Frankie Boyle

The curious title is US Beat novelist Jack Kerouac's term for life-affirming weirdos. It's apt for a set that gently mocks - among others - doomsayers, MPs and Howard's mum. Since making his name as Mock the Week's cheeky chappie, the 30-yearold Bristolian is blossoming into a comic heavyweight. Here we see him at Brighton Dome on his 2008 tour, delighting the crowd with exuberant tales, impish mimes and the obligatory topical gags. Nor does Howard shy away from his excruciatingly uncool childhood. He'll never be razor-sharp, but could teach erstwhile Mock the Week panellist Frankie Boyle a thing or two about enjoying life's vagaries.

Given that he only had enough decent material for one episode, Frankie Boyle really could have done with making his Tramadol Nights series into a one-off special.

Perhaps a half-hour festive programme with the tagline: 'something to offend all the family this Christmas!' would have been a runaway success.

Unfortunately, the third week in the series heralded the second episode in a row that was more gratuitously offensive than it was amusing.

Boyle re-hashed a few gags used only last week involving the supposed gravitational pull of overweight people and there wasn't one sketch that wasn't morally dubious at best. "I'm genuinely surprised I'm getting away with this," he said at one point.

Frankie, my friend, you probably aren't. Give it a few days and Ofcom will be beating down your door once again.

On the plus side, Boyle's stand-up was generally pretty sharp and quite funny and while some viewers might have winced at his one-liners, the audience members seemed perfectly happy to sit back and take in the personal insults.

But instead of starting his writing with the question: 'What will be funny?' he seems to have begun with, 'What's most likely to offend as many people as possible?'

Almost without exception, the sketches were wholly unfunny and the in-house audience seemed to be struggling to raise even the smallest of titters.

However, those who accuse Boyle of being talentless should consider this: during the course of one half-hour television show tonight, Frankie managed to offend grandparents, fat people, Colombians, cancer victims, AIDS victims and victims of sexual abuse... Now that is a unique talent.

While my howls of pain at the continuing run of Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights - aka a televised version of the Nirvana b-side I Hate Myself And I Want To Die - were unnoticed, The Morgana Show gets stronger and stronger.

The show by a relative newcomer is full of great characters and solid sketch comedy. Comparisons with Kenny Everett's show with its grotesque gallery of characters and childish desire to shock have been made and they're on the money.

I loved Kenny Everett's schtick as a kid and Morgana carries on that tradition. Her takedowns of Cheryl Cole, Danni Minogue and Fearne Cotton are particularly brilliant. Skip Frankie Boyle's boorish balderdash and watch the Morgana Show instead.

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Too outrageous for Mock The Week, Frankie Boyle has got his own show now. It's on Channel 4 so he's free from the BBC's post-Sachsgate compliance rules and can be even more offensive and even funnier, yes? Presumably that's the concept of Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights. I wasn't offended by any of the jokes in the opener; I just didn't find them very funny. Rules can be daft but they can force a comedian to work harder and be more clever. No need here.

"How ya doin', ya big f****n' Loyalist terrorist suspect?" These were Boyle's first words, aimed at a formidable, shaven-headed man in the audience. He also called the delighted victim a "big gun-running bisexual". Then Catholics got it, then all religious groups. Then gay people (they got it a lot), then John Leslie, George Michael, Ryanair, the Japanese and the mentally ill before finally Boyle cracked a joke I can repeat in a family newspaper, where he lamented the somewhat one-dimensional nature of The Jeremy Kyle Show: "He rounds up his audiences by firing tranquiliser darts into Farmfoods. There's never an edition called I Wanted To Go To Tuscany, You Swine!"

The stage routine was interspersed with filmed sketches which showed up his limitations as a comic actor. I say stage, but the set was a rooftop in the style of a classic movie. As Frankie got more and more enraged, I thought he was going to do a Jimmy Cagney and, in a nod to White Heat, blow himself up. Maybe next time.

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