Frankie Boyle focuses on the monarchy for Channel 4 special
- Frankie Boyle is making a show about the end of the Royal Family for Channel 4
- Titled Frankie Boyle: Monarchy, the stand-up-documentary special is the latest chapter in his career mocking The Windsors
- He described researching the monarchy as "a bit like rewatching The Sopranos: eventually you start to get exhausted by the lack of any sympathetic characters"
Frankie Boyle is seeking to abolish the Royal Family with his first Channel 4 show in a decade, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
The Scottish comic is making a 75-minute stand-up and documentary special with the title Frankie Boyle: Monarchy.
"Been researching a thing on the history of the British monarchy" he tweeted. "It's a bit like rewatching The Sopranos: eventually you start to get exhausted by the lack of any sympathetic characters."
Boyle revealed on stage recently that he was approached to take part in the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations, telling a crowd at Latitude Festival in July that "I have never been so overwhelmed with the feeling that my work has been misunderstood".
He also shared a photo from Hever Castle in Kent with his Instagram followers, since deleted, with the caption: "Where Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn used to get it on."
Channel 4 describes the programme as follows: "Comedian Frankie Boyle turns his wry eye to the state of the British monarchy and its future, by looking back at its 1,000 year history. As he discovers the qualities of our most infamous child-murdering, wife-beheading, empire-building, nation-destroying monarchs and how they've shaped our royals - and our country - today, he wonders will the monarchy soon be put out of its misery as it slips gently away under the soft pillow of our collective apathy? Do the Royal Family have any place in the modern world?"
The Royal Family have long been a target of Boyle's routines, with a 2008 gag on Mock The Week about the Queen's "pussy" "being haunted" described as "disgracefully foul" by David Davis MP, who urged viewers to pay for their BBC licence fees at the last minute as a form of protest.
The joke earned further notoriety when Emily Maitlis partially quoted it to then BBC director-general Mark Thompson on an edition of Newsnight, in the wake of the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross prank call row that came to be known as Sachsgate. Boyle was eventually cleared of any misconduct by the BBC Trust, although they called the comment "sexist and ageist".
The corporation also cut a line from a Comic Relief gig broadcast on BBC Three in 2013 that Boyle delivered about the Queen being hospitalised, in which he said: "I wish she'd died - because they wouldn't have been able to tell anyone. They would have had to hollow out her body into a suit and fill it with helium."
Frankie Boyle: Monarchy reunites the comic with the Glasgow-based production company Two Rivers Media, with whom he made the stand-up travelogue series Frankie Boyle's Tour Of Scotland (pictured) and stand-up special Frankie Boyle Live: Excited For You To See And Hate This, both for BBC Two in 2020.
Ross Wilson is the producer and director on the new special, with Alan Clements as executive producer. The commissioning editor is Anna Miralis.
Notwithstanding a talking head spot on Channel 4's 2014 factual show Parenting For Idiots, and more recently stand-up performances on Amazon Prime's Backstage With Katherine Ryan and Dave's Comedians Giving Lectures, Boyle's television shows have almost exclusively been for the BBC over the last decade, prompting speculation that the corporation may be wary of joining him in mocking the 96-year-old Queen at a time when she is celebrating 70 years on the throne and experiencing ill-health.
Boyle's last Channel 4 vehicle was 2012's The Boyle Variety Performance, a send-up of The Royal Variety Performance in which he performed stand-up alongside Sarah Millican, Katherine Ryan, Rob Delaney, Nick Helm and Tom Stade.
Meantime, his first novel, was nominated for Bloody Scotland's Debut Prize for crime-writing last month. Published on July 21st, it is described as "a picaresque detective story set against the backdrop of post-referendum Scotland, the novel tells of a Valium addict whose best friend is found murdered in a park - and he recruits a brilliant but mercurial GP, a bright young trade unionist, a failing screenwriter, a semi-celebrity crime novelist and his crisis fuelled neighbour to help."
Boyle is currently performing at the Edinburgh Fringe, with his show Lap of Shame at the Assembly Rooms.
Frankie Boyle: Monarchy is one of a number of commissions announced by Channel 4 today for a 40th anniversary programming strand called Truth Or Dare. Other commissions includethe return of Friday Night Live, Prince Andrew: The Musical and a programme about free expression hosted by Jimmy Carr.
Channel 4's Ian Katz says: "This season shows that Channel 4 is still as mischievous, disruptive and distinctive as when it was born 40 years ago. Instead of a nostalgia-thon of highlights from the last four decades, we are celebrating with a collection of irreverent, thought-provoking and hugely entertaining shows that no other broadcaster would air. If we must age, we plan to do it disgracefully."