Frankie Boyle Interview

The Radio Times dares to quiz Frankie Boyle, the mocker-in-chief.

The topical comedy show returns for a new, 13-part series. No matter how funny it gets or how outrageous resident panellist Frankie Boyle tries to be, for comedy value it'll be hard to beat Newsnight's Emily Maitlis relaying one of Boyle's ruder lines - which modesty prevents from repeating here, but is available on YouTube - to BBC director general Mark Thomson.

Creating comedy from controversy demands more than regulars Marcus Brigstocke and Rufus Hound merely spouting near-nonsense loudly and provocatively. Still, the guests in this show, including Dara O'Briain, Johnny Vegas and Frankie Boyle, show how it's done.

Another BBC clampdown

The BBC has promised to take tighter control of Radio 4 comedy Political Animal, following a complaint that a Frankie Boyle gag was anti-semitic. One listener complained that the programme used the word 'Jew' in an offensive way - and the BBC Trust agreed. Ironically, one of the show's hosts, stand-up John Oliver, is Jewish.

Frankie Boyle can add the people of Norwich to the increasingly lengthy list of those whom he has offended during his guest slot on the debating panel show this week. Phill Jupitus also appears, spending most of the time in hysterics when Marcus Brigstocke invents a new word. Still very funny.

Never mind the other panellists... here's Frankie Boyle

The Guardian says that acerbic standup Frankie Boyle is the not only saving grace of Mock the Week, he is also the antidote to the smug and anaemic world of primetime comedy

The impressive thing about this featherweight panel game (apart from how funny it manages to be) is how hard it often is to tell when the panellists are lying and when they're telling the truth. I know they're all professional performers, so we shouldn't be surprised, but even so. There are exceptions, of course: at one stage Frankie Boyle, famous as a comedian red in tooth and claw, finds it hard to pretend that he once wrote a collection of love poems, but it's still fun watching him try - not very hard.

Delighted to say that Mock the Week is back on Thursday!

For newcomers - it's a sort of Have I Got News For You mixed with Whose Line Is It Anyway?, recorded in front of a studio audience the same day, and features the crushingly funny Frankie Boyle and Andy Parsons along with various others, including regular captain Hugh Dennis.

The advent of 24-hour drinking may have largely deprived this sort of comedy of its natural constituency - the punter who consumes his bodyweight in Last Orders beer and then staggers off in search of radio-based hilarity - but that doesn't stop the Beeb from commissioning it.

Frankly, if you're sober none of it makes much sense, but it appears that the Scrooby of the title (played by the writer of the series, Andy Parsons) has gone missing but has left a series of recordings on his MP3 player, each describing his experience of various lifestyles, some of them alternative and some not.

The impressive list of guest stars includes Dara O'Briain, Frankie Boyle, Marcus Brigstocke and Lucy Porter, proof - if nothing else - that Parsons has some good friends on the stand-up circuit. There's also an interactive element that involves contacting a website and suggesting other enterprises for him to 'investigate'.

Ironically, before the BBC started advertising the fact that 'Thursdays are Funny', they really were, with comedians Frankie Boyle and Russell Howard in blistering form on Mock the Week.