Remembering Frankie Boyle's best rant on his birthday

Today is Frankie Boyle's birthday, and so Indy100 is celebrating the comedian by recalling his best polemic against modern society.

Boyle's targets in the past have been media hypocrisy, Conservative voters, and anyone else unfortunate enough to stray into his sight lines. His stand up isn't vicious for its own sake, but is usually illustrative of hypocrisy in British culture. The routines are mix of breaking taboos, and then lecturing the audience for their hypocrisy for laughing at some jokes and then becoming self righteous about other jokes.

Arguably Boyle's best rant was on the topic of Jeremy Clarkson.

Speaking to Richard Osman at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in 2014, Boyle took issue with the fact that Clarkson was defended for using the racial slur 'n*er', while Boyle was censured for making a joke regarding Gaza.

Video: abezappruder/YouTube

So if there's no content, it's fine. So I did a joke about Israel's last assault on Gaza. I did two jokes on a show called 'Political Animal'. I was censured by the BBC Trust and they called the jokes anti-semitic, which they weren't. And I wrote a response. Clarkson tells a nursery rhyme that ends in the word 'n*er' and the BBC One controller is coming out to defend him and say he's not a racist. And the reason is, there's no content to what he's saying so it can be defended. If you want to defend what I'm saying you've got to actually talk about the situation in Gaza.

Osman went on to ask Boyle what he would do with Clarkson if he were his boss.

Sack him, because he's a cultural tumour. You know, he comes from a very bad place and the reason that he's tolerated is because he's recognised by people in power. They know people like Clarkson, in fact he knows [David] Cameron, he's a friend of Cameron's. He's in there like a f*ing growth and he should be removed because he's horrible.

Happy birthday, Frankie.

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