So asks Frankie Boyle, while talking about The Jeremy Kyle Show on 'Tramadol Nights', the new stand-up/sketch show from Scotland's most ignorant prick. The answer, Frankie, is "not much lower than your piece of shit show".
It seems that there's an audience for this shit, though. Look at the cretins laughing at the homophobia, racism, paedophilia, ignorance, offence, uncalled-for crudity and general tasteless tripe, those sitting in the audience. I hope they all burn to death in an electrical fire. Not really, obviously. But I don't see how the same old jokes (with little more than the names of the victim changed) performed on a set almost as unattractive as the content can last very long.
Where are the idiots who complain about Jerry Springer: The Opera, EastEnders and the like when there's something actually worth complaining about? It seemed to be a string of insults (they couldn't even be called jokes) interlaced with "sketches" about gays, gays, black people, gays, ugly people, mentally ill people and gays, all of which were so derogatory that even I, someone who lets lots go when it comes to comedy causing offence, was left gawping at the screen with the question "where do I complain?" sitting on my tongue. There is no doubt in my mind this will make headlines. And for all the wrong reasons Boyle will be shot into the spotlight again. For a man who has built a career around being abusive for the sake of it, complaints will only be good publicity for this show. And the thousands who are out there, like frightened school-kids smoking in the park when they should be in Maths class - an audience of people laughing at their nerve and at their "bravery" at being un-PC in today's delicate TV climate than at the shit they allow to pass as comedy, will flock.
It isn't even an original format that unfortunately oversteps the mark. As Boyd Hilton so perfectly put it on Twitter "It's as if Frankie Boyle watched Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle and thought "I can do this, but turn it into a crime against humanity".
The stand-up/sketch show has been done so well in recent years (Stewart Lee being the classiest and Russell Watson's Good News being the most heart-felt) that it seems illogical that Boyle's show even got off the starting blocks. There seemed to be no through-line to the episode, no reason for one sketch to follow another or for the interspersed stand-up segments to be where they were, or about what they were about - other than "ha ha they're bumming!". It was a big, steaming sack of comedy shit. Boyle went all out on the gratuitous offensive content in episode one, presumably because he also thinks this won't be around long enough to spread the load. I remember when Frankie Boyle was "the one who went too far" on Mock The Week; he was almost bearable then. It was sort of refreshing to have someone say something they shouldn't. But now the joke is old. It's worn out. There is no humour in his arrogant, vicious abuse any longer.
I could go on and on slating this piece of shit all night long. But I won't. I'll leave you with Frankie's parting words to the audience of his new show, a show that will need all the support it can possible get. "Goodbye, Father-Fuckers!"
Nice.
