Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 23rd October 2019, 9:10 PMYou must be cool and left wing, have long hair be generally scruffy, talk a load of bollocks very loudly and wave your arms about wearing a tee shirt with a slogan or an arty design or both.
Again ? can't think of any comedians who fit this description these days. And Frankie Boyle's latest show definitely isn't pc!
Be funny...yes, great advice!
Quote: Chris Hallam @ 23rd October 2019, 9:53 PMFrankie Boyle's latest show definitely isn't pc!
Do you mean on TV or live?
I remember in 2013, he did an absolutely brilliant six-minute set for comic relief - and the BBC refused to broadcast it.
So I know for a fact he's still got it: he's just not allowed to get it out any more! 
Quote: Rood Eye @ 23rd October 2019, 10:18 PMDo you mean on TV or live?
I remember in 2013, he did an absolutely brilliant six-minute set for comic relief - and the BBC refused to broadcast it.
So I know for a fact he's still got it: he's just not allowed to get it out any more!
I definitely mean TV.
You've obviously never seen Frankie Boyle's New World Order (three series since 2017).
Subjects so far covered have included:
"Let's Look Forward to a Summer of Blue Skies, Riots And Domestic Terror"
"Donald Trump Is Just A Human Being Who Wants To Be Loved, By His Daughter"
"Britain Is Entering A Golden Age of Racism"
"Free Speech Is Vital. Without It I Would Struggle To Describe My Hate Crimes to My Children"
"Humanity Doesn't Deserve The Mercy of an Apocalypse"
"Why Worry About Climate Change When The Earth Is A Pointless Ball of Shit?"
So not really PC!
Jimmy Carr in America is seen as more ruthless that the locals, very none PC, check out the facial expressions of his American piers in this roast video.
Quote: Chris Hallam @ 24th October 2019, 6:18 AMYou've obviously never seen Frankie Boyle's New World Order.
I assure you I've seen Frankie Boyle's New World Order and I was bitterly disappointed.
He just wasn't himself: the programme and its guests seemed very much at odds with Frankie's traditional style of comedy.
I'm not saying he'd transitioned into Joyce Grenfell but, compared with the Frankie of old, he wasn't far off.
The examples you give of his comedy on the show do indeed demonstrate that he is still willing (and allowed) to touch on controversial topics but they also demonstrate that that's all he does - touch on them. In the old days, he'd have ripped all the meat off those topics and rammed it down the audience's throats.
Clearly, BBC had presented him with a set of very strict rules and regulations - and he was abiding by them.
They'd also presented him with some painfully PC guests whom he not only tolerated, he actually appeared to respect. Some of them were exactly the sort of people I'd expect to be up in arms about Frankie's traditional comedic offerings in times gone by.
The original poster of this thread enquired about regulations: Frankie Boyle's New World Order showed us a once-brilliant-and-uncontrollable wild child - now bound, gagged and struggling to move under the weight of regulations.
Hardly.
Obviously, there are limits on what the BBC can broadcast. But allowing for that, he's about as unrestrained as you could imagine.
What sort of stuff were you expecting him to do?
I was expecting him to be the Frankie I've come to know and love over many years.
What I saw was a deeply sanitised, thoroughly chastened version of that man.
And, as if that were not different enough, he was actually virtue-signalling!
It was horrible - truly horrible - to watch.
What nonsense. You seem to be confusing 'the old Frankie ' with Bernard Manning. Thankfully, he was never that.
Can you give any actual examples to support this view that his act has softened at all?
Quote: Chris Hallam @ 24th October 2019, 10:36 AMCan you give any actual examples to support this view that his act has softened at all?
You've seen Frankie Boyle over the years and you've seen him on New World Order.
Accordingly, I can present no evidence with which you are not already familiar.
We've both seen all the evidence and we've arrived at different verdicts.
He's always been left wing.
Just to convince myself that I'm not alone in thinking Frankie's gone soft, I've googled the issue and have come up with an article from The Spectator (April 2019) which asks why he's gone soft.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/why-has-frankie-boyle-gone-so-soft/
I'm not suggesting The Spectator is the voice of objective fact with regard to Frankie's transformation but I'm certainly relieved to find that my views on the subject are not unique.
For BCG members too busy to read the article in its entirety, I offer the following snippet:
"Boyle has moved up in the world. He's on the third series of his own show -- Frankie Boyle's New World Order -- yer actual BBC this time (Thursdays), rather than lowly Channel 4.
As comics tend to do when they're endorsed and promoted by our state broadcaster, he has amassed a respectable fortune (estimated at £3.3 million). And all he had to do to achieve this was to sell his soul, stop taking risks and renounce every last scintilla of his comedic integrity."
I couldn't have put it (much) better myself.
Hooray for The Spectator!
"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..."
Clearly, The Spectator loved him back then, when he was so bold and un-PC that he effectively got chucked off TV.
Did they love him? Er, here's the same writer in the same magazine (then edited by Boris Johnson) in 2014....
Back them, he went much too far: he actually took the piss out of celebrities. Unthinkable!
"I really thought you were bigger and braver than that. Clearly you're not, and that puts your stuff about Rebecca Adlington, Camilla Parker Bowles, and Jordan's disabled son into its proper context: not boldly transgressive but cowardly, gratuitous and cruel." Even worse: he attacked right wing poster boy, Jeremy Clarkson! The writer James Delingpole cannot forgive him for this.
Now, he quotes Boyle making jokes about the Brexit Party, Trump and Israel. THESE ARE ALL THINGS (AS WITH JEREMY CLARKSON) WHICH THE SPECTATOR HOLDS SACRED.
In short, they are attacking him because they don't like his politics.
No other reason.
The article I quoted from the Spectator is saying what I've been saying about him in this thread.
In that article, The Spectator agrees with me that Frankie Boyle has sold out to the BBC and its oh-so-politically-correct values and agenda. The same opinion has been expressed by numerous other people on numerous other websites.
The two Spectator articles from which you quote make it clear that neither The Spectator nor I nor indeed anybody else (as far as I know) believes that his outrageous comedy of the past was entirely laudable but the Spectator and I and many others are nevertheless of one accord in saying his comedy on New World Order is a drastically watered-down version of what it used to be in years gone by.
He was once the loosest of loose comedy cannons but today he's obeying rules and regulations that, in days gone by, he would have spat upon.
Of course, that doesn't mean that what I say is right and what you say is wrong.
It's all a matter of perception - and perception is by its very nature subjective.
The Spectator has a circulation of 77K, I know takeaway menus with a wider readership. Being a big Frankie fan, I personally think the format of New World Order makes him feel uncomfortable. He's more relaxed talking to a live audience without interruption or direction. He has a stilted delivery and lacks the same dynamic intonation of his live shows. He's flat, he doesn't know what to do with his hands, and he perches awkwardly on the edge of the desk. Surely you can't direct "no holds barred" ?
But the good news is ,now more than ever you need to go to live shows to get truly biting satire. The market for live comedy has had strong growth in the last 30 years.
Quote: Firkin @ 24th October 2019, 1:25 PMyou need to go to live shows to get truly biting satire.
The original poster on this thread asked about regulations.
Tragically, regulations have strangled TV comedy almost to death.
Who are comedians allowed to attack on TV these days? Trump and Boris for sure - but not many others.
Accordingly, live stand-up comedy is the last bastion of free speech in Britain.