Benefits Street: Frank Skinner turned down narrating job Benefits Street: Frank Skinner turned down narrating job
I railed last week about the way debased docu-soaps impact on real geographies and people. It is great to learn that Frank Skinner agrees – this article tells us:
Comedian Frank Skinner turned down a narrating job on Channel 4 documentary Benefits Street because he did not want to criticise Birmingham on television.
The Room 101 host grew up just outside the city in Oldbury, and was wary of how the show planned to present local people.
Skinner was asked by the broadcaster to do the voice-over after being told that the series would explore “community spirit” in Winson Green’s impoverished James Turner Street.
But he told the Birmingham Mail that he had refused the offer as he did not want involve himself in “something where I’m derogatory about people from Birmingham”.
“I imagine there would be a lot of awkward moments in the recording studio when I said, ‘I’m not going to say that’,” he explained. “They only showed me a very small part of a five-episode series, and I wondered what the rest would be like.”