Frankie Boyle hits out at BBC after Adlington joke led to rebuke

Published on Tuesday 27 October 2009 12:17

CONTROVERSIAL comic Frankie Boyle is unrepentant about "offensive" comments which led to a rebuke – and has hit back at BBC Trust criticisms, claiming they were "b*****ks".

• Frankie Boyle

The former Mock The Week funnyman also launched an attack on the programme's production team for asking panellists to discuss "light, frothy stuff" instead of serious issues, which he said forced them to "make the comedy more extreme".

Boyle, who has now quit the show, said few people cared about the Trust's judgment that his on-screen criticism of Olympic gold medal winner Rebecca Adlington last year was "humiliating".

The Scottish comedian was criticised for saying swim star Adlington looked "like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon".

But in an interview with Time Out magazine today, Boyle responded to the Trust's remarks saying: "It was all b*****ks. Especially, when you consider we're fighting two wars, there's f****** swine flu and the global economy is going down the toilet.

"People expect you to talk about this – and what do the production team send us? A picture of Rebecca Adlington.

"Our top story was the British team returning home from the Olympics. We'd talked about them for five weeks and yet still had to joke about them getting off a plane.

"I mean what are you going to write about, apart from the fact that she looks like a beagle in the photo? What else is there? The tracksuits they're wearing? The shutter speed the photographers were using?"

He continued: "If we were allowed to do stuff about equipment shortages in Afghanistan or the swine flu vaccination programme there would be more intrinsic interest for the audience and we wouldn't need to hook them in so much. We could be gentler, more whimsical and much more sophisticated with it. But in the end they get what they ask for."

Boyle – who also made sexual comments about the Queen, for which the Trust dismissed complaints – said the Adlington comment was one of the mildest things he had said on the show. And he said few people cared about the BBC Trust's verdict.

"Can you imagine anyone reading that and actually giving a f***? It's disheartening. Who are these people? What authority do they have to judge comedy? There are bridges people shouldn't be allowed to cross, but it now feels like we're back in the 1970s in terms of compliance," he said.

"The number one priority in TV comedy today is 'don't frighten the horses', and it's probably number two and three as well. If you look at the scheduling nowadays, it's all just celebrities meeting meerkats."

Boyle said he left the show because he felt he was "going through the motions".

And in the interview with Time Out he played down suggestions of a health scare during the filming of his last series.

He said he was exhausted after four years of "gigging, working six days a week, and it just caught up with me".