Lancing the Boyle

Frankie Boyle thinks the BBC should sack Jeremy Clarkson, describing him as a cultural tumour. Tumour is, of course, one of Boyle’s favourite words because it arouses quite deep feelings of disgust and revulsion, as do his mentions of celebrities’ sick children and jokes about cancer victims and aids sufferers. It doesn’t bother me at all, but given that a huge amount of his work is intended to cause offence, which is then (usually quite rightly) brushed off as an attack on his freedom of speech, his anti-Clarkson stance is curious.

Maybe it’s envy? After all, JC makes £Gazillions for himself and the BBC and is imitated all around the world while Frankie Boyle is popular in… parts of Scotland. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a Boyle rant as much as the next primitive, misogynist, misanthrope cave beast but it’s an odd request that people a bit like him, but way less offensive, should be cast out. Maybe it’s all just out of context but hey, that’s never been a problem when publicity is what you’re after. I wonder if he has a tour to plug?

But isn’t it staggering, how far we’ve, er, staggered in a couple of generations from a strait-laced world in which everybody knew the form, to this weird, dysfunctional shambles of a society where nobody seems to know how to behave towards anybody else any more? Back in the black-and-white days, without any hint of ‘citizenship’ training, we British knew how to address our elders, our betters, our equals, our family, our peers and even our queers without suffering any more than a clip around the ear for taking the occasional liberty.

Now, however, the offendotrons lurk around every corner. Children berate their parents for displaying what they have been taught to recognise as everyday racism. Grandparents, particularly, come in for some withering looks from the holier-than-thou Midwich cuckoos sent to denounce them. Precocious kids were ever in need of a twatting, but now their naïve observations are likely to be given every credence by the constabulary; this can only ever make things worse. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

Comedians do, of course, make their living by voicing the hitherto unvoiced thoughts of their followers, by exaggerating life and by reducing, to the absurd, the serious aims of those which whom they disagree. Thus, to a ‘further left than Chomsky’ Frankie Boyle, the Tories and all who have sympathy with them are baby-eating monsters, while Hamas are victims of Israeli oppression. This is the eternal problem with the left – their brains appear to have evolved to forever see things in only black and white.

I suppose you just have to choose your allegiances in life. For my part, the choice between an evening with the socially cancerous Jeremy Clarkson and Jim Davidson as opposed to, say, thirty seconds in the company of the mono-rationally viral Frankie Boyle and Marcus Brigstocke is a pretty easy decision. I’d go with the Technicolor brains every time.

Disabled Badgers

And they’re off. To great acclaim and well-deserved applause the Paralympic Games are already bringing honour and glory to British athletes. And controversy; always the controversy. 

The 1924 Paris ‘Silent Games’ evolved into the Deaflympics. Rehabilitative sports therapy spawned the Stoke Mandeville Games, with entrants in disabled and adaptive sports. And for those with intellectual needs the Special Olympics were created. Many of these movements have come together to form the modern Paralympic Games 

As all the promotion has blazed, these are people who have overcome what most of us would regard as horrific handicaps to compete at international level with astonishing degrees of skill, strength, speed and determination. Which is where the controversy comes in; the games celebrate ability, not disability, yet they – as always – plunge us straight into a maelstrom of political correctness and wrong-thinking. 

It's another of those subjects on which - as a white, middle-aged, middle-class, able-bodied, working, educated, non-benefit-claiming taxpayer - I'm not allowed an opinion. Which is the only reason I can think of for all the opprobrium heaped on first Edwina Currie and then Frankie Boyle. The Thought Police are out in force. 

Political capital is being made, with all sides laying special claim to the caring crown. And then there’s the language! Disabled, handicapped, crippled, challenged, differently-abled, person-with-disabilities… even to the extent of referring to the rest of us as ‘non-disabled’. I wonder if, when talking about birds we should refer to humans as un-flighted, or differently-winged? 

The competitors, however they regard or refer to themselves, are of course in the minority. And such is our fear of appearing hurtful to minorities that we go out of our way to not only hamper our own language, but to suffer offence on their behalf, whether or not it is warranted. Free speech? Not bloody likely! 

So, just for a while, can’t we shut the fuck up with the partisan bickering and not give a damn about what somebody we’ve already made up our minds about says (or doesn’t say) about a subject on which, almost all of the time, we have absolutely no opinion? Just get out your flags and wave!