Frankie Boyle on Down Syndrome - horrific

[Lymond]

interesting blog post from a mother of a DS daughter who was blasted by a 5-10 minute diatribe containing all the old stereotypes about people with DS at a Frakie Boyle show. I'm turning off any TV show he's on in future.

blog here

Grauniad article on it here

I know of the mother from another parenting forum (have suspicion she may be on here too). LeQueen - you will recognise her.

Well if she is on here - I for one as a mum of a disabled child would like to congratulate her.

FWIW I think it's unfair to tar Jeremy Clarkson with the same brush as Frankie Boyle. AFAIK Clarkson has never been accused of attacking disabled people AND he is one of the very, very few men who listened to complaints about sexism and acted on them. He may well not be PC but he sure as hell doesn't do comparisons between cars and women any more.

Jo Caulfield is a female stand up and regular at the Edinburgh Fringe. She's funny and much better than some of the other ones, so I don't understand why she isn't more well known. Probably would be if she was male.

Can't even imagine why you would book front row seats at a show by FB called 'I would happily punch everyone of you in the face'. He asked why she was talking; she told him; he said it was the most excruciating moment of his career and then tried to laugh it off. He earns money this way - he can't just cancel the show in the middle can he? She wanted to reeducate everyone about the myths of DS according to her blog - in the middle of a notoriously offensive stand up show . I don't like FB, but I am so 'right on' and 'pc' that I wouldn't have been there.

I'm extremely pc and easily offended. I have, however, sat quite near the front of a FB gig about 3 years ago. I don't remember anything he said that night offending me, and as I say, I'm very sensitive to these things usually.

I can only think that he has become a victim of his own hype and thinks he now needs to be offensive just for the sake of it, like Jimmy Carr (who I would never have gone to see in a million years).

Anyway, I won't ever be going to see him again.

I don't have any sympathy for the woman.
she paid to watch an offensive comediene make fun of anything, yet when its close to her heart she moans about it.

Sorry but if she was that clever and intelligent she wouldn't have gone to watch Boyle.

whoa there, you cannot seriously be saying your intellect has anything to do with who you pay to go and see or what you may or may not find funny or offensive?

so if i find frankie boyle amusing im automatically stupid?

people are diverse - their likes and dislikes do not define them or their intelligence.

thats one hell of a leap to make.

what if i find your crass generalisations indicative of stupidity? maybe i should be thinking people who generalise to that degree are all a bit thick if i follow your logic.

I think what worries me is that (and I think it was in the Guardian article) the women said she thought there might be some jokes about disability but she'd be able to ignore them (or something along the lines).

Now I'm not going to have a go at her because I read her blog post and thought it extremely elegant and I feel for her.

But I think this is the crux of the problem and I heard other comedians on Radio 5 when they discussed this this week virtually saying the same thing.

It seems as though disabled people/disabilities are fair game for all comedians, and even the woman above admitted she'd ignore those sort of comments if they came up except the comments that FB made were personal so they upset her.

I'd like the result of this to be a stand against all comedians targetting any disability, not one that may just affect us personally. I can't bear this picking on a subgroup of society because they don't fight back mentality. If we all stopped ignoring it when they made jokes like this, no matter the disability, and started complaining, perhaps things would start to change.

Went to see Jimmy Carr recently and he was horrible - lots of jokes about pedophiles and the disabled (he was also a bit weird in the flesh ). I've always enjoyed him on TV and naively wasn't aware of his reputation on stage - maybe Sharon wasn't either re FB.

I don't think the attitude is that all comics will have a go at disabled people but that if your going to FB then his angle is offence and shock humour so I'd imagine there's a good chance that there will be jokes that could be considered racist/disablist/homophobic etc. and if you go to him then you should be prepared to hear them.

VicarInaTuTu

Although I can see where you would think that I am generalising, I am not, The woman paid to see someone who makes near the bone jokes about anything, who has made jokes about the disabled before, this is a woman who has found them funny, yet complains when its a subject close to her heart.

We come to "not in my backyard"

It shows a lack of intelligence and a huge amount of hypocrisy (IMHO) to complain about this joke(s) and not the jokes that have offended others.

PS I quite like Boyle's humour, make of that what you will.

i agree.
seems odd to go and see someone who you know is offensive, then complain that they are offensive.
tbh I think anyone who finds this kind of "humour" offensive and think they must be slightly thick.

mayorquimby, what the comedian who called in to Radio 5 said (can't remember his name) was that he didn't trade in offensive jokes because at the end of the day, he felt he had to be able to live with the comments he made - he used far better wording than that, can't remember what it was, but something about him feeling that he had to be morally accountable. But he made it quite clear that this was his personal opinion and that it was still acceptable for comedians to trade in being offensive - it doesn't mean they all are but it does mean that it is not considered an issue if they are iyswim.

'horrific' (as in thread title) is a bit OTT.

A comedian known for his poor taste gags tells a poor taste gag at a gig.

Well I'd agree with him in that case then. I wouldn't find those jokes funny but I do think it's acceptable for comedians trade on offense because I do find a lot of offensive jokes funny. I think Jimmy Carr is superb at what he does and I love Russell Brand/Chris Morriss/Ricky Gervais/ed burnes who all make jokes based on race and paedophilia (although they are not making jokes which are racist or suggesting paedophilia itself is funny, they're more base don perceptions surrounding them.)
However others do find them offensive and consider them to be beyond the pale (remember the media storm after "paedogeddan"?) so I think it's necessary for comedy to have comics who do say things which are unacceptable and offend people. I agree completely with peoples right to complain if they are being paid by a state licencer like the BBC or to TV commissioners if they feel that it is unacceptable broadcasting material, but find it a little hard to see what right of complaint they have if they go to a stand-ups personal tour, who they know trades in offensiveness and shock (and is called "I'd happilly punch everyone of you in the face") and are subsequently offended and shocked. If FB wants to put on a show like this and there is a demand for that show by people who enjoy this sort of humour then I say let them at it.

It was a Good Thing that this woman went to see FB and reported back. Otherwise he'd have got away with it. Her blog has put discrimination against people with learning disabilities into the headlines.

Of course you are free to object to an act that you've paid to see. Ridiculous to suggest otherwise. You don't get to see the script before you buy the tickets.

I've always hated him on the TV. He never has any good jokes, he just puts people down all the time.
Good on the lady standing up for her daughter and all other people with Downs syndrome children.

completely agree with mayorquimby on this one.

boneybackjefferson - i sort of see where your coming from but from reading the womens blog i dont think she came across as unintelligent,though i agree she probably should have known what to expect and i find it very difficult to judge because no one actually knows what he said or how he said it.

i have a child with SEN, im not unsympathetic to her, but i dont want comedians censoring on tour either.

i love the likes of Chris Morris, and there was controversy when he did the spoof show on paedophiles, and on hearing about it thought it must have been vile, until i watched it and saw that the only stupidity on there was the arse licking go to the opening of an envelope so called celebrities who supported a spoof cause they knew nothing about just to get their faces on the back of a "cause" and on the telly. i thought he was genius to expose those people and it was funny watching noel edmunds tell people with such earnest heartfelt smooze that you could die of CAKE.

i liked edgy humour. Chris morris new film looks brilliant, getting rave reviews, and is about muslim terrorists which on the face of it would probably outrage the more PC.

i think unless i was there, at that gig, listening to what FB actually said i cant really comment.

The more I think about this, the more I can't see the woman's point. As I said earlier, she was obviously happy to laugh at 'controversial' subjects that aren't personal to her, so how can she complain about FB in his entirety when he makes a joke about something that is?

I'm sure FB doesn't go home and tell his children that it's good to laugh at people with disabilities - but this is an entirely different situation. He's performing to an adult audience who were laughing at the stereotypical view of eg DS - as someone else said, the perception not the actual condition. I'm sure not one of those people leave the theatre and snigger at someone with a disability on the way home.

It's much the same as when something big happens, eg Michael Jackson's death and all these texts fly around. You laugh because some are so awful you know you shouldn't - you know you say 'OMG, that's TERRIBLE!!!!' but you are still laughing. The old adage that comedy and tragedy are inextricably linked.

Again, I don't find FB funny in the slightest, but I do love Ricky Gervais and Russell Brand who share that edgy kind of humour.

There's a massive gulf between intelligent satirists like Chris Morris and playground bullies like Frankie Boyle. Chris Morris exposes stupidity and prejudice, while Boyle spreads it.

And I'm sure some of the people who laughed along with gags about people with ds having bad haircuts and older parents are ruddy prejudiced, otherwise they wouldn't have laughed.

If someone was sitting beside you in a park and started mocking a disabled kid would you think that was funny and acceptable? FB has done exactly this - totally unacceptable. Those of you who say it is need to sit back and think for a minute. And then imagine you saw one of your own children mocking the disabled kids. How would you feel then? Proud they were pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable? Get a grip people.

I've seen him at the Edinburgh festival. Much cruder than on tv, will never go and see him after this incident.

The lady did not complain about him. Her dh asked if she was ok and FB saw them talking and asked why. If you read the blog you can see how it unfolded.

"If someone was sitting beside you in a park and started mocking a disabled kid would you think that was funny and acceptable?"

That's actually a very good point imo.

I do remember an interview with Jimmy Carr where he said that his favourite noise in the whole world was the laughter of the audience which was then cut off by an 'ohhhh...' sound because it meant that they had laughed first and then suddenly realised the deeper thing in the joke and had laughed instinctively before they realised how 'edgy' it was. I'm describing that from memory, I can't remember his exact words so please don't quote me on that.

But what it made me think, was that he was sort of like a child who is told not to touch something and so gets a perverse pleasure out of touching it just very slightly. Not to stick up for FB but he did say that this was the 'most excruciating moment of his career' so he (imo) probably realised that he'd gone too far but then he seemed to make the mistake of trying to 'brazen it out' when (imo) it would have been better if he'd just been honest and said 'Oh shit! I'm sorry. I need to think about this and get back to you' and just have been serious for a moment and then got on with the show and taken some time out afterwards to re-examine the situation and decide whether he was comfortable with his material and to evaluate the situation.

I did think that he reacted foolishly. It must be quite terrifying to be accused of something so unpleasant on front of so many people but he's a professional and should have been able to deal with it better than he did (again just imo) from the sounds of it she wasn't agressive or confrontational at all though and I think he screwed up there with how he handled it. I hope he does some thinking about it and gets in contact with the mother concerned to talk to her in private.

I know this is irrelevant but did you see the picture of her child? Absolutely gorgeous!