A play on a line from the well-known musical tribute to the England football team he co-wrote with David Baddiel and Ian Broudie, the title of Frank Skinner’s latest stand-up show also reflects a three-decade (it’s actually nearer four) long career where dirt -smut or filth are better adjectives but clearly don’t scan with the pun title - has played such a key role.

Skinner has mined all manner of sexual activity and innuendo for laughs throughout his time as a stand-up, unashamedly loves a knob gag, and understands why his act is considered lowbrow in some quarters. He tried to write a clean show, he tells us at one point, but the smut kept banging inside his head like the ghost of Catherine Linton tapping the window in Wuthering Heights.

The literary reference is one of few highbrow moments sprinkled into a show that Is deliberately, and joyfully the opposite, mixing traditional front-row banter and a few local references (he was a student at Warwick Uni and performed some of his earliest routines at Coventry’s Tic Toc Club) with observational one-liner gags that apparently wrote themselves (“I was in a McDonald’s and saw a Goth ordering a Happy Meal”) and longer tales that build to colourful crescendos - a visit to celebrity chef Tom Kerridge’s restaurant in London a terrific case in point.

It’s all meat and drink to the consummate old pro, who at 67 seems at ease in his own skin as he’s ever has been, despite labelling himself ‘a once-great comedian’, wondering if there are history students present (‘see him while you still can’) and mocking the state of his failing teeth and the ageism inherent in his profession. The only TV work he now gets offered is documentaries, he claims, before deadpanning that ‘at least radio is for life’ - the day after presenting his last show for Absolute Radio after the station opted not to renew his contract.

No topic was out of bounds in a performance that almost certainly reflected the scattergun workings of his comedic brain and if the content might have been random, he knew exactly when to dial things up a notch with an even bigger and better (and typically cruder) gag, hitting every nail on the head with the timing and delivery of an old-fashioned master craftsman. The comparison to a blacksmith at the forge couldn’t be more apt - and on the basis of this performance he can certainly still make the sparks fly.

Five stars

Reviewed by Steve Adams at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, on Sunday 12 May. Frank Skinner's next Midlands gig is at The Alexandra, Birmingham, on Saturday 18 & Sunday 19 May.