Frankie boyle

In the never-ending debate about left-wing bias in BBC comedy, a more crucial issue tends to be overlooked. Namely, that the deeper problem with much of the material is that it is predictable, boring and geared towards applause rather than laughs. That most of it is also marinated in what passes for left-wing politics today, replete with all the usual talking points and lame anti-Toryism, is almost a second-order issue. Expressing a high-status opinion now takes precedence over actually landing a punchline. So much so that I’m not convinced your average anti-Tory genuinely finds this stuff funny either. Frankie Boyle’s New World Order on BBC Two is an interesting case in

Frankie Boyle is complaining about offensive comedy. In a year of firsts and unprecedented moments, I’m not sure anyone could have seen this one coming. The Glaswegian comic had a pop at Ricky Gervais in a podcast interview with Louis Theroux recently. Boyle said Gervais’s recent routines about transgenderism were ‘lazy’, and claimed he wasn’t even a real stand-up. ‘I would like him to have the same respect for trans people as he seems to have for animals’, Boyle intoned, nodding to Gervais’s passion for animal rights. ‘I don’t think that’s a lot to ask.’ In his 2018 stand-up special, Humanity, Gervais ripped into the idea of gender self-identification, with