Tap Roots

Frank Skinner is a British writer, comedian and actor. He is best known for his television presenting, often alongside David Baddiel, with whom he... also collaborated for the football song "Three Lions." He is a radio presenter on the Saturday morning slot on Absolute Radio. Skinner was born at Sandwell General Hospital, and grew up in a council house in neighbouring Oldbury. He was the youngest of four children born to West Cornforth-born former semi-professional footballer John Collins and his wife Doris. He has two older brothers, Keith and Terry, and an older sister, Nora. His father played for Spennymoor United before the Second World War, and met his mother in a local pub after Spennymoor had played West Bromwich Albion in an FA Cup game in 1937. Skinner attended Moat Farm Infant School from 1961 to 1964, St. Hubert's Roman Catholic Junior School from 1964 to 1968, and then Oldbury Technical Secondary School from September 1968. He passed 2 O-levels in summer 1973 and took A-levels in English Language and Art, along with several O-level re-sits, at Oldbury Technical School Sixth Form.
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Biltmore House is a Châteauesque-styled mansion in Asheville, North Carolina, built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895. It is the largest privately-owned home in the United States, at 135,000 square feet and featuring 250 rooms. Still owned by one of Vanderbilt's... descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age, and of significant gardens in the jardin à la française and English Landscape garden styles in the United States. In 2007, it was ranked eighth in America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects. In the 1880s, at the height of the Gilded Age, George Washington Vanderbilt, youngest son of William Henry Vanderbilt, began to make regular visits with his mother, Maria Louisa Kissam Vanderbilt , to the Asheville, North Carolina, area.
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