Meet the BBC’s new political sage
He says Brexit is ‘Christmas for racists’ and Mrs May’s a ‘ **** ing monster’. No wonder the Beeb’s given foul-mouthed Frankie Boyle a current affairs show...
Frankie Boyle, arguably Britain’s most offensive comedian, is back on our screens in a show called new World order on BBC2. Sporting a full hipster beard, he now appears before us as a solemn political pundit and even a moral authority on some of the great issues of our day.
yes, that’s right: the man who clawed his way to notoriety by telling truly repellent jokes about subjects such as katie Price’s son, who is blind, autistic and suffers from a rare genetic condition, has now been rewarded by the BBC with his very own topical news and comedy show.
as the BBC portentously explains, Frankie Boyle’s new World order will be ‘an informed, provocative and debate-fuelled review in which he presents comedians, experts and punters with his own outspoken views and invites them to counter him’.
Which means the man who has made an entire career out of sick humour can now be seen addressing sincere pieces straight to camera about the ‘immorality’ of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. is this some kind of sick joke as well? no, this is real. This is the insanity of the BBC today.
So why has the Corporation given him a prime-time Friday night slot to expound his political views to the nation?
it’s because beneath his sour, misanthropic exterior, Frankie Boyle turns out to be a cuddly, dyed-in-the-wool Corbynite after all — just like practically every other comedian allowed on television nowadays. naturally, the BBC loves him.
one of the ‘jokes’ in the new series describes Brexit as ‘Christmas for racists’. That’s it: the sum total of the joke. no, it’s not exactly oscar Wilde, but you can see why Boyle is back, and in such a seat of power and influence.
He loathes Brexit, he loathes the Tories — bingo! Have a series, mate.
There was a brief acknowledgment by Boyle and his simpering guests that there were in fact quite a few Ukip voters from black and asian backgrounds.
But they were glibly dismissed as being a bit like black people who support the BnP. (Which doesn’t happen.) ‘They might as well post dogs*** through their own letterbox,’ observed Boyle.
as if this wasn’t offensive enough, there was plenty of trademark sick humour as well. The show is replete with jokes about aids and leprosy, abortion and suicide: all those famously hilarious topics. There was even a riff about Jesus Christ which was eye-wateringly offensive to any Christian, but not remotely imaginative or witty.
And in case you missed it, Boyle described Jesus as ‘the gayest character in all of fiction’.if that wasn’t enough — after all, what’s wrong with being gay? — he went on to describe a scenario involving Jesus and a leper’s genitals. obnoxious, yes. Funny, no. it’s bizarre that the BBC warns beforehand that the show contains ‘adult humour’. it contains anything but. Calling Jesus ‘gay’ is about as puerile as it gets, and Boyle’s imaginative landscape is that of a psychotic schoolboy with more than a touch of the playground bully.
Hence his ‘daring’ mockery of a religion that is well-known for not fighting back when its most sacred beliefs are attacked. Just like a true playground bully, Boyle chooses his victims carefully.
and there is nothing daring, edgy or subversive about attacking a faith that is already rapidly in decline, with its church leaders far too pusillanimous to counter such vilification.
But it got much worse when, having plumbed such depths, Boyle turned to another camera, put on his sincere and caring face, and started speaking about Grenfell Tower; like so many others, a self-appointed spokesman for its residents, both dead and alive.
it was utterly toe-curling. Boyle appeared interested only in polishing his halo, showing himself to be compassionate and left-wing, while making venomous political points wholly acceptable to the carefully selected fan-based audience.
in fact, some of the residents of Grenfell Tower are known to have been Christian, while many were Muslim.
i wonder if Frankie Boyle was even aware that in obscenely insulting Jesus, he had just insulted one of the holiest figures of islam, let alone Christianity? Jesus is a prophet in islam, second only to Muhammad himself, described repeatedly in the koran as ‘the Word of God’ and ‘the Spirit of God’.
Having just survived an inferno of almost unimaginable horror, therefore, the former residents of Grenfell Tower find that Britain’s official broadcaster is simultaneously telling them how much it cares for them, while insulting their religious beliefs in the most gratuitously offensive way it can.
But it’s very unlikely Frankie Boyle cares one way or another. you get the strong sense from watching his programme that he doesn’t really know very much at all, lacks the intellectual energy or curiosity to try to find out more, and likes to spend time only with people who agree with him.
Which brings us to those chosen as his guest ‘experts and punters’ on the show. remember that the BBC describes those panellists as being invited on ‘to counter him’? in the interests of the BBC’s celebrated impartiality and relentless quest for balanced output, of course.
We had comedians Sara Pascoe, dane Baptiste and katherine ryan to do the countering, but there didn’t seem to be too much of it going on. They seemed better at sycophantic laughter in response to Boyle’s jokes.
Pascoe and Baptiste have actually been on the official ‘Tour for Corbyn’ comedy show, and are well-known labour supporters. So, too, is ryan, who describes nigel Farage as a ‘racist’ and moans about Tory cuts. So she’s evidently deemed a safe pair of hands as well.
Then there was the poet Benjamin Zephaniah, who has also campaigned with Corbyn.
Thus, in the interests of balance, Boyle brought on one more guest: an editor from The Guardian.
you couldn’t make it up.
So THe entire show was just as much of a Corbyn love-fest as Glastonbury, a toxic hatred of the Tories just as much in evidence as a love for the Great leader. This was confirmed when Boyle himself described the vicar’s daughter Theresa May, in his typically brutal fashion, as ‘a **** ing monster’.
incisive political commentary it was not.
it really does seem like the in-house policy at the BBC nowadays is to react to accusations of left-wing bias by . . . becoming more biased.
last year 52 per cent of the British people voted for Brexit, and yet the audience of the show appeared to be 100 per cent remain in its sympathies — while the programme itself was so viciously one-sided it might as well have had a huge banner across the stage reading ‘Brexit Voters: The BBC Hates you!’.
The BBC has again and again denied that it has an anti-Brexit bias, or a left-liberal bias, but no one believes it any more. How can the Corporation possibly hope to maintain the respect and trust of the British people it is supposed to represent, impartially and without prejudice, when a show like Boyle’s does nothing but mock and revile Tory or Brexit voters?
Mistrust of the BBC has never been at higher levels than it is today, and new World order gives plentiful, blindingly obvious reasons why this is.
remember when TV satire and topical news comedies used to attack everyone, with a gleeful cry of ‘a plague on all their houses’?
remember the cruelly funny Spitting image puppets of both Margaret Thatcher and Michael Foot, all jumbled up anarchically together? not any more.
one thing everyone can agree on is that there is a deep and dangerous divide in today’s political landscape. and that divide is only made worse by the BBC’s appalling and naked favouritism. not once during the entire show did i hear a single word critical of the labour Party or its policies.
Satire is supposed to make us think, to challenge us, unsettle us, perhaps to make it all seem ridiculous. above all, it is supposed to make us laugh.
This supposed comedy was more like a particularly unpleasant party political broadcast — scripted by a team with no sense of humour at all.