And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,/ She needs not June for beauty's heightening

from: Frankie Boyle <news@frankieboyle.com>
reply-to: reply@frankieboylefans.com
date: 2 October 2009 15:02
subject: Hey – Look at this…

My negroes, my b*tches, I hope you are well

I have a few things to tell you, Frankie Boyle Club! This week, you should have received the decoding ring that allows you to read the messages on your membership card and badge. If you’ve not yet received the ring, it must be stuck in the post or we forgot to send it or something. Anyway, both messages read “I am a c*nt”.

My book is oot! Here’s a link to a wee sample chunk, in case you’re wondering if it’s any good.

I’m also doing some more tour dates, including a DVD record at the Apollo on June 4 & 5. Dig it!

And finally, I’ve decided not to do any more Mock The Week. I’ve done what feels like a good few thousand of them now and I feel I’ve mocked the sh*t out of the week. I salute everybody there (salutes). I’m going to concentrate on next year’s tour and some other funny things I’m writing. Be careful out there everybody.

Heil Hitler

Frankie x

———————————

Yes, Mock The Week has just lost the gem of a dark comedian who wrote the above email/note.

!@#$%^&*?

Frankie Boyle. Frankie Boyle. FRANKIE BOYLE.

Mock The Week participants, viewers and producers are sure to miss him. What is Mock The Week without Frankie? The other staples – Hugh Dennis, Dara Ó Briain, Russell Howard and Andy Parsons – still remain but it all seems absurdly hollow sans Frankie.

Though always clad in a well-fitted, well-ironed suit, Frankie defies his prim image with his outrageous quips and jokes. Frankie’s brand of dark humour tends towards being completely offensive sometimes, but I must take my hat off to the bloke. (What’s bloke in Scottish Gaelic?) Ridiculously talented at mocking the week (and the weak), Frankie is totally in his element on the show. Frankie’s lines are explicit, exaggerated, occasionally expletive-laden but always, always hilarious.

No one is spared from Frankie’s gibes. The Queen, Prince Harry, Gordon Brown, Princess Diana, George Bush, Islamic fundamentalists, Max Mosley, homosexuals, Kerry Katona, Richard Hammond… Even his colleagues and comedic accomplices Hugh Dennis and Dara Ó Briain become subjects of his skilful mockery. Yet Frankie gets away with everything all the time. His firmly established identity as a dark humorist sails him through his live shows as well as Mock The Week, whose content allows Frankie to thrive comfortably and happily in irreverence, impertinence, impudence and insolence, at the expense of everyone he chooses to poke fun at.

And it was Frankie, not Sir Alex Ferguson, that got me interested in the Scot accent and Scot semantics. I admire the so-called “minorities” in the comedy scene like Frankie who highlight the merits, demerits and most importantly idiosyncracies of their local humour. People are inclined to forget that British humour includes the Welsh and Scottish brands of humour; the English have established their ground in this field and are historically the strongest: Monty Python, Blackadder, Fry and Laurie, Steve Punt/Hugh Dennis, blah blah blah are all English. Frankie weaves Scot culture into his humour, and despite his tendency to be extremely Scot-deprecating, Scotland should be proud. Frankie brought Scot culture under the spotlight in Mock The Week. (Like how Rob Brydon brings light to Welsh humour and how Dara Ó Briain and Ed Byrne strengthen the identity of Irish humour. I’m now very intrigued by the Irish accent, language and culture.)

Whether it was about humans’ sad relationship with their pets, opening the racist door, the Zulus waving their “spears”, vegetarians, Willy Wonka being a paedophile, the Queen’s Christmas address, Richard Hammond’s anti-speeding advert, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, letters to Points of View, STDs, the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, Mock The Week After Dark, terrorism, aeroplane cabins decompressing… Frankie injected a dose of outrageous (I can’t think of a synonym) humour into Mock The Week. Take a look at this compilation of Frankie’s contributions to Scenes We’d Like to See, the final quick-fire round on Mock The Week. His sense of humour is manifest even in the kind of gifts he gives to his colleagues at Christmas; Hugh Dennis once received a box “for storing the souls of my [his] enemies in” from Frankie. On the whole Frankie is adroit, original, incredibly flexible, horribly unforgiving, extremely cheeky, very, very, very funny and the source of entertainment and laughs for those who can appreciate the darkest of dark comedy.

Mr Frankie Boyle, you’re bloody swell and a legend in dark comedy. You sure do your fellow Scots proud and Mock The Week is just not the same without you. Mar sin leat.