to be impressed by Frankie Boyle's hunger strike?

[Isabeller]

grauniad link here

On reading the article I see it's being done to raise awareness. It's got people talking and thinking about Guantanamo which has to be a good thing. So I stand by by comments about FB but retract my cynical comment about 'doing it for attention'.

"one decent gesture (and of course he's taken time to make sure everyone knows about it) doesn't make up for years of hateful crap."

This. Exactly.

Have always considered him to be a cunt, maybe he is, but he is doing a good thing

"His disablist/sexist/racist act is a charicature of those who actually harbour those beliefs."

I'm sure all the readers of his Sun column get it.

Or perhaps he's just undermining the system from within.

Frankie Boyle identifies as a feminist....?

Is this in some parallel universe where Jim Davidson is chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission?

Will him.not eating really change anything?

I see, in theory, that it is a caricature. Other people do that so much better though.

And there's the case of jimmy carr, with a similar sort of schtick, who turns out to be a real-life wanker who doesn't pay his tax.

He writes for the Sun? Radical.

Frankie Boyle literally can't stand Chris Brown, the fella that battered Rhianna, his tweets re this over the years have been interesting.

Anyway him & Chris Brown both happened to be playing in Dublin the same night.

Frankie Boyle donated profit from his gig to a domestic abuse charity in Ireland.

I like Frankie Boyle, some of his stuff is a bit close to the bone for me but yeah I think he's a good guy.

It's a great thing he's doing.

Just like giving that 50k away to the Guatanemo charity for them to sue like he did last year.

The 50k was the money he won in libel damaged because a newspaper called him a racist. Which he isn't.

Obviously he's told very unpalatable anti-disabled jokes (which I don't find funny and I don't agree with)

However, a person is all of their parts - and clearly many parts of him are decent.

He also tells my all time favourite joke:

"An Englishman walks into a Glasgow pub and asks for a pint of lager and lime "

Barman: "we don't do cocktails"

Laurie

Ok. Not all bad.

His large show didn't get the best reviews and ratings, on top of his other bad press. Yes, he's probably done it for publicity.

I honestly thought it was one of his jokes when I first read this (didn't help it was on a British comedy news site...), turns out it's real and he's damn serious. He's a man of many layers thats for sure, maybe having something serious to focus on will tone his act down, I always liked him on Mock the Week and his Twitter feed is very sharp and funny.

Or more likely to raise awareness of Guantanamo.
It's been a long term campaign of his to publicise what is happening there.

What ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmmmmmmmm says.

The man is an arse with a comedy routine built on viciousness. Just because he stops sticking food in his big mouth for a while or donates money to a cause doesn't stop him from being an arse.

Yabu. I hope the lack of food continues indefinitely. He is a vile human being.

You can varnish it, sprinkle it with silver glitter, daub it with Chanel no 5 and call it coprolyte, but it's still shit underneath.
Although if he's on hunger strike, he'll be producing less shit than usual, so that's a good thing.

"His disablist/sexist/racist act is a charicature of those who actually harbour those beliefs."

Really! Wow, making jokes about specific disabled people (Katie price's son, Lewis Hamilton's brother), people with Down's syndrome having bowl haircuts and dying early, doing 'funny' 'mongoloid' voices - I don't know, I think maybe the subtle postmodern irony is lost on me.

Hope he keeps at it until it finishes him off.One unpleasant wanker less in the world

I can't believe people dismiss his vile disabilism as ironic, or as signifying that he 'has many layers'

You know damn well that if he had made racist jokes his fucking career would be in shreds

"You can varnish it, sprinkle it with silver glitter, daub it with Chanel no 5 and call it coprolyte, but it's still shit underneath.
Although if he's on hunger strike, he'll be producing less shit than usual, so that's a good thing."

Now that's funny.

I can't stand him. I think he is a nasty piece of work. I hope he sticks to his principles though and goes all the way, not eating until that guy is released...

If being this kind of caricature was useful and funny, we'd still be watching Alf Garnett and Love Thy Neighbour.

Yes it's been done before. What tends to happen is it becomes so repulsive that only those they were originally taking the piss out of in terms of beliefs end up finding them funny. Counter productive really.

He's just been left returning the abuse sent to him on twitter about the hunger strike. He gets this abuse because he has been previously so obnoxious. I wouldn't actually want him championing any cause I was involved in.

I'm really glad he's doing this. What a fantastic thing to do - 11 years without trial - I mean really why are we not jumping up and down more about this - America, land of the fucking free, keeping people without trial indefinitely - its mental that that is happening. Its horrific that they are getting away with such an awful disregard for human rights.

I think that Boyle went through a stage when he pushed shock humour too far and made some very lazy 'jokes' but really he seems to be a decent person - there aren't many people making a stand about this and it has massively raised awareness that FB is making this protest.

I don't think there was any 'stage' - his whole comedy career is built on shock humour (I use that word loosely)