Frankie Boyle

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Frankie Boyle attacked for autism comments
16 May 2012
telegraph.co.uk

The pupils of Bay House School in Gosport, Hampshire, won a new world record by arranging themselves in the shape of the Olympic logo. But the Mock The Week star wrote in a national newspaper that their effort was ''the most autistic response to a global sporting event''. And added: ''For the kids of Gosport, learning how to stand bewildered in a blue jumper is all they need to qualify them for a life of working in 99p stores.''

Caroline Dinenage, MP for Gosport, told the Portsmouth News: ''It sickens me, these people who make a living and spend their lives being spiteful towards others to make money. 'The kids have got themselves a Guinness world record and nobody can take that away from them.'' Headteacher Ian Potter added: ''The pride we feel in the young people of Bay House School raising a significant sum of money for the orphans of Malawi in their achievement of breaking a world record must not be lost.''

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Frankie Boyle tells court he was seriously libelled by Mirror article
Comedian suing Mirror Group Newspapers over story published last year describing him as racist
Josh Halliday
guardian.co.uk,
15th October 2012

Frankie Boyle has told a high court jury he was "very seriously libelled" by an article in the Daily Mirror describing him as racist. Boyle is suing Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mirror, for libel over the article, published on 19 July last year under the headline "Channel 4: we are back on the Boyle". Boyle complained he was defamed by the article, which described him as a "racist comedian", and reported that he was "forced to quit" the BBC2 comedy show Mock the Week following a controversial joke about the Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington.

The Scottish comedian was at the high court for the opening of the seven-day jury trial on Monday. David Sherborne, for Boyle, told the court the comedian's reputation had been seriously damaged by the article and he was seeking vindication and damages.

Sherborne said: "Calling him vile and offensive is one thing. It goes with the territory. But accusing him of being a racist is an entirely different matter." He added: "His complaint is that he has been very seriously libelled by being called a racist, which is completely untrue. There is no ambiguity here. Mr Boyle is no racist."

The Daily Mirror article was printed under the subheading "New show for vile comic", and began: "Racist comedian Frankie Boyle could soon be returning to TV despite upsetting thousands of viewers with his sick jokes." The article goes on to explain how Channel 4 was considering commissioning a new show featuring Boyle.

In its defence, Mirror Group Newspapers claims that the accusation of racism is true. The court heard that the publisher intends to use 12 examples of Boyle's jokes, mostly from his former Channel 4 show Tramadol Nights, to show that the racism allegation is true.

The libel action is unusual because it is being heard by a jury, rather than a judge alone. Jury trials for libel have been phased out over the past decade and Boyle's is believed to be one of only a handful to have come before the high court in the past decade. The trial before Mr Justice Eady continues.

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Frankie Boyle wins £54,000 libel case
Brian Farmer
22 October 2012

Frankie Boyle won more than £54,000 damages today after a High Court jury concluded that he had been libelled by the Daily Mirror. Boyle, 40, from Glasgow, claimed that the Daily Mirror defamed him by describing him as "racist" and saying he had been "forced to quit" BBC panel show Mock The Week.

Daily Mirror publisher Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) defended the article, published on July 19 2011. MGN said the "racist" description was either true or "honest comment on a matter of public interest". And the publisher said the words "forced to quit" did not mean that Mr Boyle had been sacked and were not defamatory.

But jurors ruled in favour of Mr Boyle today after a week-long trial in London. They awarded him a total of £54,650 damages.

Boyle, who said during the trial that he would given any damages to charity, did not comment to reporters after the verdict. Mr Boyle had denied "punctuating" material with racist references or making "gratuitous" use of black people, during a trial in London. He told the High Court that characters he played might express racist views, but he did not. Mr Boyle said he actively campaigned against racism and parodied racists - and claimed that the Daily Mirror had "misunderstood" the context of his use of language in jokes.

MGN lawyers said Mr Boyle was a "racist comedian" who gratuitously exploited negative stereotypes of black people for "cheap laughs". A barrister representing MGN had told the jury that Mr Boyle was "callous" and "insensitive".

Ronald Thwaites QC said jurors should not find in the comedian's favour. And he said if jurors thought that Mr Boyle had been libelled they should show their "contempt" by awarding damages of 45p - the price of a copy of the Daily Mirror. Boyle said he was "very happy" as he left court.

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Nice one

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fukn funneh!

[luke]

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These are some bits from his now discontinued Daily Record blog.

Nov 15, 2008

Rung off

BT have slashed 10,000 jobs. A company spokesman said: "So, anyone need a good spokesman? Anyone?" Virgin Media are cutting 5000 jobs from their customer services department, which has come as a major shock. I didn't think they employed anyone in their customer services department.

Get a head

A ROBOTIC head has been developed that is able to mimic 10 human expressions. It's not as many as a normal human, but that's still eight more than Gordon Brown. Apparently the head has already auditioned for Hollyoaks but got pipped for the part by a block of wood with boobs.

A mad mad world north of the border

A GREAT thing about writing this column has been that while I'm touring England I've had an excuse to immerse myself in Scottish news ...and its sheer mentalness.

A businessman has been found guilty of defrauding a company of 24 tonnes of cheese and grating it by the time police got there. I think it was the 70ft baked potato that gave him away. A lot of people hearing that story on the news must have thought they were watching The Two Ronnies.

In Beijing, Andy Roddick challenged Andy Murray to see how long they could stay in an ice bath, and lost. Obviously, Roddick forgot Murray is Scottish. Between October and March, this whole country is basically one giant ice bath. At one point, Murray actually broke into a sweat. If he'd challenged Murray to sit in a hot tub, he'd probably have killed him.

Apparently, it's a macho thing. Considering their willies must have ended up looking like Tic Tacs, I fail to see anything macho about it. It all sounds a bit homo-erotic. What's his next challenge going to be? Nude wrestling in a bath of jelly? Later, Murray thrashed Roddick for 90 minutes. Then they played tennis.

Meanwhile, the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen has invented wholemeal bread that can combat diabetes, tomatoes that prevent heart disease and blackcurrants that reduce Alzheimer's. What they haven't invented is a Scotsman who eats any of these. Stick a piece of fruit down the average Scottish person's throat and the only thing you'll get is toxic shock syndrome. If they'd come up with a sausage roll that prevents cancer or a Silk Cut that cures motor neurone disease, I might have been impressed.

Apparently, the recession could mean that in a year the centre of most Scots towns could resemble a post-apocalyptic wasteland. So at least there will be improvements. I was talking to a bunch of Scots at a show and spent ages trying to see who would win in Shit Town Top Trumps. In the end, Coatbridge won, largely due to my memory of it having one Chinese takeaway, called Bon Appetit. We've been to some shocking towns on tour. Port Talbot in Wales is like Blade Runner without special effects. We later heard scientists had discovered cave paintings nearby dating back to the Seventies.

It's a funny old world. Didier Drogba was criticised for throwing a50p piece into the Burnley crowd. If he'd thrown a 50p piece into the fans at Motherwell, they would have built a statue of him. The SFA is refusing to take part in the 2012 British Olympic football team. England stars like Rooney and Gerrard are devastated by this. They were hoping to finally have players on the team uglier than them.

Bush shows where dirt is in the White House

BARACK OBAMA visited the White House this week. George Bush greeted him warmly, but spoilt it by handing him a duster and a can of Pledge. Bush prepared carefully for his meeting with Obama - by hiding the TV and DVD player. The new president noticed that when Bush showed him out he was following a piece of string. Tickets for Obama's inauguration are selling on eBay for $20,000. All of them to someone called Grand Wizard in Texas.

Sarah Palin has revealed she might run for president in 2012 if "God opens the door". Presumably this is the door of whichever lunatic asylum she has been committed to by then. She went on to say: "I put my life in my creator's hands." I thought Satan had hooves?

The US Secret Service revealed the code name they are using for Barack Obama is Renegade. Other names in the running were Moving Target and Bodybag. Renegade is cool, let's hope his cabinet members include Nightshade, Rhino, Jade and Wolf. Ronald Reagan's code name was Rawhide, which coincidentally is how British Intelligence refer to Peter Mandelson. David Cameron has been dubbed "Leave it, he's not worth it" and Nick Clegg is known by security personnel as "Sorry, who?"

Reports indicate that Obama's mother-in-law may move into the White House. Give it a month and he'll be begging for a terrorist attack. Give him two months and expect him on the roof guiding the planes in.

Meanwhile, a fake edition of the NY TImes declared an end to the Iraq War. Handing out a spoof newspaper would never fool the British public. They'd just assume it was a copy of The Metro.

Nov 22, 2008

Aye-phone isn't all it's cracked up to be

A NEW voice-activated search engine on Apple's iPhone doesn't understand Scottish accents. Tests found that a request for "iPhone" in a Scots accent led the browser to search for "sex". It might not understand Scottish accents, but at least it's good at reading between the lines.

I can see it becoming a best seller in Scotland. It also gives you a good excuse if your girlfriend catches you looking at a porn site on your phone. "How did that get there? I asked it to find me rock crunchers."

Organ donation in Scotland

TURNS out there are problems with organ donation in Scotland. Lots of people die young, but they've all got the internal organs of a 90-year-old. I want my organs to be of use after I die, which is why I'm getting them embalmed and put in jars in the burial chamber of my pyramid.

That won't be for a while, though, as I've got the body of a man half my age. In my fridge. It can't hurt to keep a few spares handy. Seriously though, I don't want my organs going to waste, which is why I've told my family that after I die they should tuck in.

Zombie hellhole

A SCOTTISH musician has penned a love song dedicated to Cumbernauld after it was described as the "most dismal" town in the whole of Scotland. Whoever thinks Cumbernauld is the most dismal town in Scotland obviously hasn't travelled around much. Cumbernauld is the most dismal town in the whole of the world.

Cumbernauld actually has a lot going for it, it just needs to market itself correctly. For example, it's ideally suited to film-makers wishing to shoot a zombie apocalypse movie. Not only does it offer the sort of bleak urban landscape that would cost millions to recreate with computer graphics but they could save on the budget for costume and make-up by using the locals.

There Has Been A 68 Per Cent Fall

There has been a 68 per cent fall in the number of sparrows in the UK. Scientists are baffled, but I have three words for you. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall.

Also, surgeons have performed the world's first throat transplant. John Prescott is particularly interested in this operation as he wouldn't mind having a second one added.

Pm's Life Saver

GORDON BROWNhas ordered "supercars" designed to withstand sniper fire, roadside bombs, fire throwers and, basically, everything else he needs to get out of his Dunfermline constituency alive. The car can detect noxious gas, then seals itself off and pumps in oxygen. That's not for Brown, that's for his driver.

I see NASA have developed a machine that converts piss into water, unlike Carlsberg, who do exactly the opposite.

The number of pensioners reaching100 years old in Scotland is at a record. They are all looking forward to their telegrams from the Queen. So they have something to burn to keep them warm this winter.

The Biggest Shock On The Leaked

The biggest shock on the leaked BNP list is that one of the members was a Church of England vicar. Surely they suspected when he kept setting fire to the cross.

Liam Byrne is a man of straw

Liam Byrne, the MP who accidentally left Scotland out of the celebrations for "British Day", has been celebrating his promotion by instructing his staff to give him "cappuccino at 10, soup at 12 and espresso at three". See he's getting ready for his next visit to Scotland by practising taking his meals through a straw.

Is anyone else thinking this recession business is quite fun at the moment? Petrol down to 95p, clothing cheapest in Europe, mortgage interest rates down. I mean, nobody really enjoys going to work anyway. It's like when there are disasters and the community pulls together. Neighbours start to talk to each other. You might as well get to know your neighbours, as there's sod all chance of you getting any new ones for the next 10 years.

TV contests are a crying shame

EVERY year, it seems that one of the finalists on The X Factor has a mortally ill relative. Simon will say, "Your wife/mother/dog would be very proud of you tonight," and they cry and get through to the next round. They are not crying because they miss their relative, they are crying because they know Simon Cowell has a henchman ready to switch off the life-support machine should the show ratings start to slip. Simon only has Eoghan in the competition now. Dermot always says how nervous Eoghan is backstage - that's not singing nerves, that's because he knows Simon is creeping up on his mother with a bolt gun.

Meanwhile, Timmy Mallett joined I'mA Celebrity. Television has finally eaten itself. Mallett was famous for three seconds in the 1980s for battering kids with a hammer. Who's next in the jungle? Josef Fritzl? We've actually run out of letters in the alphabet to describe the anonymity of this man. Dani Behr is a Z-list celebrity, but Timmy Mallet means we need to start using the ancient Sumerian system of markings in wet clay. His apparent "trademark" is his red glasses, the same colour as his eyes through years of sobbing at the aching pointlessness of his existence. Mallet will excel at the Bushtucker trials, as he's been living off grubs and insects since the work dried up in 1987.

An Arab Sheikh is suing Michael Jackson for nearly £5million as he claims he wrote many of Michael's recent songs. I thought it was strange when Michael released: "Billy Jean's not my lover. Just a Western whore I had stoned to death." Jackson is now so broke he's had to sell his beloved Neverland. This is where he wrote most of his biggest numbers - usually on cheques to the parents of eight-year-olds.

Tom Cruise's two-year-old daughter is top of the list of Hollywood's most powerful children. Give it another 13 years and she'll also be at the top of Hollywood's most mental teenagers.

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Ukip is fair game for comedians – and why shouldn’t it be?
Nigel Farage’s moan about ‘leftie comedians’ on panel shows is riddled with contradictions. He appears to want comics not to make jokes.
Frankie Boyle
theguardian.com,
3 November 2014

It has been genuinely amusing to watch Nigel Farage rail against the “lefties” of television panel shows. He’s been reacting to a comedy industry debate about a pro-Ukip blog by a comedian which is far too dull to go into here. Bizarrely, Farage is enraged because he scents solidarity among performers, spluttering that “Luvvies look after themselves and look after their own, and when they sense a whiff of dissent in the ranks, first they close up, then they start flailing wildly.”

I doubt anyone has ever accused comedians of solidarity before. It’s hard to think of a less collegiate world than that of unabashed professional narcissists competing for attention; even when we reluctantly band together on panel shows, we’re only trying to sell solo tours. Indeed this article will be quickly followed by one from Stewart Lee pointing out that no panel show comedian is properly political and the only true comedy the left can aspire to is him delivering a half-hour monologue about not liking Celebrity Juice, and even then only if it’s followed by an episode about cheese. Even in this article about comedy solidarity, I have quickly descended into a pointless jibe at a fellow pro. This is what we are like.

This rare display of comic camaraderie has probably been prompted by the fact that the blog in question lambasted panel shows consisting of “women posing as comedians” and “surreal diversity targets” being filled by “ethnic comedians”. Comedians, being decent sorts deep down, maybe just don’t take kindly to what they see as their fellows being targeted because of their race or gender. I doubt any of us have a real bugbear with the comedian himself, because bitterness and disappointment is something most of us can relate to on some level. We might, at worst, reflect that better comics have faced greater disappointment with more dignity.

What I’d like to point out about Farage’s argument is, and this seems so unforgivably un-Ukip that it seems to be riddled with internal contradictions: First up, Nigel wants to be seen as a pint-swilling man of the people, but simultaneously to be taken so seriously that nobody can even make a joke about him. He tells us how popular Ukip is and simultaneously how jokes against it is easy populism. Well, which is it?

Farage disparages a (very good) article by the comedian Ava Vidal on the debate and follows her name with “(no, I don’t know either)”. It seems strange that Farage hasn’t heard of such an accomplished black female comic, if television is awash with such performers. It’s almost as if black people, and women, are actually underrepresented in the media.

Enraged by Mock the Week talking about Ukip, he claims, “There’s no rational response. There’s no such thing as, ‘Ah, that’s interesting. We should discuss that’.” Well, of course, a rational response about the interest of a subject might not be what one would immediately expect from a show designed to take the piss. Or possibly joking about something is the way that it is discussed on a comedy show. Perhaps that’s why it’s not called Let’s Have an Interesting Discussion about the Week. Equally, a rational response seems a lot to ask from a party making a wholehearted appeal to irrational fears and prejudices.

I’m not saying that there’s no rational response to Ukip, but maybe there isn’t one that doesn’t involve some general laughter. Still, Farage poses a few rhetorical questions and, as he seems to seek rational discussion instead of comic zingers, so I am happy to answer them here seriously.

“One week I’m Hitler’s buddy, then next week the Tower of London’s Poppy Memorial is hailed as “Ukip-style” attraction in the Guardian. Well – which is it? Am I pro-freedom, or anti-freedom? Am I a modern Hitler or a modern Churchill?” Well Nigel, you seem to be pro-freedom for big business and rich people, anti-freedom for immigrants, asylum seekers, gay people and other marginalised groups. Does that also answer the second question or shall I go on? You ask if you’re a Hitler or a Churchill. Well, your party forms pacts with rightwing Holocaust deniers. The poppy memorial was described as “Ukip-style” not because your party is imbued with the same Churchillian values as the poppy, but because the stunt itself was viewed as the sort of crass politicisation of patriotism that your party is so fond of. Honestly, next time you need an article explained to you, just give me a shout fam – I used to be an English teacher.

The idea of an increasing liberal, left-leaning bias in TV comedy seems to ignore all evidence. It’s harder than ever to get a joke on television about Britain’s wars, or US foreign policy. This is because of editorial policy, not “lazy” comedians. On channels terrified of accusations of bias, or political retribution, comics making jokes about the growing power base of far-right politicians aren’t taking the “easy” route.

Far from enjoying Ukip as an easy laugh, there looms before comedians the worst of all possibilities: the opportunity to have the Nazis back without the style. Say what you like about those awful bastards, but for failed artists they had a surprising amount of flair. Put Farage in jackboots and a leather trenchcoat and he’ll just look like a gay Dr Who. I’m depressed to think that if these wingnuts form a coalition I, as a comedian, will have to know the names of some real morons. There will be some dreadful frontbencher with a collection of Nazi trenchknives leading a campaign against sun beds or some such nonsense, and I will have to know his name. It’s genuinely appalling.