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‘Feeling sick?’
‘Yes, I just puked.’
The sort of conversation dogs would have if they could talk.
‘Aren’t you Frankie Boyle?’
I put my earphones on and stupidly plug them into the side of my shut laptop. He’s reading a book called Confidence: There are No Coincidences. Confidence is only worth having if you’re not a fucking idiot. Try speaking German using just confidence. Start skiing with confidence and break your fucking neck, you cunt. I wonder why there are so many idiots now and whether in the past the big wars used to thin them out. I wonder if the free coffees are winding me up, or the rapist, or the work.
I look at the ‘War’ chapter of the book. That end bit is maybe everything that’s wrong with the world. Wanting to help but feeling it’s all to do with ‘you’, the ego that thinks it can make a difference is the same ego that wants a new car, praise, pussy, immortality. Still, maybe I’m just being honest, and what I honestly am is an idiot.
In London, I have to go straight across town and into a script meeting. It’s a voiceover thing I’m doing for a clip show, which is a pretty shit thing to be doing, but I get to write the jokes, so that’s something.
I sign the visitors’ book and walk wordlessly past the security guard. In the event of some terrorist atrocity they will have the guy’s signature. There are whole floors of talented people beavering away making shit. An infinite number of Shakespeares producing the work of a monkey.
I’m met by Gary, a tall, spindly production runner who looks like a freakish wind chime or insect king. He leads me to the meeting room, where there’s a pyramid of Diet Coke, and some fresh notepads and biros. During the awkward wait for the producer, Gary tells me at length about his new baby while I reflect that in the wild his mate would have eaten him now.
I sit down and start reading the stack of tabloids that’s in any writing room, whether the show is topical or not. Alex Ferguson is playing mind games. If only he would – telling the opposition that there is a sniper in the stadium, or staging a coach crash then sending out players everybody thought were dead in a macabre piece of gamesmanship.
The producer, Gerry, drifts in. He has the jovial air of a corrupt small-town cop. I’ve not seen him for years and, in the meantime, his face looks like it’s had kids. I go through the intros for the show
Welcome to The Frankie Boyle Clip Show. There’s nothing like being on television. And let me tell you, reading out this shit, to you pricks, for this money, is nothing like being on television.
Hello and welcome to the show that made the Crossbow Cannibal refuse to pay his licence fee. Feels good, doesn’t it, knowing that cock is currently watching video tapes of Minder wishing I had tits and he had a lifespan of 300 years.
‘I prefer the first one!’ says Gerry, and I agree, having included the second one so I had something to give up. I launch into the rest at a pace calculated to delay discussion.
The show that masturbates to the Oscars’ Obituary Montage.
The show that’s laughing with you, not at you. Ahahahahaa! Oh no, wait a minute, it’s at you.
The show of clips you could find for yourself on YouTube. If porn didn’t exist.
The show that three of your personalities only agree to watch because they’re scared of your dominant personality, a murderous lesbian midget.
30 minutes that will leave you sweating like Peter Andre on Countdown.
The show that eats your pussy with neither skill nor enthusiasm.
The show that knows you felt a hand running up your leg on a crowded bus. You grabbed the hand and held it up, saying, ‘Whose hand is this?’ Only to find out that it was your own.
Hey! Mongo! It’s evening. The bright ball of wonder has yet again left the sky, so take your hoof from out your pants and once more suckle at my TV teats.
Hey, friendless! Yes, you! Wipe the dribble from your fleece and once more feast on my distractions. Together we can get you half an hour closer to the dawn of another worthless day.
‘Ehhh …,’ starts Gerry.
‘We only need six or something,’ I interrupt. ‘It’s just intros, we can come back to it …’
We nod, both agreeing to different things.
The first clip we’re doing is of some hugely misguided children’s show from the 80s, teaching yoga to little kids. It’s set on a farm and hosted by a real sandpit haunter calling himself Yogie Okie Dokie. We see him bending the kids into various positions.
It’s amazing how flexible kids are when they’re drunk. Yogi Okie Dokie is only his first name. His surname is Pokey Chokey.
‘Now the lawyers are worried about that … we can’t actually imply that he’s a paedophile …’ Gerry havers.
‘The lawyers?’ I ask. ‘It’s a joke. I don’t think anyone would really think his surname was Pokey Chokey. Or that his first names are Yogie Okie Dokie …’
‘You can’t imply that he’s a paedophile.’
‘Fuck, look at the show. I mean … fuck!’
There’s a clip of that wee toddler that smokes in fucking Papua New Guinea or somewhere.
Of course, he doesn’t smoke any more. He’s dead now. His little brother uses his skull as an ashtray.
‘We can’t say that,’ murmurs Gerry.
‘Why not?’ I ask and open another Diet Coke because maybe this would be easier if my brain were dead.
‘He’s not dead.’ Gerry is getting exasperated. ‘So the lawyers say that we can’t say that he is.’
‘It’s a joke. They’re saying we can’t say anything that isn’t the literal truth? He’s going to sue? He’s out in the fucking jungle. He’s hardly … getting driven on a moped to a clearing where they all sit round and watch fucking clip shows.’
We keep hitting bits the lawyers have vetoed. They have suggested replacements, the lawyers have written jokes. I have met lawyers and these are the sort of jokes you would expect them to write. It’s not immediately obvious that they are jokes.
The final clip is a terrible video about how to use the techniques of a magician to pull women. We type the last joke up in a way that it can be altered if there’s a legal problem.
These are the techniques that Debbie McGee [an older magician’s assistant] warns [a] young magician’s assistant about, before heading home to another night of being sawn in half so Paul Daniels [a magician] can watch her [them] eat her [their] own arsehole.
I suggest that we start the show with me in an armchair, cradling a huge horn. I will explain that not all of the jokes are literally true and that when I say something not meant to be taken literally I will blow a note on my mighty horn. Perhaps we should change the title of the show to The Horn of Balathor.
‘Where is Balathor?’ says Gerry
‘I thought of it as more of a what – Balathor the Green. Balathor the Mighty.’
Another producer comes in and this idea sort of catches fire. Yes, we could call it The Horn of Balathor. It’s only a fucking clip show. Perhaps I could appear at the bottom of the screen when I blow the horn, like the guy on sign-language programmes. Maybe there could be different sizes of horn, depending on how offensive the joke is. There is a clip from the 70s that suggests black people can’t swim. I suggest we do the line:
Of course it’s a ridiculous racial stereotype to say black people can’t swim. How do you think AIDS got to Europe?
And then I come on with one of those huge Alpine horns that rest on the ground and give a blast so loud it would actually blow the speakers on people’s TVs. I’m thinking that will keep me in the papers long enough that my arse will remain un-raped. I maintain to the guys that it could work as a show. Fuck it, it could work as a show, or has my judgement just gone? Yes, my judgement has gone but perhaps I could be right by accident.
I look them both in the eye and beam, ‘Comedy is tragedy plus laughter!’
But I know the fucking thing is not going to happen.
The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land,
In England there shall be dear bread – in Ireland, sword and brand;
And poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand,
So, rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand,
Of the fine old English Tory days; Hail to the coming time!
Charles Dickens, The Fine Old English Gentleman
Chapter 2 (#ulink_dc60aebe-c6ca-5dbf-b645-656861122277)
Having travelled a wee bit, I’m convinced that Britain’s sense of humour – the sheer scope and breadth and complexity of our piss-taking – is unique. That’s what I hate about these various joke scandals. They have at their heart the idea that the public won’t be able to decode what was meant by the joke; that even if you understand, other people might not, when everyone here has a PhD in wind-ups.
People are struggling with the whole idea of comedy at the moment. I think comedy is probably a descendant of shamanism. The comic is some guy or gal covered in shit who’d live out in the desert and come roaring into the settlement every so often to tell everybody what was up with how they perceived life. Of course, this made them a pariah.
Comedy is a fictional space. Some of the things the shaman says are true, even heartfelt. Sometimes she says things she doesn’t mean; sometimes she says the opposite of what she means. And, admittedly, she isn’t always good, but nobody is. Sometimes you end up watching Peter Kay, but sometimes it’s Bill Hicks and sometimes it’s Loki.
There are a few problems. One, you get the soul-grinding mill of television, which sees that it can use a few laughs to keep people dumb and distracted. It likes to employ shamans with their eyes poked out. Two, you get some well-meaning types who would like the status of the shaman without the whole pariah bit. They could maybe skip the drugs and keep the status – or even just the cash? Sorry, those are all false paths. The shaman knows that the route to enlightenment is to lose the ego and, what with one thing and another, she’s going to get too much attention to get very far with that. So the joke is on her. The price the trickster pays for her existence is to be, ultimately, the butt of her own joke. Glad I managed to explain comedy to y’all before I died [tips hat].* (#ulink_237e4744-79ab-5208-9a59-dc001b14c645)
* (#ulink_2d06e020-aa4a-54e5-9d2b-d965a98bb6d6) I don’t believe any of this. The idea of the comedian as shaman is simply a different way for a practitioner to gather status and feed the ego. In man’s original nomadic tribal state, the role of social critic would have been vital in deciding when to move on. Comedians are just the descendants of the guys and gals whose job it was to say, ‘It’s fucking shit here,’ and moan until everybody upped sticks and headed west, into an ambush prepared by a rival tribe, or a barren wasteland.**
** (#ulink_2d06e020-aa4a-54e5-9d2b-d965a98bb6d6) This is all bollocks. Comics are sort of the opposite of shamans really. Shamans, poets, priests are all people whose role is to power-up symbols. In our scientific reality tunnel a hallucination might be a manifestation of the unconscious mind. In a shamanic one it might be a fairie, in a religious one, an angel. The comedian is actually there to de-power the symbolic world. With Lenny Bruce, cancer goes from being this big demonic taboo to being, well, just cancer. The best comics are really trying to wake you up from the symbolic world; they’re desentimentalisers, pointing out that those First World War soldiers who had a truce to play football at Christmas probably killed each other the next day, and not even remorsefully but muttering, ‘That was never offside, you cunt.’***
*** (#ulink_2d06e020-aa4a-54e5-9d2b-d965a98bb6d6) Of course, none of this is really what you would call accurate, but between these viewpoints there is something close to the truth. I think that by constantly undermining and subverting himself a comedian might be able to communicate quite profoundly, by a kind of triangulation. You can’t really ever defend a joke because at the point it’s getting dissected it’s not a joke. Is a dead butterfly in a case still a butterfly? Even a mermaid wouldn’t look too beautiful during an autopsy. This is as close as someone like me can ever get to explaining himself. Do you get it? [smiles hopefully with a brittle smile].****
**** (#ulink_2d06e020-aa4a-54e5-9d2b-d965a98bb6d6) Look, it’s not supposed to be analysed. You can’t create a space that asks what would happen if we abandoned all the rules and then start saying things are outside of the rules. There aren’t any fucking rules. OK, here’s something that should stop you dissecting comedy, something I could prove scientifically if I could be arsed. Do you know the main factor in whether you find something funny or not? The kind of day you’ve just had.
So, the Tories are back. If you don’t remember them, they were big in the 1980s – like dungarees and white people getting AIDS. The British people spoke, and they conclusively shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Whatever. I’m not bothered. Him. You. Or the other one. Britain’s Got Talent’s coming on, you sort it out. See you in five years.’ So, we’ve got a new prime minister and, unlike Gordon Brown, this one was actually nearly elected. Obviously, Cameron got straight down to work while Samantha got all of his forehead polish into Number 10. Can Cameron really manage to create social cohesion? I mean, his head has only just managed to create some semblance of a face. Cameron is the youngest prime minister for nearly 200 years, which is odd, because he’s also been alive for far too long.
People who say we shouldn’t have royalty and an elected representative seem to be missing the fact that we have royalty as our elected representative – both David and Samantha Cameron have royal ancestors. In fact, now William is married to Kate Middleton, we actually have an elected first family that have more royal blood than our future king and queen. Do you get the feeling that Sam Cameron is one of the few PM’s wives to consider Number 10 a step down on the property ladder? It comes to something when our prime minister regards his trip to Buckingham Palace as part of his gritty contact with working-class people. He’s descended from King William IV and his mistress. Why did we vote for him? Even King William knew he didn’t want to take him on permanently.
It was claimed that Cameron has a fortune estimated at £30 million. Do you really believe he really gives a flying fuck as to when your bins get emptied or where your rat-faced children go to school? Does he even know how to use public transport? I can see him now, queuing at his nearest helipad, clutching an Oyster card.
For a while, Cameron was on the board of the company that owns Tiger Tiger. This is his idea of how Britain should enjoy itself? Rows of spandex-clad women trying to work out which former reality TV star they are least terrified of accepting a drink from?
Not long after the election, David Cameron and Barack Obama had a historic meeting in Washington and Obama rolled out the red carpet for Cameron. A lovely gesture, but Cameron really should not have tipped him a dollar for doing so. It was a low-key welcome. I feel a bit sorry for the PM. It can’t be good for your self-esteem, seeing a cabbie at JFK airport with a bit of cardboard with ‘Mr Macaroon’ written on it in marker pen. When Cameron first saw a black man standing in a white mansion he thought they were remaking The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
The PM met with the president face to face, after breaking free from the White House tour group when they passed the door to the Oval Office. Apparently, Obama and David Cameron ‘swapped anecdotes’. That must have been fascinating for Obama. After telling David all about his rise to become the first black president of the most powerful nation on earth, he then had to listen to Dave tell a rather amusing story about going to Waitrose and buying chorizo instead of salami.
Reports also said the men were on ‘Christian-name terms’. Dave calls him Obama and Obama calls him Nick. When David’s in Obama’s company he always has a very serious, concerned, concentrated face – like he’s desperately trying not to fart, but knowing that only minutes ago he ate four catering-size tins of pickled cabbage. He flew to meet Obama on a standard BA flight, to save money. If he really wanted to save money, he should have flown Ryanair. During a recession, it would be inspiring to see the PM pissing into an empty Fanta can, just to save a quid.
Ah, the Big Society. Does Cameron really believe Britain would be a better place if it were run by the public? Have you seen the public? It’s hard enough to get through the laboured and tedious process of getting a pair of trousers dry-cleaned by someone who has been in the dry-cleaning business for 20 years. How’s it going to work when your lollypop man is in charge of a prison?
George Osborne said, ‘Everyone in our society has had to make a contribution.’ And Osborne’s contribution is to destroy our society. Everyone’s going to muck in. First, you can make up for the lack of police by doing a citizen’s arrest, and then – due to the total lack of nurses – attempt to stitch your face back together.
If we really are genuinely all in it together they should disband all political parties and run the country in a true democratic manner. In the past the Greeks used to run their parliament in a similar style to jury duty. You were called up to serve and you did your time. There were no career politicians. It was part of your civic duty. And at least that way everyone in Britain would get one year to do their house up, employ their relatives, make some extra cash on expenses and find out what it’s like to live like a fucking king.
Sir Michael Caine helped the Tories promote their National Citizenship Service, a plan to help youths experience being a citizen of the UK in a non-military national service. Kids don’t need to have their own brown shirt to join, but the names, addresses and occupations of all friends and family are an essential.
The prime minister announced plans for private firms to run more public services. Clearly a good idea. You only have to look at Southern Cross care homes to see that. Thousands of OAPs may be kicked out onto the street after the care-home giant said it was closing. It’s a really distressing thing and my heart goes out to all those unfortunate people who must be worrying that they’ll have to let their parents move in with them. Staff said they’ve been kept in the dark. Something Southern Cross previously only did with residents, having them suckle a sedative paste until their direct debits ran out.
Cameron says he wants to give charities and community groups more power to run organisations such as youth clubs. Exactly how much power do you need to run a youth club? I’d have thought a Sony PlayStation and a box of biscuits, and you’ve pretty much covered all the bases.
Conservative MP and Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced that teachers will be allowed to discipline unruly pupils outside of school. This should allow teachers to be assaulted even when they’re not at work. They’ll end up getting their heads kicked in, and probably their assistant heads too.
More than 100 state schools failed to enter a single person for GCSE history in 2010. Which sounds like a shocking statistic, but bear in mind in just a few years’ time it will have been completely forgotten. Along with the Holocaust and slavery. A report said there’s one bad teacher in every school. Of course there is. They can’t cut PE out of the curriculum altogether.
A teachers’ strike hit over 5,000 schools. Gove wants teachers to work an extra eight years before they retire. But look on the bright side, teachers – you’ll be on holiday for four of them. Maths lessons will be interesting with a teacher who’s nearly 70. ‘If there are two milk bottles on my doorstep and they are joined by another twelve milk bottles, how long have I been dead?’
Luckily, on the day of the strike they also shut the job centres and the courts, meaning Glaswegians could spend the day with their kids. Civil servants, court ushers and teachers – we couldn’t have had more ineffectual strikes if the dead had decided to stop decomposing for a day. But it’s nice for British teenagers to have the day off – watch some Jeremy Kyle, find out what all those girls who left at 16 are up to. The Sun interviewed a teenager from Gateshead who was worried that the teachers’ strike would ruin his future. How will he sign on if he can’t spell his name?
There’s controversy over the ballot, with the government saying that many who voted for the strike were simply marking the fact that ‘Yes’ was spelt correctly. How can it be a 24-hour strike when these people only work until 3.30? Or did they also take the evening off when normally they’d have been getting drunk in the local pub while trying to grope ex-pupils?
Teachers don’t have my complete sympathy. I remember turning up without my kit and saying, ‘I suppose I have to do it in my pants?’ and my PE teacher whispering, ‘That was last time … you’ve raised the stakes. This time you’ll have to do it in my pants.’ The cross-country run was much easier, but I confess the whole arrangement did make me feel a bit like a baby kangaroo.
That strike went against everything the Big Society is all about, which is ‘work constantly for free until you die’. I love the way the media pretends that the erosion of workers’ right to strike is some kind of advance. In the 1970s, we’re told, strikes were the British disease. I guess we’re supposed to be proud that it’s changed to chlamydia. I still remember the last miners’ strike, when a shortage of coal led to a terrifying winter of blind snowmen. Still, it’s clearly ridiculous for teachers to go on strike for a better pension. A teenager will have stabbed them through the heart ages before they reach retirement. Some people defended the strike by saying that it was only one day. Unfortunately, it was the day all the private-school kids got taught how to run banking software and pass the Oxford entry exam.
The General Election was a surprising result for Nick Clegg – he was bounding around Parliament with the joy of a bullied child who’d just changed schools. His first action as deputy prime minister was to make sure Jeremy Beadle was still dead. Never has someone so mediocre been so fought over – he must feel like girl at a Star Trek convention.
The Lib Dems found it very hard to decide whether they were Labour or Tory supporters, mostly because they’re Lib Dem supporters. I mean, had most of them agreed with one of the major parties they would probably have applied to join those parties, rather than spend their career standing at the back of town halls looking disappointed.
Clegg said he wants the British to experience a taste of the Lib Dems in government so that they will be confident to vote for a fully Lib Dem government. I know that reasoning. It’s similar to when you bring home someone for a threesome who smells like a goat.
During the coalition a few compromises have been made. The Lib Dems have had to agree to Tory policies on taxation, immigration and policing – but they will be presented in a nice yellow folder. The Tories have dropped their cap on immigration, but have axed £150 million from the local government housing budget. You can’t get rid of immigrants while you’re cutting social housing – who will we blame? Horrible to see Child Trust Funds have been scrapped. By the time they are 18 our current generation of babies will need that cash to forge their papers and bribe a Chinese camp official.
Of course, the Lib Dems didn’t even get the voting reform that they sold their souls for. The problem with the Alternative Vote was that it wasn’t a real alternative. They should just make the candidates do an It’s a Knockout-style course with their last year’s expenses in 2p pieces in a rucksack on their back. My idea of an alternative vote would be having the option of electing someone who isn’t a cunt.
The coalition is also proposing to cut benefits to heroin addicts. Surely it would be better to send them to Afghanistan. If the Taliban are between them and those opium poppies we might just win. And when Al-Qaeda blows up the Olympics there won’t be a TV left in the country for them to watch it on.
The Lib Dems aren’t totally comfortable with a new deterrent being ordered. But in this new spirit of political cooperation they’ve been given some options by their coalition partners. They can either shut up or piss off.
The Lib Dems say they want to give everyone in Britain the chance to fulfil their potential. What potential does Britain have? If you’re talking about young people, then it means they’d all get the opportunity to release a single, be on Page Three or finger Cheryl Cole. And when it comes to old people, think about your parents. What potential do they have to fulfil? As long as they get their two weeks in Lanzarote and can afford wafer-thin ham they wouldn’t care if the country was run by a military junta of humanoid gorillas.
‘It should be what you know, not who you know,’ said David Cameron’s mate, Nick Clegg. Mr Clegg admitted he feels ‘quite miserable’ that he does not see enough of his three kids. I suppose someone has to work to pay for them to get through university. He’s also admitted he doesn’t want his kids to see him smoking. Luckily it doesn’t bother David Cameron at all. Apparently he’s even put a little ashtray in Nick’s hutch. David Cameron has suggested patches. But Clegg wants to stick with the name ‘Nick’.
Clegg says he and Cameron wander into each other’s offices to chat. Well, Cameron wanders into Clegg’s to chat and Clegg wanders into Cameron’s office to be greeted with a tuft of black hair bobbing behind a desk and some giggly shushing.
Nick Clegg’s popularity’s slumped to just 18 per cent, but David Cameron leapt to his defence, saying he’s a great politician and work colleague. Good move, Dave – never slag off the guy who brings your coffee. Especially if you have froth on the top. Clegg’s even been getting flak for doing the morning school run. I certainly take my lad to the school gates whenever I can. Then whisper in his ear, ‘See all those laughing children? Improve your stitching around the instep and maybe you can join them.’
Energy Secretary Chris Huhne isn’t faring any better in the popularity stakes after he allegedly tried to get off a speeding ban by claiming his ex-wife was driving. I guess he’s got to switch to plan B – claiming that a bomb would’ve gone off in his Vauxhall Nova if he’d dropped below 80. I suspect he was just confused by events. As a Lib Dem Euro MP, when the camera flashed he would have had no idea what it was.
If Huhne really was the one behind the wheel then it could have a devastating effect on the country. Just imagine experiencing the uneasy feeling that maybe MPs can lie. If Chris Huhne deserves any points then surely it should be for dumping his wife for a bisexual woman ten years younger than him. Bisexuals are really attracted to senior Lib Dems – as they’re both a man, and a great big pussy.
The cabinet performance of Vince Cable has definitely convinced me – to have my parents’ euthanasia documentation rushed through. Only kidding. I’d vote for Vince Cable. I did at this year’s EuroPorn Awards.
His speeches about Unions have been peppered with aggressive language, which is odd because he normally saves that sort of thing for his home help, who he thinks is stealing from him. Cable plans to sell off a portion of the Royal Mail but also to hand over a significant chunk of the service to employees. When he does hand it over I hope he does it in the style of a Royal Mail employee, by creeping up to the front door, pretending they’re not in when they clearly are, quietly slipping a ‘Sorry you were out’ card through the letterbox and making them go down to the depot to collect it for themselves.
The business secretary said that by giving them 10 per cent of the company this would be the largest handover to employees attempted in the UK ever. Really? I’m sure almost every employee has stolen more than ten per cent of the business they work for. If the plan for privatisation goes ahead, postmen will get regular performance-related payouts. As opposed to the current system, when they only get a bonus if they hold a torch up to an envelope and can make out a tenner wedged in a birthday card.
