When you’re making near-the-knuckle jokes about paedophiles and the Royal Family that are so over the top that even BBC Two doesn’t mind seeing the back of you from its top rated topical comedy panel show, it’s probably time to take a new approach to exposing establishment hypocrisy.
That’s exactly what Frankie Boyle did, taking his outspoken standup show to extremes with the Tramadol Nights (originally titled Deal With This, Retards) series on Channel 4 which was the subject of a stream of complaints for racism and insensitivity to disability and mental illness.
Boyle made a mistake in making his comedy hateful. Anyone who reads his (sadly occasional) newsletters will see that he is a man who is dissatisfied with inequality. So why spew bile like this?
“Jordan and Peter Andre are still fighting each other over custody of Harvey – eventually one of them will lose and have to keep him.”
“I have a theory about the reason Jordan married a cage fighter – she needed a man strong enough to stop Harvey from fucking her.”
It’s pretty sick, isn’t it? Yeh, you might chuckle, you might hate Jordan or that idiot Alex Reid – but that kid has had a pretty bad life so far, regardless of who his mother is.
So it should come as no surprise that in the middle of “developing” a new show (or in this case, “arguing over the tone, content and format”) Frankie Boyle’s Rehabilitation Programme (a pilot for which was recorded last year) Boyle has been axed by Channel 4.
In concept, the show seems fine, featuring celebrities and members of the public tackling Boyle over his controversial rules. Channel 4’s head of comedy Shane Allen described it as “….very much like Parkinson or Wogan, but with paedo jokes.
“It’s him [Boyle] in a studio, riffing off the audience a bit, with some people challenging what he says.”
Based on that precis, it sounds pretty rough; it should come as no surprise that Channel 4 has dropped the show.
The question is, what next for Frankie Boyle?