Might knob gags be defended on the basis of cultural inclusion? Frank Skinner claims they were the primary means of communication where he grew up, as indelibly a part of him as his Black Country brogue. OK, so comedy has changed, and he can’t be so fast and loose with the filth as he once was. But – as he reports in 30 Years of Dirt, in an image for the ages – Skinner can no sooner extirpate knob gags from his imagination than the ghost of Cathy Linton be stopped from tapping on the windows of Wuthering Heights.
By the end of this Edinburgh hour, then, 30 Years offers itself as a celebration of smut. But it’s smut without crudeness; gentlemanly smut, even, from a 66-year-old with a poetry podcast.
