Comic hits out at BBC producers

Mock The Week star Frankie Boyle has hit out at the programme's producers for asking panellists to avoid discussing serious issues.

Frankie Boyle: Fierce, fearless... and funny

The foul-mouthed Glaswegian comedian is in trouble with the BBC over his joke about the swimmer Rebecca Adlington. Does he care? The Independent meets Frankie Boyle.

Mock the Week 'humiliated' Olympic sportswoman

The BBC Trust has censured the BBC over a joke on Mock The Week that branded Olympic gold medallist Rebecca Adlington "very dirty".

Boyle's 'sexist' joke about Queen cleared by BBC Trust

Comedian's gag on Mock the Week was 'in poor taste' but 'would not have gone beyond audience expectations' for the show.

Frankie Boyle leaves 'Mock The Week'

Frankie Boyle has left Mock The Week to concentrate on other TV commitments, while the show has been signed up for two new series by BBC Two.

Frankie Boyle: mocks the weak

When asked on one episode of Mock The Week to suggest a line unlikely to appear in a superhero movie, Boyle responded: "Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Whatever it is, it's heading straight for the World Trade Center." A joke where surely half the audience easily guessed the tired punchline.

Joke ace Frankie taken to hospital

Comic Frankie Boyle has been forced to pull out of this week's Mock The Week show after being carted off to hospital with a mystery illness.

I was flicking around the iPlayer this week and I settled on Mock the Week. I don't know if it was this week's or last week's or a repeat from last year. The news it's supposed to mock is so nebulous and incidental, it doesn't register as current affairs. The presenter is that moon-faced Irishman who was christened by a dyslexic priest. Whenever I see him I can't help thinking: "You really ought to be doing something better with your life." The show is a masterclass in too competitive joke-telling and trying too hard. The joke is always the same joke and the guests are always the same people wearing different ugly prosthetic Hallowe'en masks with comedy beards and character hair. It is a show of the most abject oppression. Grown-ups desperate for attention shout pathetic inanities and slight obscenities, falling over one another to garble payoffs that are more like IOUs or begging letters. If you changed the set a little and made it, say, a National Health Service waiting room, it would be easier to believe this was a documentary about special-needs ADD patients. This is only one of a whole slew of late-night comic quizzes that lack any purpose or self-belief. This isn't satire or anger; it's not even irony. It's comedic lap-dancing with ugly men.

There is a moment at the start of all of these shows when the compere introduces the teams to the audience. As each name is spoken, the person to whom it belongs knows that they're in close-up and reacts with a little cameo of hilarity. They'll do a small gurn, make a gesture, as a reaction to their own names. It's such a pitiful moment of insecurity, such a naked insight into despair and neediness.

What humorous little mime do you pull when you hear your name called? Perhaps we should all work on one in front of the mirror, so when we're introduced to new people we can flash a surprised guffaw and point our fingers like invisible revolvers, or make a show of glamour and run our hands through imagined big hair. And then people who didn't know us before would know right away that we're really, really, very, very funny.

What more could you want from a panel show than the brilliant Frankie Boyle and Andy Parsons? Well, probably just one more thing - the sharp and sure David Mitchell, always a hoot on these sorts of things. His fellow guest is the likeably down-to-earth Sarah Millican.

See how Gordon Brown's mouth falls down after he speaks? See how Dawn French is fat? See how Scottish people are smack heads? What about some celebrities? Don't they get DRUNK? See children? Aren't they sexy? See cricket? Isn't it boring? See stand-ups? When they guest on Mock The Week, don't they get to choose a round that allows them to recite a big chunk of their stand-up routine?

Mock The Week grows ever more popular, being the sole mainstream comedy satire show not peopled by authority figures and old favourites whose laughs grow more grating by the week. It is The Frankie Boyle Show, of course. While the others flail around him fighting, often pointedly, for applause, he can deliver the audience into a paroxysm of frenzied self-congratulation merely by suggesting that John Prescott is fat/Gordon Brown has one eye/David Cameron is posh.

Of course, the comedians (Boyle in particular) are capable of wit. But that's not the main outcome of the show. It's not about laughs. It's a show about concision, speed and nastiness. Get a clear run on the mic before anyone else and suggest that MTW stands for Mediocre Television Spamfilter and you'd get a laugh just for having replaced an initial with a rude word.

The most telling point is the guest comedians. Whether total rubbish (Gina Yashere) average (Jon Richardson) or brilliant (Stewart Lee, who described his own appearance thus: 'I must have looked like a competition winner, who'd won a prize to sit silent on an unfunny topical quiz show') they never make any impact. They're always less important than Andy Parsons. Think about how that must feel.