and I think the whole thing backfired on him massively. I wonder about what other jokes of dubious targets the parents of the down syndrome kid chortled away at thou.

What would offend me is his 'I don't give a fuck. this is my last tour' retort. Its someone with an inability to defend their act when it hits with reality. He continued to dig a hole when he could have moved on.

I guess there is some similarity with Jimmy carr's recent disabled soldiers gag but wheras Carr deblt with it quickly and explained himself in an intelligent way I suspect Boyle won't. Mainly because he can't apart from 'its funny cos its true'. Balls.

when you say "I wonder about what other jokes of dubious targets the parents of the down syndrome kid chortled away at though" That thought crossed my mind too.

I have been affected by cancer in my close family and I am a bit touchy about that but, if I decided to go to a Frankie Boyle show I guess I would have to expect the possibility of some "cancer jokes". I would just grin and bear it until the subject changed, if I felt I couldn't handle it I wouldn't go.

What I don't get is why, when he saw this woman obviously in distress, did he feel the need to humiliate her by drawing attention to her? I think that's the line I feel was crossed.

and quite a messed up person, but sometimes very funny indeed.

In this instance, I don't know if I'm getting old and bellicose here, but I find myself in total agreement with this commenter on the Daily Mail site directed at the aggrieved audience member (who had, of course, immediately sold their story to the Mail): "So you were happy to laugh at the jokes about the old, the Scottish, stupid people, the ugly, Richard Hammond, injured soldiers, AIDS, gay people, 9/11, Princess Diana, etc, but felt the need to muster up some offence when your pet subject came up, attempting to ruin other people's evening by sucking the funny out of the room. Personally, I abhor this trend for feeling offence, and there are no greater perpertrators than modern parents."

The question of whether Boyle's jokes are acceptable in themselves is one thing, but if you pay money to go to a show by a notoriously nasty comedian - a show entitled 'I Would Happily Punch Every One Of You In The Face' FFS - I'm afraid you hand in your right to sympathy (from me, anyway) at the door. It's like going to see Roy "Chubby" Brown for the racism then getting upset when he does a homophobic gag.

At a Frankie Boyle Edinburgh show a few years ago, upon hearing the same gags he'd recently done on telly, a member of the audience said 'Er, we've heard these before...'

'Sorry?'

'We've heard all this stuff before, on the telly.'

'Well why don't you fuck off, then?'

I'm no big fan of Jimmy Carr, but thought his soldiers gag was really good - making a positive from a deep negative. I always think offence is much more easily taken than given, anyway, and too many people are near-professional grade offence takers. I've no time for charmless comics, though.

she didn't make a fuss or heckle him. She was just talking to her husband\partner and Boyle asked her what she was discussing. When she calmly explained it was he who pushed the point and made a big thing of it.

Yes she wrote about it on her blog (which is where the Mail picked it up, doubt any cash changed hands)and went on Radio 5Live (which I bet she now regrets) but if anyone made the rest of the audiecne feel uncomfortable or sucked the funny out of the room it was Boyle.

I'm all for touchy subject matter in comedy but if its not handled intelligently then it just becomes hate for me.

with my views on this area before on here, but what I object to is the 'cake and eat it' aspect of a lot of 'edgy' comedy, e.g. "we're not laughing at people with Downs Syndrome - perish the thought - just at other people's perceptions of them".

In that respect, I suppose Boyle can't be criticised as he doesn't do the 'you all know I'm a great guy really' get-out that so many others do.

On the Jimmy Carr soldiers/paralympics joke - I think that is one of the least offensive examples of his I've heard, and is actually in keeping with the kind of gallows humour prevalent in the forces.

I read this earlier , the report and the blog, and bearing in mind what FB was like when I saw him, I had mixed feelings. It is a Frankie Boyle show, with a show called I Would Happily Punch each One Of You In The Face. You wonder what she expected.

On the other hand someone like Bill Hicks usually had some sort of point, or story arc to the provocation and offensiveness, and potentially your own prejudices would be undercut. Brendan Burns even planted his own scandalised audience member when I saw him.

However Boyle is just a gag man : there is no suppleness applied in stringing it together, instead just groups of gags and then, boom-boom-boom, more groups of gags. You never feel that there will be a story going on, so that, say, the jokes about the disabled will be followed and subverted by jokes about the able-bodied and their attitudes, but instead he will just move on to a new target with a new handful of gags.

Which is probably where it really went wrong for him because, by the law of Sod, on a big tour there was always the risk that he would he would catch the wrong person, and he should have been ready for it, and maybe planned to incorporate it, like Brendan Burns did. However it just sounded as if he was a rabbit in the lights and eventually just gave it "I Don't Care Anyway". Not classy. My first instinct is to think callousness, but later I felt more that in terms of putting that sort of comedy it betrayed a sort of idiotic carelessness. If you are going down that road you had better be ready. From reports so far, Frankie Boyle was not.

I must confess to only know knowing a few disabled people and carers of disabled people, but these could be fierce and funny about what they contend with, sometimes much more than outsiders would dare. Maybe Frankie Boyle was just crap at it.

I think we have been 'across this story' (or similar) several times now, but the case still stands - there are some instances where the 'I was just being ironic about what other people think' doesn't stand-up, if you excuse the pun.
The saying the unsayable maxim of edgy comedians is being pushed further towards mainstream prejudice than it ever has.
I saw Tommy Tiernan do a whole section on a Downs Syndrome man which I felt disgusted about but which he passed off as acceptable because he is a patron of a Downs Syndrome charity. I also see stand-up most weekends now and routinely hear racist material being passed off as being ironic and it's reprehensible.
While world weary/ pessemistic Carlin, Bruce, Hicks and Pryor were genuinely saying the unsayable to make a great political and/ or social points, Boyle is just an unconstructive misanthrope. I spent two hours at his show last year and it was genuinely dispiriting - he had not a joyful or constructive thing to say.
He also parrots the same cycnical shit every show, no sense of warmth or craft - he's just a cynical robot with nothing constructive to offer.
And that is not what great comedy is about.

I have little time for FB myself and I've never seen him live, but I can bet that he'd never make an overtly racist gag or indeed an obvious sexist one. If he did, the outcry would be huge. Yet he makes a gag about disabled people - not one poking at the prejudices of others nor, like Jimmy Carr's, a comment about something else entirely, but a gag that mocks the way people with Down's Syndrome speak - and there's discussion about whether he went too far.

How is this different to Jim Davidson? I honestly can't see the difference.

I saw Stewart Lee recently. Lee pushes the boundaries of taste, saying genuinely shocking things but always with an underlying meaning. Boyle just says nasty things to the amusement of idiots.

Having said that, you do wonder what these people were expecting.

Boyle is not a misanthrope. The act is too calculated for that. I'm sure after a gig he basks in the glow of a job well done and is quite happy in the bar.

Coincidentally, he's not a comedian either. His material is all reverse-engineered by starting from the topic that going to be the taboo and trying to hang a routine off it. That his act has become an exercise in outrageousness as opposed to having any content, form, message, makes him a hollow, unfunny hack.

Bill Hicks and Jerry Sadowitz were both great, white-knuckle gag men, but as well as aiming to make their audiences laugh, you could tell they were 'fighting the good fight' and trying to stimulate thought, refresh our feelings. Great comedy can wake us up. Dare I say it, it can maybe even serve a moral purpose. (eg Jimmy Carr's joke was satire. We ARE sending men and women abroad, many to have their bodies mutilated. Pointing that unpleasant fact out may just lead to more people pulling their heads out the sand and questioning WHY we're doing that.)

I'm not fan of the man - I hear spite rather than humour - but I'm not entirely convinced by this story at the root of this controversy. In the blog post that started this, the author says a couple of interesting things.

One of the reasons that we wanted to see Frankie Boyle was that we have seen him on shows like Mock the Week and have loved his humour, how dry he is, how nasty he is, how clever he is. We wanted to see him out of the confines of a TV editing suite, to hear him say things he could not get away with on mainstream TV.

And:

Frankie Boyle spent a good few minutes in the second half of his show making joke after joke about people with DS. And they werent even clever or funny jokes either (though the audience were still laughing - well everyone except me and the 5 people I had gone out with last night)

She seems to be saying that she knew full-well what she was getting herself into - and was looking forward to it - and is prepared to accept that the rest of the audience was enjoying the remarks she found so offensive. There seems to be an element of "you can be nasty about anyone, as long as it's not me" going on. And that's no way to "police" comedy, if it needs policing.

Frankie Boyle for the simple reason that his brand of comedy resides in a very small and narrow pigeon-hole. He offers nothing more than a one-dimensional persona but can often hit the mark and be funny. But it's Duracell bunny humour, linear and repetitive; the idea of spending 2 hours in his company at a show just does not appeal.

It's the old maxim of "Buyer, beware" as far as this couple goes. On stage you have an adrenalised comedian probably mentally tossing himself off at how funny he thinks he is and then they come into his visual range and there's only going to be one outcome. I sympathise with their difficult role as parents of a child with Downs Syndrome but I don't sympathise with their conscious decision to put themselves in harm's way.

The problem as I see it is that you have many people going to see Boyle for "a laugh" but when the humour hits close to home it's no longer funny. You can't blame Boyle for that: what you see is what you get.

With Bill Hicks you got comedy of dialogue, you always felt that it was a two-way street with him and the audience. With Boyle it's a monologue and his aggressive and offensive demeanour is there to close off any empathetic engagement with the audience. Hicks wanted to take the audience with him even when he was offending them. Boyle doesn't, he just wants you to be offended. That's not challenging humour designed to break down barriers and prejudices, that's just boorish and bullying behaviour offset by a joke. The joke is no longer the punch-line.

That's why they pay good money to hear him be unpleasant about anyone but them. So it's a bit like the Christians paying to be attacked by the Lion in ancient Rome. Some of them are going to get torn apart and partly eaten, to the relief and amusement of the others.

That said, I think that Boyle is simply a wilfully unpleasant boor who most people as individuals would cross the street to avoid.

As it stands, he simply cannot rationally be mentioned in the same breath as Dan Hicks, Gerry Sadowitz and, lest we forget, Lenny Bruce - all of whom had underlying points to make.

Seriously, what's the point of Frankie Boyle?

Maybe it makes me a bad person, maybe I'm the sneering goon who cheered on the bully, but, and I'm sorry for this, I really like Frankie Boyle. Bill Hicks is my comedic god and I think God himself must have Irish relatives to have created both Dylan Moran and Dara O Brian and while all the three above can be safely lauded for not engaging in the sort of thing Frankie Boyle does, I still think he's extremely funny. Sorry.

I'll give you that.

...or does he cut it simply because it's offensive, in which case, if he applies that to all his material, he's left with a very short show.

Boyle was born on the South Side of Glasgow in '72 ... he went to the local RC secondary school, then off to Aston Uni (didn't work out) then eventually got a degree in English from Sussex, then back to Scotland to do teacher training in Edinburgh ...

key formative adolescent period, say from when he was 12-18, would have been 1984-90 (Thatcher getting crazier and crazier, Rangers signing Catholics and Englishmen, Glasgow making a stab at reinvention - Glasgow's Miles Better - but in a fairly patchy manner, The Smiths releasing albums)

given his documented issues with alcohol i don't think it's libellous to say that he enjoyed a refreshment in his teacher training period ... but he packed in teacher training to go on the comedy circuit where he gigged around for a decade (1995-2005) before getting a break with Mock the Week when he was around 33 years old ... and he has now been a TV/stand-up fixture for all of five years ...

he came of age on the comedy circuit when it was 'mature' ... older stand-ups who did 'alternative comedy' back in the 1980s were breaking new ground to an extent, but by the time Boyle appeared, the Edinburgh Fringe and the stand-up circuit has been 'professionalised' and there were arguably more people, hence it was harder to stand out ... you had to shout harder? even now, i watch people like Sean Locke or Michael MacIntyre and think "hmm, the connections are a bit plodding, there is craft but a lack of wit" ... where Izzard or Bailey can take you on some enormous narrative journey, Boyle just stabs you when it's not expected ... then looks pleased with himself and laughs at his own best jokes (a bit like Billy Connolly) ...

no conclusion yet, just meandering...

.. not funny in a good way
Frankie Boyle not funny in a bad way

Apologies if I have posted similar here before here's my thesis anyhow.
There are too many comics out there looking for a sure fire, short form, provocative set of sound bites which will get them noticed by TV producers and which play well on the telly.
As a result they have to play up to this format when they get out to the 'proper' theatre circuit and it doesn't half curtail what many of them would like to do.
Jimmy Carr or Frankie Boyle's ad nauseum feedline/ punch, shock fests are very successful but they do occasionally get caught out trying to get away with the kind of stuff which often doesn't make the edit on MtW or 9/10 Cats.
The non-comedy club people only raised on panel games are thought to demand a version of the act comedians do on TV and so everyone is left hamstrung and shuffling nervously when it goes wrong.
In the relatively recent olden days, when a stand-up made it big enough to do a two part theatre show, they had a set of themes or even a story to tell. Maybe it was the Edinburgh concept eking its way into the mainstream, but at least it was more than the reductive shtick of many of the top acts now.
I've seen all of the panel show, comedy establishment darlings and only really Andy Parsons, Reg D Hunter, Chris Addison and Dara O'Briain really knock your socks off. And John Bishop, but I know him and I can see why he might not be everyone's cup of tea.
The real tragedy of the panel games is that many people don't get out and see great acts because they don't like how they are made to appear on TV.
My cousin, a great lad, was venting spleen about Andy Parsons saying he would never go and see him as he is 'pure crap' on MtW. Andy Parsons is one of the best, most thought provoking comics working today and can still be seen in London's Comedy Store 'Cutting Edge' night most Tuesdays.

She has a baby girl with Downs Syndrome. She also has a subscription to Word Magazine, and she's also a Frankie Boyle fan. Pass the tin opener, open the can and by jingo, worms all over the shop! What's that buzzing sound?, dirty great hornets nest that's what.

She was rather sanguine about the whole thing really. She readily admits to laughing at some Boyle lines about Downs when she saw him live (prior to baby being born...he's been doing this material for a while it seems). She agrees she'd probably react much the same way as the blog woman to hearing that routine now, but then she still finds him funny when he's laying waste to all and sundry....so can you pick and choose what you're going to be offended by?

At the end of the day she feels if nothing else it might get people talking about Downs, brings the cause into the spotlight and get people to think about their own preconceptions about Downs Syndrome.

For me, I was more offended by that berk on Sky News calling people with Downs 'defenceless victims'.

without wanting to come accross all Daily Mailish, there's a world of difference between making offensive jokes in private and making a living out of it. Unfortunately both Boyle and Carr haven't grwon up enough to understand that. If you don't like either of them, and I don't, pass them by....for the same reason I avoid the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sky News, Heart FM etc etc.

or not but it is possibly an over-reaction. There are plenty of things that offend me but not any comedians I have ever heard. Some of them can be extremely unfunny but offensive? Nah.
Graham Norton I find offensive but nothing at all to do with his humour. I don't know Frankie Boyle and I don't know the joke he made that has so deeply offended someone but largely go with the notion that the person in question shouldn't have been at the gig of a comedian with a reputation for anarchic comedy.
There are several things that people get upset about that I see no logic to and I am pretty sure that I get upset about things that others find inoffensive.Each to his own seems like a pretty good tenet by which to lead ones life. I am quite sure there is a market for his brand of comedy or else why the sell-out tours? Some people just like to cause a stink for the sake of it and it's interesting that the Mail has got so embroiled in the argument. It's right up their street that's for sure.

I haven't got a problem with his subject matter choice however lazy and easy the jokes may have been. Those subjects can be adressed by smarter minds (ie Stewart Lee. Richard Herring, Bill Hicks, Pryor, Carlin n Sadowitz).

Its Boyle's treatment of the audience member and his inability to deal with his work coming smack up against reality that reveals him to be shallow, vacuous and a cheap shock merchant.

I remember Bernard Manning often defending his racist material by saying that he wouldn't do 'sick humour about mental kiddies n that'.
So when people call this a return to old school outdate comedy it isn't as they wouldn't touch that material with a bargepole.

Of course a Boyle audience should know what to expect from his act when they buy a ticket but to be bullied by that comic when he finds himself out of his depth isn't what they should get.

bargepole is relieved to hear it!

I don't know why on earth people feel the need to preface any condemnation of Boyle with - "well I respect Cutting Edge comedy, but … " - What on earth is 'cutting edge' about a school boy putting on a cod disabled voice? And what is 'cutting edge' about Russell Brand phoning a 80 year old man and saying "I shagged your granddaughter" and then putting that on a radio show? And call me old fashioned, but I would assume that the main objective of comedy is to be funny. Not happening here, unless your opinions are actually deeply dodgy in some way.

Boyle is, and always has been, a school bully of a comedian. Appealing to people less interested in observational comedy and more in humiliation. Many current stand ups, in their analysis of their own craft make the mistake of concluding "its all about cruelty". Showing a profound lack of faith in human nature (most probably psychologically a reflection of their opinion of themselves). There are many stand ups that make this mistake. Rufus Hound and Jimmy Carr are other examples. In fact many live shows are often uncomfortable events, with many comedians, to get the audience on their side, carving into anyone daft enough to be sitting in the first two rows. Usually at the beginning of the set to establish a "them and us" psychological relationship, with the comedian hopefully on the right side of it.

If so, I'm waiting for her to post a spirited defence of his character.

For the record, I have a child with Downs syndrome but it's not the main focus of our lives and I'm not interested in being an evangelical tw*t about it. Personally I like Frankie Boyle, and if I went to see this tour I would just have to swallow the stuff about DS and enjoy the rest of it. Like many posters have said, I can't laugh at everything else but suddenly get offended about the small part that affects my own life.

What really annoyed me was the Daily Mail's patronising coverage, using language that, for me, is as outdated as "mong" or "retard". The DM has only jumped on this because they love to have a go at anyone seen as left-wing/alternative/anti-establishment. In reality, the DM and its readers are the sort of people who would complain about their taxes going on some of the wonderful services my daughter gets for free on the NHS - "Nurses paid to play with handicapped - and they're immigrants!" - or something.

In the end everyone wins though. FB's reputation as "edgy" is assured and his tour will sell out, awareness of DS is raised, and even the blog woman, outraged as she was, can use the experience to feel like she's done something positive and make her daughter proud. It's all good really.

*sorry for the long post. I'm new so be nice*

The Devil's Shilling in my book.

If Manning, Davidson or Boardman cracked an identical gag.

Boyle doesn't tickle my particular sense of humour (he's a bully, obnoxious, arrogant, smug and above all NOT FUNNY) - but for people who have paid money knowing his style to moan after the event is a bit rich.

Does Word magazine want an exclusive interview about my outrage?

I don't know why anyone's remotely surprised. It doesn't excuse it because personally I think they've gone far enough, but if you don't want to be outraged, don't go and see outrageous comedy.

Comedians like Boyle play on the fact that some people hate to admit they're shocked by anything as they're afraid to appear uncool.

But by forgetting why we needed alternative comedy in the 80s, he ends up just as nasty and humourless as Bernard Manning.

I'm tired of Boyle, Jimmy Carr, Sara Sugarman and others who set up a series of routines designed to test the audeience's shock levels without being funny.

I'm also tired of the identikit chatshow charlies like Manford and McIntyre with their cosy, 'look what happened to me' routines.

For me, the best stand-up is Daniel Kitson, a man with real depth and soul, who is original and hilarious.

Right up the Daily Mails a street!!!

jokes some of which I find very amusing indeed. Others less so or not at all. Listening to jokes is no different to listening to music in as much as you select what you want to listen to/immerse yourself in. I am more likely to find listening to Thrash metal more offensive than listening to off colour jokes but I accept that is just me. I share the jokes with friends I know will find them funny (yes,I have sick friends!!) and don't share them with people who are likely to take offence and I have plenty of friends who would take offence.

I've found this strand fascinating (apart from the diversion into political parties). I have laughed heartily at Frankie Boyle on MtW for a number of years now. However over time I've come to realise that he's something of a one trick pony. Without re-hashing the arguments already made here the key issue to me seems that Frankie can dish out the offence but his act is so one-dimensional that he can't back it up with reasoned argument. Surely there is more to comedy that being shocking? He is just shallow and I'm sure that he can't believe his luck that he's got away with it for so long. The silver lining for me is that he and his act are so limited that he's likely not to be around for too much longer, at least not at the level of popularity that he's enjoying now.

What I find more offensive (which for me isn't the same as saying the offender doesn't have the right to offend me) is the Daily Mail's description of people with DS. Words like 'victim' and 'suffering' are not appropriate in this context.

Then go have a look here: http://www.sickipedia.org/faq.php

All care of the b3ta lads. Who include Fraser in their numbers from time to time.

So now that that punchline's been well and truly ruined, I presume the show'll be just a tad shorter.

I'd have laughed, by the way. Shameful, possibly, but I have a long history of paying to see people make me chuckle. You pays yer money...