'Dangermouth' comic who can't take a joke
Comedian Frankie Boyle has been in the news for making horrible remarks about the disabled child of topless model Katie Price. A one-off slip of the tongue? Probably not.
A Kingston upon Thames reader, Nick Booth, recalls taking part in a pilot TV show with him three years ago. ‘The show was called Dangermouth,’ says freelance writer Mr Booth, 50.
‘In the audition, you had to have a rant about something that made you angry in modern life, and they seemed to like what I did. But when we turned up for the filming of the pilot, the producer — who looked like he’d spent the night sleeping in a skip — had changed the rules.
Offensive: Frankie Boyle has made offensive jokes about disabled children - and it also appears is unable to understand when people don't want to abuse other people
‘The point of the show, it transpired, was to take part in a sort of knock-out competition where you had to abuse your opponent verbally. The person with the lowest self-esteem was eliminated. Bouts were to be judged by showbiz luminaries, and the star judge was Frankie Boyle.
‘As inspiration, we were asked to watch a video of Americans exchanging insults about each other’s mothers. My prospective opponents included some middle-aged housewives, a schoolboy and a tall transvestite in a blonde wig.
‘They all seemed thoroughly blameless. I was told to insult the transvestite, but couldn’t really bring myself to say anything. Boyle was angry. “Come on mate,” he snarled, “you’ve got an open goal there. Look at his muscular arms.” He said he could think of loads of things to say.
‘The trannie made mild fun of my shirt, but then ran out of steam. He was quite sweet, really. We shook hands afterwards, much to the disappointment of Boyle, who’d wanted some fighting. Boyle was so angered by my lack of aggression that I was judged the loser of the bout and sent packing.
‘The irony of it was that before Boyle arrived, the producer and various runners had all instructed us not to make any jokes about the star judge. We were told he was terribly thin-skinned and must under no circumstances be insulted.’
The Church's high profit
The Church Commissioners this week published their annual report, pink-tinged politically with photographs of anti-clusterbomb demonstrators and reassurances about their ‘ethical’ investments.
Nor can the C of E’s administrative body be faulted on its Christian generosity when it comes to pay. One member of staff is paid more than £130,000.
Another pockets more than £140,000. Its investment manager, the aptly named Tom Joy, is on a salary of more than £300,000. Bejaysus!
Mind you, under Mr Joy (a dutiful churchgoer in Winchester) the Church’s investments have had a good year, returning 15.2 per cent.
Personally, I am all for rewarding good and trusty servants. But Mr Joy’s pay is 13 times that of a parish priest. I am sure vicars will overcome any sense of covetousness.
Elliptical comment on the state of affairs at the top of the Coalition Government may perhaps be gleaned from the current reading matter of Keith Simpson, Tory MP for Mid-Norfolk and parliamentary aide to William Hague.
In the Commons this week, he could be seen brandishing Dan Snow’s World War I history tome The Confusion Of Command.
Publisher Lord Weidenfeld made a rare contribution in Parliament this week. Peers were talking about the Middle East and Lord Weidenfeld alluded to the assault of broadcaster Lara Logan (left) in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.
Hansard quotes him as talking about the ‘savagery against a hopeless American woman’.
Do you think he meant ‘helpless’?
Our American allies are reportedly unhappy about European reluctance to welcome the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
My own sympathies are firmly with the Americans. But they will perhaps now understand how we British used to feel when American supporters of the IRA complained about Irish republican terrorists being stopped in their tracks by our troops in Northern Ireland and Gibraltar.
To the Ledbury branch of the Co-op to buy some medicine for our eight-year-old, who was running a temperature. A small bottle of Calpol, all 80ml of it (sorry about the metric measurement), cost some £3.11. On the same day, the shop was offering two normal-sized bottles of gin for £20. By my not terribly good maths, that means gin costs just over £13 a litre while Calpol — which is basically pink sugar with a tiny dollop of paracetamol — is almost £39 a litre.
Something not quite right here, surely.
Serjeant At Arms under fire
Another public servant on good money is Westminster’s Serjeant At Arms, Jill Pay, who sits in the Commons most days wearing a sword and very dainty high heels.
Not everyone is convinced that she is up to the job. Buckingham Palace is said to have its doubts. A parliamentary question from Keith Vaz MP elicits information suggesting Mrs Pay (good name!) may be on as much as £128,900.
At the same time, there are wider political rumblings about Commons officials.
Many of the clerks are paid considerably more than MPs. Select committee researchers have also spread like comfrey and are, in some cases, unaccountable even to their committee chairmen.
Mr Vaz and a senior Tory, Andrew Tyrie, are on the warpath. Mrs Pay may soon be needing that sword.
Savaged: A small dog attacked Lord Biro during the local elections in Nottingham
Hair of the dog
Thelocal elections were truly bloody in Nottingham, where Lord Biro, a candidate for the Militant Elvis Anti-Tesco Popular Front, was savaged at teatime on Wednesday.
His assailant was ‘a small dog, believed to be a corgi’ and it pounced while milord Biro was shoving an election leaflet through a door in Sneinton Dale.
A spokesman for the Popular Front said: ‘Election campaigning had to be suspended for two hours while our man received medical attention and rested in a local pub, the Dale Tavern.’
