Frank talking
February 2009
Photo by Kate Sutherland
by Judy Mackie
Anyone with a smidgeon of self-consciousness will never forget their early experience of Frank Robb. Patrons of Aberdeen pubs during the Seventies and Eighties still talk about the strain on their bladders. For only the brave, innocent or stupid would answer a call of nature while Frank Robb was in the spotlight: stand up and you became a moving target – a lamb to the slaughter for the eagle-eyed entertainer to embarrass amid the laughter of a relieved audience momentarily off the hook.
Very few escaped his wry, lyrical observations; yet everyone went back for more.
More than 20 years on, meeting Frank at his Bridge of Don home is a more comfortable experience. Solemn-faced, softly-spoken and ever-so-slightly shy at first, he proves the point that comedians can be very different people off-stage. He is funny, but the joke is often on himself, as he tells story after story about his life and career – although he does allow himself a gleeful grin now and then, as he recalls occasions when some of his more acerbic put-down lines were justly deserved.
Looking fit and healthy – he is a keen, if fair-weather hillwalker – Frank has 40 years of show business under his belt and plans to accumulate many more. His unique ad-lib comedy act now holds audiences captive across a variety of UK and European venues, from clubs to festivals and five-star hotels.
The perfect celebrity foil
As an accomplished after-dinner performer, he provides a perfect foil to celebrity speakers, who (generally) take his de-bunking in good part. As a talented singer-songwriter, he entertains fans of Scottish, traditional and contemporary folk music with his performances on guitar, harmonica and vocals. He has recorded three original albums, Silver City, Watching Time and Bought and Sold, and he wrote and performed the original theme for the documentary In Search of Aberdeen and composed music for the BBC Radio series The State of Scotland.
What you will not find in Google – and what Frank chose to reveal to Leopard exclusively – is that his career began at age eight, when he was coerced by his grandmother into the church choir as solo soprano.
“I wasn’t keen, but my grandmother, whose sister was a jazz singer and brother played piano, was determined. She came from Shetland herring fishing folk and I lived with her, in Torry, until I was 11. She was a big influence on my life.”
Being a child soloist was character-forming, he says. “The other kids hated me and used to attack me on the way home from choir practice. So I got a gang together and led a strange double life as a gangster choirboy.”
Another hard lesson followed when Frank’s voice started to break and he was replaced by a less-talented youngster. However, he made sure he went out on a high note: “My final performance was my best ever. My parents turned up, my father’s clothes reeking of whisky – not because he’d been drinking, but because he was a cooper and had come straight from work. He hadn’t liked me being in the choir, as he thought I sang like my sister, but he came to my last performance – probably at my grandmother’s insistence.”
Despite his misgivings, Frank’s father gave him a guitar, which he had bought off the local bobby for £2. With role models Lonnie Donegan, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan on the scene, Frank had dreams of becoming a rebel singer-songwriter, and he practised every minute he could, rigging up a harmonica with coat-hanger wire. By age 16 he had formed his first folk duo with pal Brian Lawrie, who played penny whistle. The pair endured a baptism of fire at the famously discerning Aberdeen Folk Song Club, in the Royal Hotel: “We didn’t do all that well, but it was a start and it got me back in front of an audience, which I’d missed.”
The Crofters and Joe Loss
He had more success at 19 with his next band, The Crofters, who recorded two albums on the Decca label, with Joe Loss Orchestra producer Ray Horrocks. This quickly led to regular theatre and tv appearances alongside Calum Kennedy and his daughters – an early taste of fame which, bizarrely, landed Frank a new day job at the Ministry of Transport, in Aberdeen.
“The man who interviewed me was a great Calum Kennedy fan and had seen me on telly the night before. He told me right away I’d got the job. I had go on stage at night and turn up for work next morning looking like death. Mind you, some of the people in that office looked like death anyway, so I blended in fine…”
This exciting time for the Torry loon was sadly short-lived, as, in 1973, the variety theatres started closing down. But having inherited his grandmother’s determination, he lost no time in forming another band, Hedgehog Pie, whose acoustic American country folk style struck a chord with Scottish audiences and launched his professional career. Before long, he had moved on again, forming the band Superklute, who played avant-garde rock music, accompanied by colourful on-stage theatrics.
Then, just as they were about to sign a large record deal, punk rock stormed the scene. Unwilling to conform to the record company’s demands on how to dress and what to play, Superklute backed off and Frank found himself solo yet again. Undaunted, he broke into the festival circuit, focusing on the unique comedy-music act he had been perfecting all this time in the Aberdeen pubs, in between band gigs. One of his most memorable festivals was at Stroud, in 2001, where he performed for two nights, sharing the stage with his hero, Lonnie Donegan, The Jam and American jazz singer Stacey Kent.
Audience is everything to Frank, whose off-the-cuff humour relies on the punters. Talking and singing in the third person, in a fake mid-Atlantic drawl, he spins rhymes about folk, likening them to famous characters, or giving them imaginary jobs.
“The little bloke in the corner suddenly becomes a private detective, or the Milky Bar Kid 30 years on. A crowd of men become the Seven Brothers waiting for their Seven Brides, except, unbeknown to them, the Seven Brides have already been in, had a look and b******d off,” he grins.
Fit for the hecklers
The one time he paid someone a compliment – he called a man ‘Richard Gere’ – he got a filthy look. “He told me later: ‘I hate Richard Gere. He canna act. I’m sick of people telling me I look like Richard Gere’. I got the message.”
Most people secretly enjoy the attention, but if Frank sees anyone is upset, he will quickly move on. “At my age, I’m fit for them if they heckle, but not for running away!”
There have not been many off-nights, but the worst was at a Renfrew tyre factory club on a day Rangers had been badly beaten. His new speakers had blown up, he had dropped one of the club’s speakers on his guitar hand, and the audience was in a foul mood. After an agonising evening, he met an old man at the top of the stairs, who was looking at the poster billing Frank as ‘Scotland’s most unique comedy talent’.
“This little old man, leaning on his walking stick, turned to me and said: ‘Well, sonny, as a comedian you’re certainly unique, because you’re – not – effing – funny.’ I looked at him, looked at his walking stick, looked at the stairs and thought, ‘Hmm…’.”
One of his best gigs earned him A-list treatment at a major drinks company’s glittering promotional event in London. Frank was hired to entertain the celebrity guests, who included the cast of East Enders, Jackie Stewart and a host of supermodels. After putting a “rather lippy” East Enders crowd in their place, he noticed Naomi Campbell making an entrance on the arm of “some grey-haired, grey-bearded, middle-aged mannie wearing a ridiculous hat,” who turned out to be a celebrated (now deceased) Italian fashion designer. Unwilling to insult Ms Campbell – “I didn’t want a stiletto heel stuck in my head” – he crooned: “If a hat like that can get a girl like that, get me a hat,” and was rewarded by a dazzling supermodel smile.
Barry McGuigan’s favourite act
Nowadays, Frank is kept busy with a variety of work, which includes regular 40-minute slots on the after-dinner circuit, which he broke into big-time after boxer Barry McGuigan, who loved his act, rang up all the agents to tell them so.
Music – and the opportunity to perform it at festivals countrywide – is still very important in his life, and he also enjoys exploring Spanish history, having become hooked while hillwalking in Majorca. He recently resumed his childhood hobby of watercolour painting and says long-time partner Deirdre Grant is his greatest critic. Not surprising, considering Deirdre is Aberdeen Art Gallery’s cultural services promotions officer.
With projects that take him far beyond his North-East base, Frank no longer works the pubs and clubs of Aberdeen. But he can rest assured his name will go down in the annals of local history: for his music, for his comedy – and for bringing painful new meaning to the word ‘bladdered’.
Judy Mackie is a copywriter and newsletter editor and runs Aberdeen-based creative communication business M&M Media with her husband. Born and brought up in the Granite City, she enjoys reading, creative writing and walking with Westies.
This is an article from the February 2009 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.