Frank Skinner has quietly tied the knot with his long-term partner Cath Mason after 24 years together – and in true offbeat Frank style, the entire ceremony took place on the stairs at Camden Town Hall with just one witness: their 12-year-old son, Buzz. The 68-year-old comedian revealed the news on his Frank Off The Radio podcast, leaving his co-hosts Emily Dean and Pierre Novellie stunned. “Can you brace yourselves? You’ll never guess what I did on Monday: I got married. I got f***ing married!” Frank announced.
The low-key wedding reflected Cath’s no-nonsense approach to tradition. “Don’t be offended, we didn’t invite anyone. Buzz was a witness. We got married not in a room but on the stairs at Camden Town Hall,” Frank said. He proposed without fanfare and was met with an equally blunt response. “I said to Cath, ‘Will you marry me?’ and she said, ‘I’m not having a f***ing party! I don’t want a load of guests. I’m not going in a church. I don’t want a ring. I’m not wearing a stupid f***ing white dress.’”
After briefly calling the whole thing off, they changed their minds. “So it went on. ‘I’m not doing this!’ I said, ‘Oh, forget it.’ And then about two weeks later I said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it your way.’ I felt bad for the friends. I would have invited everyone.”
They spent the morning of the wedding walking on Hampstead Heath, even debating whether to go through with it. “She said, ‘I don’t know. Shall we not do it?’” Frank recalled.
As Buzz played Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul by The Fall from his phone, the couple made their entrance. “That sounds gimmicky, like getting married by Elvis in Vegas, but in fact The Fall meant so much to me and Cath when we were in our early days, so it was actually quite an emotional thing,” Frank said.
Cath wore a flowery dress – reluctantly – and refused a wedding ring. “She said, ‘If I wear a ring, I’ll feel trapped.’ I said, ‘You’ll be married, you’re supposed to feel f***ing trapped! That’s what it symbolises. It’s like a shackle!’”
Frank joked that the most difficult part was the ceremony itself. “We had to look each other in the eye, and I know she’s thinking, ‘Why are we doing this?’ I’m holding both her hands, I mean come on it’s like a f***ing seance!”
He even described the kiss as: “like kissing a reluctant employee under the mistletoe.”
When asked why he finally decided to marry, Frank quipped: “Maybe I’ve got too much money, I’ll give her half in about five years time! It wasn’t even like a tax thing, so I’m not planning on dying anytime soon.”
He added that the night before the wedding, he lay awake thinking, “If she f***s off and takes my money, I could end up in a p*** covered bed in a council care home in my 80s.”
The couple first met when Cath worked for Frank’s management company. They’ve been together for more than two decades and welcomed their son Buzz in 2012. Despite previously proposing four times – and being turned down – Frank never gave up.
