches the vast expanses of you, it probably feels like an index finger gently brushing your cheek.

That’s what worries me. My individual prayer-praise is, at best, economical, downplayed even. I don’t have a problem with the subservience. I’m happy on my knees, happy on my belly. The New Testament redefined humility as a power-source. My palms, together in prayer, sometimes seem to crackle with energy. I realise it could just be the nylon carpet. To lie prostrate before you has become the believer’s badge of honour. Such reduction of self seems the antithesis of modernity. It challenges the fundamental concept of the twenty-first century: the cult of the significant individual. The aim, instead, is to un-me oneself. Like the great medieval artists whose work remained unsigned. Then again, to celebrate my dazzling capacity to be truly humble is, of course, somewhat contradictory.

My problem is that it’s so hard to come up with praise for you that feels, well, fresh. There’s scarcely any room at the top end of praise: the ‘almighty’, ‘all-powerful’, ‘I’m just insect-remains and you’re magnificent’ end. For me, the way forward is the understated, bittersweet end of praise. That seems to fit me better. Although, as we’ve established, it’s not about me. I do completely acknowledge your all-powerfulness. It’s just that it’s not on my ‘Top Three Favourite Qualities of God’ list. Off the top of my head, those qualities would be: 1. Loving, 2. Interesting and 3. Defiantly uncool. Admittedly, it’s a subjective list and it changes on a regular basis. I’ll keep you posted.

Anyway, if I work my way past the rhetoric, past the Deity-pleasing, and dig deep, my instinctive praise-mode would be along the lines of ‘I’m always glad when I’ve remembered to turn to you’. It’s not especially catchy, but when I say it, things go quiet. I go quiet. Your strength and my weakness are implicit, but not hammered home.

I could say, ‘You are the stillness at the core of me.’ It is true, but I acknowledge it does sound a little bit yoga-ish and I’m never sure how you feel about the Eastern religions. I like to think it’s the same you at the centre of every religion, just viewed from a different angle, but, suddenly, I’m remembering the golden calf incident and deciding to move on. Nevertheless, before I do, I must say I think yoga has many benefits, and I think it’s a shame that you’ve allowed the Eastern deities to have something of a monopoly on religious practice with a strong physical fitness element. I certainly think Christianity could be classified, without any loss of gravitas, as part of the wellness industry, and that it’s a real pity that we’re not, for whatever reason, exploiting that particular mailing list. Of course, if, as I suspect, you are the Eastern deities, there’s no more to be said.

Anyway, that’s enough marketing advice. Back to the praise. What about, ‘You fill me with peace’? I have to stop this now. I’m actually asking you to pick your own adulation. Worship was never meant to be multiple choice.

What I’m trying to do here, I realise, is to stay humble, to switch off my status-light, while still championing my self-penned, sparklingly original praise-style. A lot of the ticker-tape seems to be blowing back in my direction.

Oh, universe-moulding, life-or-death-deciding, totally top-drawer almightyness, make me truly humble, but humble in a really fascinating way.

JESUS. YOU SAY in Luke’s Gospel that when we do charitable works, we should do them in secret, not sounding a trumpet about our generosity so that we might reap ‘the glory of men’. God will know and that should be enough. This advice makes complete sense, but it has, nevertheless, almost certainly cost me an MBE.

I HAD A charity request arrive in the post, today. It was a good cause – helping people with some illness or other – but the letter began ‘Dear Stephen’. I know these requests are sent to a lot of people, but I do believe that if you’re asking someone to help you, you should at least get their name right. Then it occurred to me that I’m in the habit of addressing you as ‘God’, as, for example, in everyday requests like, ‘Please, God, help me to be less impatient with the incompetent loafers who surround me.’ I suddenly got quite anxious about this. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but it’s possible, of course, that getting the name right could be absolutely crucial. All the good things I’ve done in my life – it would be crass of me to offer examples – could be rendered void because, in my discourse with you, I accidentally adopted the wrong form of address. I’m perfectly aware of my failings. Well, not ‘perfectly’, obviously. You’re perfectly aware of my failings. I only have an unreliable general sense of them. But enough to know it’s not completely out of the question that I might end up on Satan’s griddle. I say it’s not completely out of the question, but that might just be me being tactical. I don’t know if you’re aware of this – I’m guessing that’s something people don’t often say to you – but there is a temptation to be a bit tactical when praying. I mean, you hold all the cards and it’s scary that one might say the wrong thing and create an indelible black mark. So when I say I might end up on Satan’s griddle, I’m not being totally sincere. The truth is that when the Great Segregation comes and good and evil are placed in th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Dedication
• INTRODUCTION
• A Comedian’s Prayer Book
• Copyright