Rebecca Adlington

Rebecca Adlington took Frankie Boyle comments to heart

London 2012 star Rebecca Adlington has opened up to Digital Spy about Frankie Boyle's comments on her appearance, arguing that female celebrities "are criticised more than men".

Frankie Boyle trial: BBC editor on Adlington joke

Suzanne Gilfillan has told the high court that the joke Frankie Boyle made about Rebecca Adlington on Mock the Week was included after a discussion with producers.

Rebecca Adlington talks about Frankie Boyle joke

23-year-old Rebecca Adlington has had to cope with some cruel comments about her appearance that have come with being in the public eye. Most famously, comedian Frankie Boyle unfairly mocked the swimmer's looks on TV and Twitter.

Frankie Boyle: Still a c***

Frankie Boyle has been condemned for calling Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington 'Dolphin Face.' Risque comedy or just a bully?

Frankie Boyle goes on Twitter to mock Rebecca Adlington

Frankie Boyle has renewed his long-running feud with Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington. He posted on Twitter: 'I worry that Rebecca Adlington will have an unfair advantage in the swimming by possessing a dolphin's face."

David Walliams meets up with Rebecca Adlington

Charity swimming champ David Walliams and double Olympic gold medallist Rebecca Adlington OBE posed for a pic at the London 2012 pool in Stratford.

Rebecca Adlington: I'm over Frankie Boyle spoon jibe

Rebecca Adlington has admitted she was "hypocritical" to complain about a BBC comedian who mocked her appearance.

In [Frankie Boyle's] new series Tramadol Nights, the notoriously abrasive comedian, who rose to fame on BBC Two's Mock The Week, demonstrated that he can make mincemeat of anyone, with a mere one-liner.

"You look like a child's drawing of a dead baby," he told one member of the (presumably masochistic) front row, but that's practically a compliment from Boyle, who has found himself in hot water before for making fun of people with Down's syndrome, and comparing Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington to "somebody looking at themselves in the back of a spoon".

Boyle's modus operandi - a mixture of stand-up and pre-recorded sketches - is to say the unsayable. It works best when he is having a pop at something monolithic enough to take, or indeed deserve it, so the best of the sketches were those that satirised the bland inanity of TV culture. In a dark send-up of the hidden-camera reality show format, a man has to convince his friend that he has accidentally killed someone.

I'm less comfortable with the jokes about mental illness - in this episode more or less restricted to crude impressions conflating religion and autism. Here it's not at all clear who or what Boyle is targeting - is it political correctness, or our own prejudices? Whatever his intention, the net result feels too much like an unenlightening mocking of difference.

Boyle's one-liners are, in fact, his strong suit, the vitriol often counterbalanced by sheer verbal flair. But on the whole there's something very brittle about the laughter. The world seems a meaner place after listening to Boyle.

'Failure of editorial control' blamed for Boyle joke

The BBC Trust has detailed the full extent of the editorial failure that resulted in a Frankie Boyle joke about swimmer Rebecca Adlington airing on BBC2's Mock The Week, which it later ruled should never have been broadcast.

Frankie Boyle, Rebecca Adlington & the limits of taste

If comedians sometimes cause offence, well, isn't that their job?