Scotland’s Jesus: The Only Officially Non-racist Comedian

by Frankie Boyle

  We seem to have problems with snow every year now – isn’t it about time they started making paths out of salt? People moan when trains and flights are cancelled because of snow. It’s like what they really want is pilots to come on the radio and say, ‘Hi, it’s probably too dangerous to take off, but fuck it, let’s give it a go. Who’s with me?’

  Which reminds me, I’m supposed to be talking about transport. Rail fares are up by 11 per cent but I’m not going to slag the rail companies off. Some of these new services have great views from the top deck. How do these executives come up with that figure? My best guess is that they spend most of their days on their own trains, going nowhere, staring at the tracks heading off in to the distance. Subconsciously those track lines get processed as 11 per cent. So if we want cheaper train fares in future you know what to do: if you ever find yourself travelling next to a rail executive, pluck his eyes out with your plastic M&S spoon.

  Rail bosses denied they’ve consistently missed performance targets, pointing out they’ve met the most important one, to get 100 per cent of price rises arriving on time.

  Some people haven’t been affected by the rise in rail fares. Justin Lee Collins, for example, won’t have to travel to work ever again. I tried travelling free by hiding in the toilet. But it was too much faff squeezing behind that panel. And by the time we’d got anywhere I was hoarse from blowing people’s hands dry.

  Commuters have reacted furiously to the price rises. Many of them let their eyes glaze over as they pretend to read the Metro, lost in hypothesising the ‘maximum damage for minimum bullet’ route from their office to the roof, before emitting quiet sighs of relief as they picture being picked off by a marksman in a police helicopter.

  But there’s an easy way round it. Head to a collectors’ fair and buy some Victorian tickets for the relevant line, then just by growing a huge moustache, popping on a top hat and dusting yourself in flour, pass yourself off as a ghost. Just be sure to remember to go, ‘A Kit Kat, whooooooh, and a bag of Mini-oooooooo-Cheddars . . . eddars . . . eddars . . .’ when the trolley arrives.

  The completion of the high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham could be delayed until after 2027. Meaning the announcement of delays is well ahead of schedule. We can be damn proud that we’re able to announce delays to projects before they’ve even started. It’s lucky it’s a high-speed link or it would be delayed until 2079.

  The high-speed rail initiative will reduce journey times to Birmingham at a cost of £32 billion. For that sort of cash I imagine they’re going to achieve this by building a replica London somewhere around Wigan. I’m certain that any form of transport that can get you out of Birmingham at 225 mph will be welcomed by everyone. Passengers will now be able to say, ‘How much? But it’s just a coffee and a Snickers!’ at previously unimaginable speeds.

  Most of the track will be hidden, although I suspect a train going past at nearly 230 mph might just alert you as to where it is. There’s going to be over twenty miles of tunnels – so at least there’ll be somewhere for Cameron to hide when rebels decide to hunt him down like Gaddafi. The government would have more support spending £32 billion burying Birmingham under a tunnel and leaving the train on display. With the way the recession is going it’ll end up just being a Megabus whose driver has a weight in his right shoe. The completion date for the new train route is 2033. They set that date because that’s when the last remaining commuter starts working from home.

  • • •

  Hellishly enough, they’re privatising the roads. Let’s hope it goes as well as rail privatisation, so that in ten years’ time we’ll struggle to even get a seat in our own cars. More tollbooths will ensure traffic runs smoothly by having everyone standing completely still, waiting for a tourist to find £2.30 in change.

  We already have roads only the wealthy can use. I mean, have you seen the price of petrol? Cameron called for us to show the ambition of the Victorians – so we should aspire to enslave half the world, masturbate at the memory of seeing a woman’s elbow and die from mumps. The coalition wants to privatise the roads, NHS, schools, pretty much all services the state currently provides – soon the only way to get around will be to cut a hole in your pocket and leave a trail of 50p coins wherever you go.

  I was stunned by rumours of price rigging by Shell and BP. It’s totally shaken my belief in the benevolence of faceless multinational corporations. I just hope it’s not true, as I can’t stand the idea of being phoned twice a day by some prick asking me whether I’ve been mis-sold any premium unleaded. The government’s right to have a go at oil companies for sneakily adding a few pence to petrol. That’s their job. I decided to try living without petrol but it’s hard. It took me over an hour just to push the car to the top of our street. Cameron says the oil companies will face the full force of the law. If he takes as hard a line as he did with the bankers they could risk having their fuel-selling division separated from the one that sells pasties.

  To be fair, oil companies have been very careful about price fixing over the last ten years; they only put up petrol prices when the price of oil rose and when it fell. Let’s remember that forecourt petrol sales in the UK have actually fallen by 20 per cent over the past five years – a sign of the damaging impact that peace in Northern Ireland has had on the economy. It’s estimated that the oil companies have ripped British motorists off by £300 billion. To put that into perspective, that’s enough to fill the petrol tanks of almost a dozen cars. Despite BP being responsible for the Deepwater Horizon accident, the worst oil spill in US history, their profits have more than tripled this year. This seems reasonable; maybe there’s just more of a market for dead pelicans than anyone knew.

  Skint Britons are switching to mobility scooters to get round the high cost of motoring. Worries they’ll block the pavements have led to immediate complaints from cycling groups. They may only be designed to go at 6 mph, but I got one up to 30 on the downhill. Only for a moment, though, then the caravan jack-knifed. OK, mobility scooters may not be that quick, but dey certainly get all dat sweet Day Centre pussy cumin to da TV Room winda, kna-wha-am-sayin, bro? If the price of petrol goes any higher, people might be forced to walk to the shops.

  Lots of new road building has been announced. The most expensive road project will be the A14 between Huntingdon and Cambridge. Is this a priority? People are losing benefits but students at an elite university can soon visit a poisoned monkey and be back home in time to smash up a tea room. It will take three years for these roads to be re-built; think of all the things that could happen in three years – in three years that girl who ran off with her maths teacher will be on her seventh Nuts cover after having been voted out of Celebrity Big Brother for not being able to add up the shopping budget, but at least when she finally throws herself in front of traffic on the A1 it will be nice and smooth.

  They always announce the cuts first, then the spending the next day – like a violent husband waking up the morn-ing after and trying to make it up to you by buying you a road. No one has a job, so where are they going to on these roads? I suppose no matter how penniless people get they will still want to live as far away from their in-laws as possible. It appears that there are ten potholes for every mile of road in Britain. That’s pretty dangerous – I’d recommend putting your Scotch into a beaker with a stopper before setting off.

  More 20 mph speed limits are to be rolled out. Good, it’s safer. Although journeys might take a little longer, we can just use the extended driving times as a chance to catch up on texts and emails. It’ll mean more speed cameras but if you get flashed just do what I do. Rig up a magnetron from an old microwave to your car battery and fire it at the big yellow box to fog the film . . . even if it doesn’t work, this lump now growing on my head means I look nothing like the photo they’ll have of me at the DVLA.

  You’ll be fined if you use your mobile while driving, even if you’re playing Mario Kart on your iPhone to practise your driving skills. Eighty driver
s were sent police warnings after using mobiles to snap an accident on the M1 while driving. That’s wrong. Far better to pull over, then change into your US cop costume, sneak up to the wreckage and stride purposefully from the flames like a T-1000. There’s also to be a £90 fine for smoking at the wheel. They won’t get me; I’ve just had my giant briar pipe electroplated as there’s nothing in the rules about driving while playing the sax.

  Recent research shows that one in eight drivers can’t see properly in the dark. There’s a simple solution – people with glasses should only be allowed to drive solar-powered cars. I sometimes drive when I’ve forgotten my glasses. It’s not dangerous, as I’d know if I were about to hit someone by the panic in the sat nav’s voice.

  And speaking of dangerous driving, George Michael fell out of a car door on a busy motorway! Great to see him taking a break from singing to get back to what he does best. Poor George. He now has no choice but to do another world tour as it’s the only way he can fund his next insurance premium. The police investigating the accident were looking for an explanation, then they saw George and went, ‘Ah, right.’ He’s set to be the first person to be banned from travelling in the passenger seat of a car.

  In much the same way as travellers favour a St Christopher, Middle Eastern truck bombers now clutch an effigy of George before driving at US embassies. I guess there was only so long George could look at the white line in the middle of the road whizzing past without wanting to hop out and attempt to snort it. There’s been a suggestion that George tried to commit suicide. I don’t believe it. After all, if he really wanted to hurt himself he’d have tried to park. It will be difficult to charge George with any kind of offence, as although he was caught on a speed camera going over the limit he has the unusual loophole defence that he wasn’t in a car at the time.

  George’s car needed work after the incident, requiring a new honky-honky horn and a bit more custard in the radiator. He was rushed to hospital, regaining consciousness just long enough on his trolley to plough it into an A&E vending machine.

  *Hopefully, you’re reading this on a Kindle or similar so it’ll seem a lot less hypocritical of me.

  4

  WAR ON TERROR

  The Batman villain The Scarecrow produces a fear gas that gives his victims terrifying hallucinations. I was laughing with my kid the other day, saying that Batman got hit with the fear gas on an early mission and everything else is just the effects of the gas on him. The larger-than-life villains are just local teenagers being beaten to a pulp by this madman. He probably doesn’t even put his costume on. The Joker is just some children’s entertainer who gets regularly victimised during his flashbacks and The Penguin is a local pigeon.*

  Really we’ve all had a blast of the fear gas. If you see a Muslim on a plane and think terrorist, that’s a delusion. People walk about thinking they’re going to be mugged or raped, and do you know why? They’re pumping us full of fear gas, man, and it gets into the house through your TV. That’s why in the Western world, in these times of plenty and no real threats, we’re governed by stress, the hormonal response to danger and famine.

  Politics nowadays isn’t so different from the way things were during the time of the Roman conquests. After their military victories the Romans held parades called ‘Triumphs’, in which the leader of a conquered territory would be paraded through the streets of Rome, symbolising in his person his defeated people. Compare this to Saddam and Gaddafi, and their very public deaths. Why did the Romans conquer? To provide popular support for their leaders and benefit financially from other countries’ resources.

  The Romans would enlist local leaders into their service by offering them money and patronage. It’s not so different from David Cameron’s relationship with our modern Romans. Oh, and the Romans aren’t the Americans by the way; they’re the corporations. The corporate interests that control the US thus control much of the world, like a modern empire. We’re just one of those tribes whose leaders have struck a deal, so we ignore the plight of the imperial slaves who make our phones and we ignore our own people when they starve on our streets.

  And, of course, we think of the Romans as this civilising force because we’re a product of the Romans. They were barbaric brutes who crucified their enemies and got the popcorn out for prisoners being mauled by lions and bears. Similarly, we think of the corporate US as a democratising, civilising force because we grew up under its cultural occupation and have internalised its values.

  There are the literal meanings of words and then there are the doctrinal meanings. The doctrinal meanings are what things are understood to mean within the system and are often different from literal meanings. So, for example, ‘terrorism’ literally means something done to terrorise the general population. Yet Britain and the US terrorise civilians every day with drone strikes and so forth, but we don’t call this ‘terrorism’. The doctrinal meaning of ‘terrorism’ is that it only includes acts against us, not by us – a pretty important shift of meaning.

  I saw this recently when the comedian Stewart Lee wrote an article titled ‘Where are all the right-wing stand-ups?’ Lee’s career since he got his own show is a bit like that episode where Father Ted gets an award and uses his speech to bitterly settle scores with everyone he’s ever met. Anyway, it’s interesting doctrinally, and interesting to me because Lee dismisses the idea that I’m a left-wing comedian. He wrote, ‘The Daily Mail inexplicably demonises Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle as “politically correct left-wingers”, yet to sensitive souls they appear callous, apolitical nihilists’, but at the end of the same paragraph he concludes I’m ‘too likely to be bluntly anti-war or pro-Palestinian to help Radio 4 out of its Trotskyite ghetto’. Of course, he’s absolutely right in strictly doctrinal terms because doctrinally ‘left-wing comedian’ means ‘a middle-class person concerned about social issues’. These will typically be people talking against the coalition, cuts and so on, but who generally draw the line at being bluntly anti-war or pro-Palestine.

  Of course, to people outside a doctrinal system these things can look very strange. You’d have to explain to them that Stewart Lee – an Oxbridge graduate with a militant anti-piracy stance who appears on BBC Two punching up at the big targets of the day, such as the autobiography of Chris Moyles, mild-mannered comic Russell Howard and the ugliness of Adrian Chiles – is in fact a political comic. Someone like me, who was described by the Daily Mirror as a ‘racist comedian’ after a career of telling anti-racist, anti-war jokes, who took the newspaper to court and used the damages to help a Guantanamo Bay prisoner sue MI6 for defamation – I’m apolitical.

  That’s the real reason doctrinal thinking is encouraged: it fosters an ability to be deeply irrational. Possessing the moral agility required to say that blowing up civilians with flying bombs is not ‘terrorism’, or even simply to call Paddy McGuinness a ‘comedian’, is tremendously useful to a society like ours. Because we don’t really need commentators to explain or reason; we need them to justify.

  Of course, you’re welcome to take Stewart Lee’s view that the best place to criticise the behaviour of a crocodile is from inside its belly, perhaps in the hope that some day you will be so counter-cultural and innately radical that you’ll be given your own show on BBC Two and the opportunity to edit Radio 4’s Today programme. I’d argue that would never happen with a genuinely left-wing comedian who thought outside of the doctrinal system. Someone like Bill Hicks or George Carlin would have raised too many awkward questions. For a start, they’d have written an article titled ‘Where are all the left-wing stand-ups?’

  As soon as you enter into something doctrinally important, language becomes charged and contested. In Iraq, troops fighting the US were called ‘insurgents’ in the BBC coverage. That’s quite an important choice of word, as an insurgency is something that happens against a legitimate government rather than, say, an occupying foreign army. In Libya, the troops trying to overthrow Gaddafi were referred to on the BBC as ‘activists’. Like
they were the sort of people who’d get a petition up about him, rather than publicly sodomise him to death. The doctrinal importance of attacks on American soil is semi-religious. Blood spilled in the Temple. The Boston bombers got the same publicity they’d have achieved by attacking the Kabul Marathon with a dinosaur.

  The modern doctrinal era begins with the destruction of the World Trade Center. The Americans, in an understand-able rage at the half-million dollar cost of the attack being funded by Saudi Arabia and carried out largely by Saudi Arabians, invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s good to remember that in years to come this whole period we’re living through will be written off in a couple of sentences under the heading ‘The Oil Wars’. ‘Britain over-reached itself in the Oil Wars, was destroyed, and became Sexcamp 3 for Workers of Shanghai MegaProvince’, the history books will read, as they sit in a petrol-soaked pyramid waiting to be lit as a warning signal to the Lastmen of the Garbagecities that their enemies the Crabmen have begun their final sideways march out of the sea.

  Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said we should be proud of what we’ve done to promote peace in Afghanistan. He plans to visit soon; he’s just waiting till they’ve found a full Kevlar bodysuit in his size. We went into Afghanistan to get bin Laden and our mission there is more important than ever, now that we killed him, quite a while ago, in Pakistan.

  The US is to open direct peace talks with the Taliban after more than a decade of war. Good to see the US has only waited twelve years and the loss thousands of lives before resorting to ‘speaking’ to them. The meeting will take place at the Taliban’s new office in Doha – I like the fact they’re opening new branches, so long as it doesn’t get like Starbucks where you’ve got a Taliban on every high street. I wonder why they need an office – perhaps they’re branching out and are going to start dealing with both insurgencies and van hire. I bet it’ll be another call centre – we’ll be plagued by the Taliban ringing up to ask if we need replacement windows or do we want to wait until after the car bombing?