Frank Skinner Walks Into the Fringe, Twice

 Franks Skinner returns to the Fringe with two shows

There are comedians who treat the Edinburgh Fringe as a victory lap. Frank Skinner has never really been one of them. Thirty years into a career that most stand-ups would happily retire on, he's coming back to Assembly this August with not one show but two, and neither of them is the safe option.

The first is billed simply as Frank Skinner: Work in Progress, and the title is doing honest work. This is not a polished hour being wheeled out for the festival crowds. Skinner has always built his shows the old-fashioned way, trying half-formed ideas in small rooms above pubs, keeping what lands and quietly burying what doesn't. The difference this year is that he's doing the building in public. The show's own billing compares it to watching Doctor Frankenstein stitch his monster together, which sounds about right. Audiences at Assembly George Square will see the experiments, the misfires and, if past form is anything to go by, some of the sharpest new material of the festival before it's been sanded down for a tour.

There's something rather generous about that. Plenty of household names use a work-in-progress label as cover for an under-rehearsed greatest hits set. Skinner, by contrast, has spent three decades treating stand-up as a craft to be worked at rather than a status to be defended, and the show promises a look at both the successes and the struggles that come with it. For anyone curious about how a comedy hour actually gets made, this is as close to the workshop floor as you're likely to get.

The second show is a different beast entirely. Crowd Work with Frank Skinner arrives at Assembly George Square Studios from 17 to 26 August, making its Fringe debut after a run of sold-out nights at London's Leicester Square Theatre. The premise is beautifully simple: Skinner and two guest comedians, a room full of strangers, and no script whatsoever. Whatever the audience brings through the door, the three of them have to run with it.

The guest list alone would make a decent festival line-up. Sara Pascoe, Mark Watson, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Catherine Bohart, Vittorio Angelone, Felicity Ward, Ania Magliano and Dan Tiernan are among the names confirmed to rotate through the residency, with the pairings changing night by night. The producers promise that no two shows will be the same, which for once is not marketing puffery but a plain statement of fact. When your raw material is whoever happens to be sitting in row three, it can hardly be otherwise.

It's a shrewd bit of programming, too. Crowd work has quietly become the most watched form of comedy on the internet, clipped and shared endlessly, and there are few people alive better at it than Skinner. Long before social media discovered the art of the audience put-down, he was picking apart front rows with a warmth that somehow made the victims enjoy it. Seeing him do it live, flanked by two of the best improvisers on the circuit, should be a treat.

The shows also make an interesting pair. One is Skinner alone with his notebook, showing you how the sausage gets made. The other throws the notebook out of the window altogether. Between them they cover just about everything stand-up can be, which feels fitting for a performer whose relationship with the Fringe goes back to the days when he was an unknown Brummie playing to single figures.

Crowd Work runs at 6.10pm each evening from 17 to 26 August at Assembly George Square Studios, Studio One, with tickets from £13.75. The Work in Progress dates sit within Assembly's wider programme, which runs from 5 to 31 August as the venue marks its 45th year at the festival. Both are on sale now through Assembly and the Fringe box office.

On this evidence, Skinner's fourth decade in the business looks rather more restless than most people's first. Long may it continue.