...watching a wounded antelope trying to bring down a wounded antelope
October 17, 2017 3:53 PM   Subscribe

Frankie Boyle in The Guardian: "Perhaps the next leader will be Boris Johnson, a man who sees genocide as the first stage of a planning application. Boris, a malevolent baked Alaska, is living out in public the great dramatic sweep of a life that asks what if a hero, instead of a single tragic flaw, had all of them. Or perhaps it will be David Davis, a man who seems to suffer from the same lack of imagination as his parents. Or Jacob Rees-Mogg (a man who has taken the phrase “stalking horse” rather too anthropomorphically), who, when he’s not on the run from Westworld: Victorian Britain, seems to be one of those people who flicks through the Old Testament looking for the sexy bits." (Contains very dark humor)
posted by Wordshore (27 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 


May’s attempts to deal with Brexit have all the conviction of someone whose long-term partner has developed a new fetish.

OK, not quite a spit take, but close. Well played, Mr. Boyle.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:24 PM on October 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


It was decidedly odd reading Frankie Boyle, whose person is almost entirely synonymous with his speaking voice for me, in writing.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:29 PM on October 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


I can't not read it in his voice in my head.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:41 PM on October 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Re: tories, labor & brexit. I'll repost this FT letter here in all its glory.
posted by lalochezia at 4:45 PM on October 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


Philip Hammond, a man who could send a wooden leg to sleep, a haunted suit with all the personal magnetism of Paul Scholes’s accountant, glimpsed through a fog.

That whole paragraph is wonderful, but this especially.
posted by Pink Frost at 4:54 PM on October 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


Okay, I don't get enough context to follow, well, nearly all of this. But nonetheless, allow me to repeat my reminder to myself to never annoy the English.
posted by Naberius at 5:09 PM on October 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Boris, a malevolent baked Alaska, is living out in public the great dramatic sweep of a life that asks what if a hero, instead of a single tragic flaw, had all of them.

I'm a Yank with a barely passing knowledge of the British political scene, but I am in total awe of that sentence nonetheless.
posted by dnash at 5:13 PM on October 17, 2017 [30 favorites]


like watching a wounded antelope trying to bring down a wounded antelope
posted by doctornemo at 5:38 PM on October 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


  But nonetheless, allow me to repeat my reminder to myself to never annoy the English.

gasps

Call Frankie Boyle a foul-mouthed layabout, a caustic-tongued facial arse-hair cultivator, a vile nihilistic off-gassing from Britain's decay … but never, ever, ever call him English.
posted by scruss at 5:41 PM on October 17, 2017 [36 favorites]


But the lesson is basically sound. Never annoy the Scots.
posted by Grangousier at 5:43 PM on October 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


This is Matt Taibbi level bitterness. Thank you.
posted by selfmedicating at 5:43 PM on October 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Frankie Boyle can often be a slightly guilty pleasure, because his righteous outrage turns into outright rancour. In this case, though, he uses the personal insult as beautiful metaphor to colour and enrich the condemnation of the venal behaviour, and, and,…

Man, it turns out that his purple prose style is infectious, even for those of us who are nothing like up to writing it as well as he does.
posted by ambrosen at 5:55 PM on October 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Would Frankie Boyle be angry if you said he was English? Yes, but he'd tell you in a way that meant that you knew an awful lot more about what it is to be Scottish and to be Glaswegian, and what the English should be ashamed of, but somehow perversely take an arsehole pride in, instead.
posted by ambrosen at 6:01 PM on October 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


I am so glad to discover that not only does Frankie Boyle have this piece, but a whole archive of stuff going back to 2014. Thank you!
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:07 PM on October 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


In the 1990s I liked Matthew Parris's political sketches in the London Times for its lovely, sharp tone ("...then came a barbed speech of unwelcome from a lady in a hat [HRH the Queen]..."), but this is...really something else.

How do I get more of this wonderful Frankie Boyle??
posted by wenestvedt at 7:11 PM on October 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Ten years ago I was once in the same room (debatable, see *) as Frankie Boyle and even though it was a taping of Mock the Week* I still get a strange sense of satisfaction when I think about it.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:16 PM on October 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


I didn't care much for Frankie Boyle on Mock the Week - ironically, after he left the current affairs panel show he became much more satirical and to my mind much funnier - but one of my favourite jokes is one of his from the Scenes We'd Like To See improv segment. (put your headphones on at work)
posted by Merus at 7:28 PM on October 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


His Distraction Pieces interview is a pretty interesting listen.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 8:12 PM on October 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I saw Frankie Boyle trying out some new material at a small London theatre last year. One guy in the third or fourth row was foolish enough to check his phone mid-set and Boyle ripped into him mercilessly for it. He unleashed a full-on burst of concentrated (and very funny) abuse into this guy's face, repeatedly telling him him what a cunt he was and explaining the many reasons why. It was quite a sight.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:02 AM on October 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


It took me a long time to warm to Frankie as before his current 'hate the tories' column phase of career he always seemed a bit too 'shocking for the sake of it' and stepping over the misogamy/homophobia boundaries (really, AIDs jokes?)

'Boris, a malevolent baked Alaska' is a phrase of genius though.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:14 AM on October 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


It took me a long time to warm to Frankie as before his current 'hate the tories' column phase of career he always seemed a bit too 'shocking for the sake of it' and stepping over the misogamy/homophobia boundaries

Indeed. I was conversing with some locals in a tavern last night about this, and someone drew an interesting parallel between Frankie Boyle and ... Eminem. How, when younger, their act was often based on homophobia and misogyny and now they're less about that and more focused, and sharper, about right-wing politics. Cue the recent Eminem video about Trump.
posted by Wordshore at 6:00 AM on October 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


He has a couple of free podcasts up at the moment with the title Prometheus. One his Edinburgh show from this year and the other is an audio book of his Guardian columns from 2014-2016.
posted by toamouse at 12:05 PM on October 18, 2017


Podcasts are on his site
posted by toamouse at 12:07 PM on October 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


My favorite line from him is when they were planning Thatcher's state funeral.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:36 PM on October 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Just to stress- the recent "podcast" is over 5 hours of him reading his columns from the past few years. Well worth it!
posted by Gratishades at 3:07 AM on October 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh, a follow-up piece:

"The key players include Liam Fox, a man who looks like he could finish a steak while looking at footage from Hiroshima; Boris Johnson, who for the first time finds himself in a cabinet without it involving someone saying: “Quick! My husband’s home early!”, and David Davis, Sid James after a This Morning makeover and a half-hearted tilt at therapy ...

... Jacob Rees-Mogg called the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, “an enemy of Brexit”. Rees-Mogg’s other enemies include the Jacobites, the concept of Progress and Velcro. Rees-Mogg is an imperial C-3PO, PG Wodehouse’s flirtation with fascism given physical form, and it’s tempting to write him off as one of those broad characters who arrives late in the life of a dying sitcom. Yet he serves a sinister purpose: as an outlier to provide a context in which Johnson seems a plausible prime minister. Many voters are complacent about Rees-Mogg, maybe because they feel like any minute now he’s going to be arrested by Poirot."
posted by Wordshore at 11:58 PM on October 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


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