I ordinarily despise Katie Price and everything she stands for. But this time, I'll make an exception:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/de ... atie-price

http://www.mrpaparazzi.com/post/13512/K ... ense-.aspx (the actual statements, for anyone who missed them)

Sooner or later, the "You know what to expect" defence is going to have to fail, because all it creates is a feedback loop as he tries to be more and more edgyagainst a lack of boundaries.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't believe that picking on a disabled child for something they can't help is acceptable. Especially a specific one by name - even one whose mother is quite happy to flaunt him in front of the cameras when the publicity suits her. The poor kid didn't ask to come out of the clothes horse.

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"If the past really is a foreign country, I'm surprised that 'The Daily Mail' would want to live there.” - Roger Quimbly

It really is cutting edge taking the piss out of a disabled child isn't it? Fight the Power Frankie!

I saw the first episode of his new show - jokes about George Michael wanking. Oh my aching sides.

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I felt a sense of real despondency earlier when I first stubbed my foot on this story. Why the fuck would anybody class a profoundly disabled child as fair game?

The whole thing reminds me of Jim Davidson at his absolute worst. It isn't funny, it isn't satire and it doesn't pass the David Brent car.crash test. In fact it is just plain old cheapskate cuntery.

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Meh, it's not a good joke but who cares, it's not like the kid is going to read it.....

Apparently the show is tanking in the ratings - Boyle's "let's be as offensive as possible" routine is obviously starting to wear thin...

Now that was better than Frankie's effort.



What's the "Car Crash test"?

You know, I'm a bit more sympathetic to Frankie on this one. First of all, I don't really think that referring to the disabled offspring of a professional media whore in the course of stand-up comedy act really can be said to constitute "bullying" the child, as has been claimed. And as Channel 4 has said,



With which it's hard to disagree. Bernard Manning used to say that kiddies with disabilities was the only subject he wouldn't tell a joke about - while being more than happy routinely to put out the most repugnantly racist and sexist material imaginable. I don't think you'll get Frankie doing racist or sexist stuff, but barbed surreal gags about people who have become wealthy through a career based entirely on living their lives publically (and in Price's case she seems to have been perfectly happy to talk about her son to the media and permit her son to be photographed) are, as far as I can see, fair game for Frankie. Katie Price might have had her feelings hurt by this, but I do think it's a tad rich for her to complain about a professional comic taking the piss out of her.

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As I said initially: I despise that woman and everything she stands for. But it's a bit much to claim that it's acceptable to ridicule her child for her stupidity. The kid didn't get a choice to be spawned from her or to be born disabled (very probably due to her inability to refuse a bottle during the pregnancy). He also has no choice about being used as her media tool and due to those disabilities, has no prospect of being able to fight back or emancipate himself in future.

It shouldn't be different if it was someone else's kid.


What does constitute "bullying", then? For me, the excuse that it doesn't count if it's behind someone's back and/or they won't hear about it expires when you're about six years old.

As with the Liddle/Burchill offspring - it's bad enough that your parents have to play their entire lives out in the public eye without having to read that you were dragged into it, too.

I know that I'm perilously close to using a "Think of the children!" defence - which I don't like - and I'll freely admit that this is probably one of my personal "fluffy bunny" issues, but I don't think that my points're less valid for the fact I've been on the end of that sort of bullying myself. As I said when the DM ran a particularly sensationalist and inaccurate article on my own disability: people read that crap. And they talk about that crap. And they believe that crap and pass it on to other people, because they think that it's acceptable. And it perpetuates because their kids think it is, and so on.

Which is why we complain to the DM mods and the PCC about articles on immigration and non-white people and suchlike. For me, it's the same here. For all Katie Price is a massive hypocrite who'll milk this complaint for sympathy for all it's worth, I don't think that she should be disqualified from complaining when the complaint isn't about her.

Yes, it's reprehensible to use a disabled child to get attention. But how is that any different from what poor, victimised, censored, put-upon Frankie just did? Personally, I'd expect any Ofcom verdict to point that out, in much the same way as the Naomi Campbell versus The Mirror court case a few years ago.


Again, where was the kid's choice to be stuck in the spotlight? What Frankie is doing is using the child to attack the mother - is he not good enough to come up with a decent joke attacking Jordan on her own?

And where was the intelligence, wit and satire in that remark, anyway? I must've blinked and missed it.

Also, plenty of comics moderate their act from stand-up to TV. Witness the contract between the number of times Russell Howard uses the word "rape" in his DVDs and on the BBC. But the "Well, what do you expect?" defence from the platform is still rather pathetic. You can defend anything up to and including snuff movies and televised happy slapping with that, as long as you label it first.


But again, this is about the child, not the mother. I think that Channel Four and Frankie Boyle could both've remembered that in the first place. The key idea here is that somebody could've shown some responsibility and restraint when the mother won't. Two wrongs don't equal the moral high ground.

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"If the past really is a foreign country, I'm surprised that 'The Daily Mail' would want to live there.” - Roger Quimbly

But the kid is never going to be affected by this. Can bullying happen if there isn't an effect on the victim?


And I don't have a problem with this.


But taking the piss out of a crippled kid isn't anywhere near crippling the kid in the first place.

Once we start censoring jokes then we might as well give up.And yes, that means we have to put up with Jim Davidson and Roy"Chubby" Brown too.

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There's a difference between censoring and saying that something is distasteful or unacceptable. When you say someone should not say something, that is not the same as saying they cannot say something. I'm not sure Ofcom getting involved is appropriate, because a fine of some sort would ultimately amount to saying "no you cannot say that", but on the other hand I agree that the defence of "you know what to expect" cannot stand forever. If it does, that means we have no recourse when the Daily Mail and its cohorts in the right wing media incite the stringing up of gays and gypsies, because we all know what to expect from them.

It's a complicated issue, but I just don't see why it is necessary to target jokes at disabled children. It's the sort of thing that a comedian should be able to self-censor, knowing it will achieve nothing more than hurt feelings... except self-serving controversy. I suppose I am hoping that a moral compass would guide a comedian rather than an authoritarian rulebook.

I think his new program is shit to be honest. He is trying too hard to be overly offensive purely because thats his brand of comedy, the jokes are no longer funny, just crap. But, perhaps Jordan should have thought about playing put every aspect of her life in front of the TV cameras, if she didn't want her family to be game for comedians then she should have lived a little more privately, you know, like a lot of normal people do.

And didn't people on here say exactly that about Mr. Russell Brand and Mr. Jimmy Carr not that long ago when they got into trouble for jokes they made?

Or is it only OK to like it when the Daily Mail doesn't?

Personally, Abernathy and storygirl have hit this nail squarely on its head. If Jordan / Katie Price doesn't want people to talk about her disabled son she shouldn't parade him in front of the media in the first place simply to please the OK! photographers.

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I don't think he should be censored. I just think he's an unfunny cunt, but so what?

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Regarding Jimmy Carr and Russell Brand:

Brand/Ross first of all. The butt of their 'joke' was not Andrew Sachs. It was his granddaughter. As far as I'm aware, she chose to sleep with Brand. Ross then made a joke of it, and Brands/Baillies sexual proclivities. If anyone was being ridiculed, it was a grown woman who makes her looks and sexuality her means of making a living, and her taste in men. Perhaps I could say something about the double standards here, in which Brand is seen as a sexual tyrannosaurus but Baillie is seen as a slapper, but if I do that I'll be here all night. Anyway. The 'controversy' wasn't really about Brand or Ross. It was an opportunity for the press to put the boot into the BBC for their own reasons. If it hadn't been them, there would have been another 'scandal' forcing the BBC to go on the defensive and fire a few people.

Carr: a classic case of "You don't know, you weren't there", if we're talking about disabled soldiers and the Paralympics. The joke had apparently been doing the rounds of the armed forces for a while, and Carr picked it up when either visting recuprating troops (which he does with very little publicity) or from someone in the army. Perhaps being shot at earns you the right to make a joke about the experience, just like Jackie Mason and Mel Brooks (and many other Jewish comics) used to crack wise about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. Or Chris Rock doing a routine about "Blacks vs niggers". The humour comes from the experience I suppose.

Onto Boyle. You know what he reminds me of? Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish once did a great sketch sending up Chris Morris's "Jam", called "Goitre", in which they were pointlessly disgusting and morbid for the sake of it. "Oh, what's this clogging up your TV set? A dead baby!". That's Boyle, just looking to be controversial and offensive for the sake of it. And it does become a form of bullying. "Oh, can't handle it, eh? Well, fuck off out of the theatre or change channel then!". How many people are watching and laughing, not because they really do find it funny, but because they think that by appearing to find it funny, they appear to be cool and acceptable in the eyes of whatever band of media shitehawks are determining what's hot or not this week?

The other week, I gave "Robert's Web" a try, and it was intermittently funny (actors reading out genuine Mail reader comments but - oh, get this - dressed in stockings and suspenders (the men, that is), 'cos you know, all Mail readers are secretly perverts and weirdos, yeah? Well, no. The point is that people can come out with shockingly offensive views without having some badge of weirdness. That's the scary thing. Fascists don't have three heads and breathe fire. They're just ordinary people. Anyway, the programme lays into that toughest of targets, Dave Benson Phillips. And I was genuinely furious.

Dave Benson Phillips is a children's TV presenter, who does a hell of a lot of work off-camera putting on theatre shows for autistic, deaf, blind and disabled kids, giving them and their families the experience of a night out at the panto that they otherwise just wouldn't get. He advises on sensory story packs for kids who can't experience your typical story book. He does all of this for very little recognition or material reward. I only found out about it through work done with various charities such as BagBooks. But what did the programme makers decide was the thing to pick up on? Well, on his webste, DBP says that occasionally people mistake him for Lenny Henry. At this point Robert Webb basically says "HA HA HA! WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, DAVE? THINK WE GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU? THINK YOU'RE FUCKING SOMETHING, EH? YOU BIG TWAT!".

If you want to, there are plenty of comedians out there who combine offensiveness with an intelligence and awareness of their place in, and the development of, stand-up comedy. Stewart Lee, Richard Herring, Jerry Sadowitz... ...and then there are paople like Boyle, propped up by whatever cabal of fucking Nathans have set themselves up as the arbiters of cool, who everyone else is so shit-scared of being seen as uncool in their eyes, that we all just laugh along, and tell anyone not joining in to either 'get a sense of humour', or fuck off back to their Michael Macintyre DVDs.

When Heat magazine laid into Harvey Price, Charlie Brooker leapt to his defence (recounted in "The Hell of it All"). Harvey is not responsible for his parentage, or his mother's behaviour. He can't tell his mother not to stick him in front of a camera - if she sees him as a prop in her quest for the limelight, it's not his fault. He can hardly tell her to fuck off and leave him alone now, can he? Hell, if Katie Price believes that parading her family in front of the cameras is the way to keep the dough rolling in and the kids with the standard of living she wants for them, that's up to her, and up to her to handle any criticism of her behaviour. But Harvey's a kid, he's not like the older Osbourne daughter who wanted nothing to do with her own family's TV show. HE DOESN'T HAVE A SAY IN THE MATTER.

Joke about the mum. Joke about the way she uses the kid. Just don't joke about the kid. OK?

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