Saturday 17 June 2017

Sombre mood

It’s (nearly) my official birthday and I’m releasing a statement: ‘It’s difficult to escape a very sombre mood’ in the country.” And would you believe it, on her official birthday The Queen agreed with me.

A very sombre mood

Terrorist attacks, Jeremy Corbyn set to become the next Prime Minister, the Conservative Party imploding just as we’re about to commit Brexit, Al Quds day tomorrow and the BBC whipping up more and more indignation and fury with its wall-to-wall coverage of those increasingly familiar days-of-rage, sparked off (sorry) by the Grenfell Tower inferno. It’s all part and parcel of living in this country don’t you know, and we’ll just have to get used to it.

As if all that wasn’t sombre enough, on top of that the BBC aired a programme last night featuring a whole load of those really annoying people who always, always laugh at nothing. You know them. They’re the ones about whom you’re thinking ‘why are you laughing like that, you moron’.

Where do they get these people?    Are they real? Like, actually sitting in the audience, laughing at swearing? Or are they spliced in at a later date?

That must be it. I think I know how they do it. Frankie Boyle and clebs from the BBC’s favourite pool of same-olds perform their tedious Theresa May / Donald Trump routines in front of the green background. Then the technical department splices in the laughing audience, which was actually filmed watching people falling down on  “You’ve been Framed”. They do this to make Frankie Boyle look amusing.
Unfortunately things turned out more sombre than ever. Is Frankie Boyle Susan’s brother? Can he sing or anything?

Frankie Boyle’s New World Order is the title of the programme. It's an ironic title - so ironic it's not. Wearing an oddly retro suit and waistcoat combo that made him look portly and awkward Mr. Boyle poured his little heart out. What was wrong with him? It seems that he had a bottled-up stream of resentment against Theresa May and Donald Trump he needed to offload, and the BBC generously gave him a safe space to do so. Sara Pascoe and Katherine Ryan made one or two predictable quips and the diversity quota came in the form of the finger-wagging Mona Chalabi and that American who appeared (mysteriously) on Question Time last week.



“It’s amazing to thunk that that’s the best election result that we could’ve hoped fur. The Conservatuves formung a co-ulushuon with the poluticul wung of the auld testimunt” He said. Oh how they laughed.


All the ire was directed at Theresa May / the DUP and Donald Trump. Not even a squeak about Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, Emily Thornberry, Seumas Milne, John McDonnell or Sadiq Khan, let alone the perpetrators of the three recent terrorist attacks, which, one would think would have merited at least a tad of ire.

Sombre mood indeed.

2 comments:

  1. Wee Frankie's nae fool.

    He knows the days of getting away with non PC anti-feminist and anti-disabled jokes is long past. His only hope of getting a secure place in TV Land is by indulging in ritual hate of the Tories and Trump...he's gone off the Boyle hasn't he?

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  2. How true. But it does gladden the heart to see how the license money is spent. Mock the Week is another case in point. I marvel at the knowing self-indulgence of these programmes and the seeming unanimity of the audience's response.

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