Frankie Boyle’s TV show, New World Order, has not been renewed by the BBC, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth by his fans – of which there are many. It’s OK though. He’s back on telly anyway, in the new series of the genuinely-beloved Channel 4 game show Taskmaster, alongside Jenny Eclair, Mae Martin and Ivo Graham. The BBC haven’t given a reason for cancelling New World Order, though the statement announcing the news did include the line, “We look forward to seeing what he does next on the BBC”, so we can assume it wasn’t an issue with his style or content (though Boyle, posting on Twitter that the decision was “not surprising in the current climate”, seemed to imply that he was actually too left-wing for the BBC).
This is interesting, because it wasn’t that long ago that Boyle was a pariah for almost the opposite reason. After an ill-advised jab on Mock The Week at swimmer Rebecca Adlington’s appearance, a horrible tweet about raping cyclist Victoria Pendleton and, most infamously, a run of offensive jokes about Katie Price’s disabled son on the immediately-cancelled Channel 4 show Frankie Boyle’s Tramadol Nights (including a punchline about then-eight-year-old Harvey raping his mother), there wasn’t a mainstream channel in Britain that would touch him. He’d gone too far.
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