“Well, maybe best not to vote for people who think of you as a 'herd'.”

April 5, 2020 1:54 AM

(CW: Dark coronavirus/pandemic humour) Frankie Boyle on the pandemic: “Mistakes have been made in the handling of the crisis. Like flying the Buckingham Palace flag at half mast when the Queen’s not in, which is just an advert for burglars. In my local park, someone has tried to cheer people up by chalking 'You Got This!' on the ground. Literally the last thing you want to hear in a pandemic.” ... “The Prime Minister has written to every household in the UK. As that letter lands on the doormat, I won’t be the only one who’ll be picking it up with a couple of snooker cues, like a contestant on a Japanese game show.” Previous Frankie: [1][2][3]
posted by Wordshore (26 comments total)

I love this, thank you.
posted by corb at 2:11 AM on April 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

Thanks, wow, this is like Sleaford Mods as stand-up - it has the 'voice' of stanstandup ... and Sleaford's humour and anger.
posted by unearthed at 2:37 AM on April 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Indeed, you have to wonder if the virus is so very different from extractive capitalism. It commandeers the manufacturing elements of its hosts, gets them to make stuff for it; kills a fair few, but not enough to stop it spreading. There is no normal for us to go back to. People sleeping in the streets wasn’t normal; children living in poverty wasn’t normal; ... Using other people’s lives to pile up objects wasn’t normal, the whole thing was absurd. Governments are currently busy pouring money into propping up existing inequalities, and bailing out businesses that have made their shareholders rich. The world’s worst people think that everybody is going to come out of this in a few months and go willingly back into a kind of numbing servitude. Surely it’s time to start imagining something better.

I hope he's right, but there's a troubling layer of totalitarianism/ control-of-the-populace behind what many governments are doing. I wonder if things don't have to get much worse and break completely before they can be fixed. That if they don't break completely, coming 'out' of this is going to reeeeeeallllly suck
posted by From Bklyn at 2:47 AM on April 5, 2020 [22 favorites]

Wordshore: "In my local park, someone has tried to cheer people up by chalking 'You Got This!' on the ground. Literally the last thing you want to hear in a pandemic.”"

That and "Stay positive!"
posted by chavenet at 3:06 AM on April 5, 2020 [35 favorites]

"For a handful of children in Britain that’ll have been the first contact they’ve had from their dad."
wow
posted by pickinganameismuchharderthanihadanticipated at 3:23 AM on April 5, 2020 [19 favorites]

So many ‘wow’s.
posted by MtDewd at 3:48 AM on April 5, 2020 [9 favorites]

I’m not saying the Labour leadership election went on too long, but human civilisation ended in the middle of it.

Hah. We were still in the EU when it started, too. Here's hoping Starmer can add to the pressure to sort out getting PPE for NHS staff so they can stop having to wear fucking binbags and ski goggles.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 4:09 AM on April 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

Good old Frankie. The misanthrope's misanthrope.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 4:36 AM on April 5, 2020 [9 favorites]

Frankie's a national treasure. Of course, he'd glass me for saying that.

If you want to hear his most recent wit, here are videos of four 30min travelogues . Equally wry and hilarious.

Frankie Boyle's Tour Of Scotland

Episodes 1,2,3,4
posted by lalochezia at 5:12 AM on April 5, 2020 [19 favorites]

Also: Frankie Boyle's 2019 New world order (year in review panel show, with guests)
posted by lalochezia at 5:15 AM on April 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

It’s distressing enough to be told that you’re being put on a ventilator, we shouldn’t be adding to that by having the news broken by a doctor wearing a Spiderman mask and boxing gloves.

It’s funny because it’s true. Laugh out loud and wake the home school kids at 6am funny.

Thanks for posting Wordshore.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 5:24 AM on April 5, 2020 [10 favorites]

Oh, Wordshore, thank you so much.
posted by Mister Bijou at 6:14 AM on April 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

Also the final paragraph in his last article on that site in 2018 about Brexit makes for a hell of a prescient foreword to this one.

A few years ago, Kanye West visiting Donald Trump in the Oval Office to show him designs of a hydrogen-powered plane would have been a suggestion shouted out at an improv night. Maybe we should keep an open mind about how much worse things can get.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:15 AM on April 5, 2020 [17 favorites]

So many good bits:

"Toby Young questioned whether there was an economic case for preserving the lives of the elderly and vulnerable, and at least showed a certain honesty by politically aligning himself with a deadly virus. There’s still a question mark over whether any virus would want to be associated with Toby Young, and at the time of writing both Ebola and AIDS have sought to distance themselves from his remarks. When Toby Young pops up on my TV, I can’t be the only person in the country who involuntary coughs at the screen. "
posted by doctornemo at 6:47 AM on April 5, 2020 [11 favorites]

Before the lockdown, old people in Glasgow, apparently determined to flood the housing market with cheap bungalows, looked like they had formed a search party to go and find the coronavirus. It was sinister just to catch sight of an old person in the distance: much like the feeling you get when you see an antelope in a nature documentary and know it’s not going to end well. I’m sure we all know fatalists from the older generation who are saying things like, “If I get it, I get it. There’s no point trying to avoid it.” Some of these people lived through the Blitz, and were presumably mental back then as well. While everyone was hunkered down in Anderson shelters in the dead of night listening to the Luftwaffe passing overhead, your grandad was probably up on the roof testing his Christmas lights.

Sheerest dark genius.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:07 AM on April 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

Setup, punch, repeat.

Relentless, and so very glad this made it across the Atlantic.
posted by furtive at 8:19 AM on April 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

Frankie Boyle is admired and loathed in equal measure. Many of the former convert to the latter when he spits poison at things that they happen to care about Frankie Boyle insults disabled and laughs at rape, but could he summon up the courage to mock the IRA? Of course not.
posted by epo at 8:21 AM on April 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

Yeah, Boyle's a bit of a weird one because this kind of political satire is properly excellent, but his career's built on gleefully crossing the line and a fair amount of punching down. He used to be a regular on Mock The Week where he had a lot of jokes cut for taste, until eventually I think they both got sick of each other.

I cannot bring myself to fault a Scottish comedian for not being foolish enough to mock the IRA in Ireland, however. That, to me, feels like covering oneself in honey and going for a walk in Ten Thousand Bears National Park.
posted by Merus at 10:00 AM on April 5, 2020 [12 favorites]

Using my Glasgow sectarian spideysense (which I wish I didn't have), the Belfast Telegraph is just a wee bit Protestant and Frankie Boyle is, well, not. So he's going to be a whole bunch more aligned with the IRA than the BT article writer. There's a chance that Margaret Thatcher was more aligned with the IRA than the average BT journo, though.

I'm not letting him off past (and possibly ongoing) homophobic and ableist slurs, even though UK media seems to let that slide.
posted by scruss at 10:50 AM on April 5, 2020 [13 favorites]

Nice to hear a bit of local context, thanks scruss.
posted by aleph at 12:44 PM on April 5, 2020

Dark humor like this is like the Covid virus itself: not everyone gets it.
posted by ocschwar at 1:37 PM on April 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Between that news about Borris being admitted to hospital and the Queen giving a special address to the nation today for only the 5th time in 68 years, in which she promises we’ll meet again, it really does feel like this is going to be quite the special week in the UK.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 2:04 PM on April 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

"villainous kneecap" is a fantastic epithet.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:14 PM on April 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

distressing enough to be told that you’re being put on a ventilator, we shouldn’t be adding to that by having the news broken by a doctor wearing a Spiderman mask and boxing gloves

He's actually choosing to look on the bright side here; imagine what they might be wearing when they tell a patient they're not being put on a ventilator.
posted by jamjam at 3:25 PM on April 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

> universal vaccines

Honestly, he was doing so well until he played the "Big Pharma" card.
posted by Leon at 5:11 PM on April 5, 2020

Turns out you’re working from home. Trying to get a spreadsheet about bodybags finished before the provisional deadline of your own death.

I had to laugh: my fiance is a mortician and was doing exactly this the other day!
posted by traveler_ at 12:52 PM on April 6, 2020