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Frankie Boyle...


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Firstly his latest controversy...

 

Channel 4 urged to sack comedian Frankie Boyle in race jibe row

 

The debate to begin with here should be identical to the old Brand/Ross one. The bloody broadcaster showed to show it! It was taped!

 

Focusing on Boyle himself though, I personally found him hillarious when he was on Mock The Week, his rants were legendary. But his new Channel 4 show, Tramadol Nights is not funny what so ever. Sure swearing can be funny in the right way and for me less is more. The sketches are not funny and ultimately the whole show doesn't work.

 

Your thoughts on him and his reputation?

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I watched the episode the other night of Tramadol Nights, and I was embarrassed for the actors who were simulating giving hand-jobs and intercourse with Sesame Street characters.

 

I can only guess cannabis-smoking twats would have found it funny, but having never touched weed I can't be sure.

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Boyle has completely jumped the shark.

 

In bite-sized chunks he was really funny on Mock The Week - though when I went to see his stand-up gig, I was disappointed that his jokes were pretty much all recycled from Mock The Week and there was no flow to any of it.

 

And this Tramadol Nights is utter shit. I recorded the first episode then took a week to get round to watching it, and subsequently wished I hadn't bothered. That was swiftly deleted from the Sky+ along with the series link.

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For me, Boyle is a very good joke teller but a poor stand up comedian. He is an even worse sketch show writer. Mock The Week suits him perfectly.

 

Absolutely. I find him perfectly fine doing appearances on panel shows where you get him in bits and pieces, but his stand-up is awful because there is absolutely no coherence to his performances at all. Now he's just being controversial for the sake of it.

 

Then again, he's going to retire by 40, isn't he? He won't be doing this shit much longer.

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To be honest after seeing a series or two of his Mock the Week routine I got bored of him. The problem for me isn't that he says controversial and potentially offensive things, its more that that's all he does. It made a point at first, nobody else at the time was really saying such things on television, but when it turned out that it was all he could do it just got repetitive and boring. I believe he appeared once or twice on Have I Got News For You and was pretty quiet which I'm assuming was because he knew Paul Merton and Ian Hislop could probably run rings around him.

 

Like I say, I can get why people might like him, I did at first when his routine seemed fresher but increasingly he just became a parody of himself. I think the only shows that really suit him are Mock The Week and to a lesser extent You Have Been Watching, but then his act is quite similar to Brooker's who I prefer so I don't even know if he's that well suited to the latter.

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Tramadol Nights, while funny in parts, is disappointing. That's not the issue here though, the issue is Daily Mail readers who are trying to determine what we all watching by their blinkered standards. It's the Brass Eye Paedo special all over again - people are complaining without watching the show in context and seeing the race references were clearly a satire. The Jordan joke a few weeks ago was harsh (but funny) and it strikes me that a lot of people will happily laugh along with Boyle when he's making harsh jokes about other people/issues, but if it's something affecting them, suddenly he's unfunny and offensive. The claim that he's picking on defenceless people is clearly bollocks, since most of his jokes are aimed at his own countrymen. In fact he's made plenty of jokes about (in no particular order): the Welsh, the French, Americans, politicians, gingers, Muslims, Christians, Indians, the Irish, the English, single mothers, the elderly, AIDS/HIV/cancer sufferers, the list goes on. Blanket coverage there for someone to get offended and give him a kicking, surely? I'd like to think Frankie is watching this media coverage and laughing at how polarising the public is going to translate into even greater cult status (and wealth).

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but then his act is quite similar to Brooker's who I prefer so I don't even know if he's that well suited to the latter.

 

Yeah I can see the link with Boyle and Brooker. But Brooker is way more natural and he doesn't seem like he aims to shock, even though he so hillariously often does. Boyle seems to wtite gags to be as shocking as he possibly can.

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I've seen Frankie a number of times of over the years, both on his own tours, on mixed bills & at the E'Burgh fringe. He's a great stand-up & has moments of genius. His show at the fringe a few years ago (3?) 'The Voice of Black America' was fantastic. My main complaint is that he quit Mock The Week as he was supposedly tired of the BBC not allowing them to be too cutting about news events & politicians, they instead forced them to talk about menial topics & celebs. Fair play I thought & good for him (the stories I've heard about the MTW audition/screening process from comics who have done the show is frankly shocking). However, now he's been given free reign from Channel 4 he's just gone & covered the same topics he complained he was being forced to talk about, Z list celebrities & popular culture? I was expecting more scathing satire, supposedly the areas that he wasn't allowed to cover previously.

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For me, he has become similar to Roy "Chubby" Brown. As Brown peppers his routine with bad language for the sake of it, and to no effect, Boyle does the same with offensive humour. It's certainly a shame, because hidden inside Tramadol Nights is the odd moment or two of genius....but you have to sit through 25 mins of poop to get to it.

 

I can certainly see why his use of the words "nigger" and "Paki" are offensive, but we've had that debate time and time again. Certainly the points I assume Boyle was trying to make are valid enough.

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One hour of Frankie Boyle is frankly too much, when every joke is intended to offend it gets grating quickly. Chris Morris is actually very clever in what he does and the Brass Eye Special was intelligent in its shocks. Boyle isn't even a gifted amateur in regards to his new show and his stand-up show had me bored within twenty minutes. "C**t" is no longer "cool" to use since people use it almost as frequently as "f**k" nowadays.

 

His joke about Madeleine was good though, as another poster pointed out the "who's looking after Madeleine?" comment is actually true, something her parents didn't ask themselves when she was being kidnapped.

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