CityLife Rating
Frankie Boyle
SHOULD a trip to comedy have a golden rule, it’s avoid the front row.
Unless, that is, you’ve ready to be abused by the best – and tongues don’t come sharper than Frankie Boyle’s.
“What’s your story, man?” the star of BBC2’s Mock The Week asks a nervous gent up front. “You look like someone shaved a monkey and kicked it through Top Man.”
It’s not for nothing that Frankie has become the TV show’s most edited panellist.
Live, he shares a couple of the jokes that didn’t make the cut (none of which would escape the chop in a family entertainment guide, either) – they’re guilty pleasures gags that make you howl then pause to consider your very moral fibre.
Taking the proverbial out of the topical is what Boyle’s onslaught of bitter, twisted and gruesome one-liners is all about.
Cynical logic
And it’s hard to argue with his cynical logic: he questions plans to give Margaret Thatcher a £3m state funeral (“For that money you could buy every person in Glasgow a shovel so they can dig a hole so deep they can hand her to Satan personally”) or why the word cancer is on his mobile phone’s predictive text. “Who’s texting that?” he barks. “I’ve got cancer. LOL. Sad face.”
On Michael Jackson: “He has to live the life of a Scooby Doo villain, hanging around in a deserted fairground with a plastic face”; and on North Korea: “They have nuclear weapons that could hit Alaska. But who’s going to nuke the Eskimos? You can take out one of their villages with a three-bar fire and a bag of salt.”
The downside of the live experience, though, is its familiarity; many of the set’s best lines have already turned up on Mock The Week. The pleasure of the live show, then, is less in waiting for the punchline and more in watching Frankie find life’s absurdities and toy with them like a child pulling the wings off a fly.
He ruthlessly teases the limits of taste itself; that he gets away with it is proof of his star quality.
What did you think of the show? Have your say.
Reviewed: Mon, 03 November, 2008
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Reviews (2)
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Lucy Lou
04/11/08 11:35
Fair do, MISS Reviewer (can't you read Nigel?) did point out that a lot of the material wasn't new. You also seem to have invented the reviewer's use of the word 'genius', which she did not use. She described his playful sense of cynicism as his "star quality". And that seems fair to me. You clearly read this review with your own agenda in mind, expecting the reviewer to call him a genius.
I was at the show and thought his performance was pretty funny, although the Q&A was admittedly very poor (which the reviewer didn't mention) - mainly because the audience couldn't think of any decent questions, though. A good show, I thought, and a fair representation of Frankie's comic style and subject matter. It was just, as the reviewer said, a shame there wasn't more original content.
This review is the opinion of a CityLife reader and not that of CityLife itself
nigel .......
03/11/08 23:00
it was not my good self that invented the word genius, but it was evolved over the many centuries of time , most probably with it originating from some latin word. yes it was a review to my own agenda a.k.a. my own opinion.
maybe mr/mrs/miss/ms(please delete as necessary)boyle should have informed his audience well in advance that it was to be a Q&A session so that the calibre of input from an audience that was clearly expecting frankie ,without any help from his fans,to be able to fill a suitable ammount of time with his views of life, could have been up to scratch.
the original review was more like a transcript of his short set , albeit from the plentiful "whats your story,man" or the paddingly ,copious sips of water.unless reviewing person actually broke the one of the many golden rules about copyright issues and loo breaks that were rammed down our throats from entering the lowry to the inclusion of the 11th,12th and 13th commandments ,as laid down by frankie ,in that lovely,warm-hearted warm-up mans set more than once. i now fully understand why he was so desperate for any recordings of this show not to exist..... or did the MEN reviewer perform a cardinal sin to all and record segments for reference late?
will keep to watching MTW on dave tv in future methinks....
This review is the opinion of a CityLife reader and not that of CityLife itself
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