CityLife

Frankie Boyle: I Would Happily Punch Every One Of You In The Face

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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.