Frankie Boyle’s Down’s Syndrome Laugh In

FRANKIE Boyle is the poor man’s Jerry Sadowitz, a comic who prides himself on being edgy and wah-hay, but who works for the BBC’s Mock the Week – a show on which agonists try out for a cub-scout badge in comedy by competitive joke-telling – and has a column in an underground publication called The Sun. Boyle does not take comedy to the limits – he just takes it to the limits of the BBC and the police canteen.

You know it’s a funny, funny FUNNY show because the needy panellists smile a lot and look like they’re telling jokes rather than flying a plane or drinking Terry Waite’s urine.

Lately, Boyle’s been making jokes about people with Down’s Syndrome at Reading’s Hexagon Theatre. In the audience is one Sharon Smith, whose five-year-old daughter Tanzie has Down’s.

Says she on her blog:

“I expected dry, nasty, crude humour, yes, but unimaginative humour poking fun at the stereotype of people with Down’s syndrome was not something that I expected.”

Bloody hell.

The opening to Sadowitz’s shows feature him with a cut-glass accent asking the crowd to settle into their seats and Jews to make their way to the showers. He then delivers a rant about the difficulty of being a paedophile given the cost of Smarties, insults everyone and fires off gags of the calibre as:

Q: How do you crucify a spastic?
A: On a Swastika.

In short, Jerry Sadwitz gives you exactly what you expect. And , in any, case anyone who pays to watch stand-up comedy is by definition a ****.

Mrs Smith is unimpressed and in “Punching me in the face would have been preferable…” says:

Last summer I booked front row tickets to see Frankie Boyle on tour –

Front. Row. She booked front row tickets to see a comic she says is “crude”. The. Front. Row.

My beautiful, feisty, determined 5 year old daughter has Down syndrome and last night Frankie Boyle spent a good few minutes in the second half of his show making joke after joke about people with DS. And they werent even clever or funny jokes either (though the audience were still laughing – well everyone except me and the 5 people I had gone out with last night).

Funny is someone else falling into a hole. Tragedy is you falling into a hole.

Mrs Smith ends by saying:

He doesn’t need to stoop to such low levels, such poor humour. He is better than that.

No, he isn’t…

Anorak

Posted: 9th, April 2010 | In: Celebrities Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink