Off the Boyle

‘I spend a lot of time helping teenagers who’ve been sexually abused…’ — beat — ‘…find their way out of my house.’

You’d scarcely imagine, listening to Frankie Boyle now, that this was the kind of joke he was telling on TV as recently as this decade. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t have written evidence of it, in the form of a 2011 TV review of his now-forgotten shocker of a Channel 4 show, Tramadol Nights.

Boyle was great back then because he went to places few other comics dared to tread. He joked about everything from cancer (‘What is it about people with cancer thinking they’re suddenly going to run a marathon?’) to having sex with your granny (‘Often she’ll stick £5 in your pocket afterwards and say, “Don’t tell your mum.”’) to Jordan the large-breasted celebrity’s disabled son. It was cruel, it was tasteless, it was horrid — but it was hugely refreshing.