Ronan Grace, Frankie Boyle & Tuesday at Six

Atletico Spudland

This week on The Comedy Cast, we speak to Kerry comedian Ronan Grace, Frankie Boyle is our Legend of Comedy and our band guest is Tuesday at 6.

Comedy Podcast

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Ronan Grace is our stand-up guest and we speak about comedy in the age of social media. We speak too about his time with the Fact YouTube channel, how he became involved and the troupe of Albuquerque kids who still follow him on Twitter thanks to it. We speak too about him falling a bit out of love with comedy and how thankfully he’s back in love with what he’s best at and how he keeps motivated to become better.

Social media is a weird thing and as someone who would be instantly recognisable to fans of the Facts videos I wanted to speak to him about people of our vintage, as he says himself, and how we don’t really get social media properly. We do get nerdy about comedy, Ronan has been at stand-up a lot longer than the Facts channel has been around so we speak about how and why he got into it, how it lead to him leaving college over his pursuit of a career in stand-up and how it all kind of lead to him falling out of love with stand-up.

He took a long, hard look at himself then and came to the realisation, thankfully, that he still wanted to do stand-up so he’s got a new vigour for the craft and personally I’m delighted. Ronan’s a brilliant stand-up and I hope loads and loads more people get to see him all across the country over the coming years. Follow Ronan on Twitter here.

Next up myself and Seamus Kelly speak about none other than Frankie Boyle. We’re both huge fans of one of Scotland’s most famous comedians so it was a delight to speak about one of our favourites on the podcast.

Frankie Boyle

Legend of Comedy

Francis Martin Patrick Boyle was born on August 16 1972 to Irish Catholic parents in Pollockshaws, Glasgow. After leaving school he worked as a library assistant before going to college to study Urban Planning. He soon left the course and instead enrolled in a BA in English Literature at the university of Sussex.

At 22, he had graduated college and began working at a mental health hospital but soon returned to Scotland and went to a teacher training college. He worked in a couple of school on placements but by then his career in stand-up was kicking off and he didn’t have to stay teaching long.

In 2005 he got his big television break on the new BBC comedy panel show, Mock the Week, the first episode aired on June 5th, 2005 and Frankie Boyle was a regular guest on the show until he left in September 2009.

Of course the show is hosted by Ireland’s Dara O’Brian who once described Frankie Boyle as ‘the dark heart of Mock the Week.”

In a Facebook post when he quit the programme he said that the show did not cover enough major news stories, and was too restrictive on his risqué comedy act because the producers and the BBC Trust were afraid of “frightening the horses”. We can all certainly agree that the show went to shit when Boyle left.

In 2008 while the whole Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross phone call thing was going on, Boyle came to the attention of of a Tory MP, David Davies, yes the same one who failed so miserably at the Brexit talk, who chimed in regarding one of his jokes saying it was a ‘disgracefully foul comment’. During a repeat of Mock the Week, no doubt that Davies had seen on Dave, Boyle made a joke about the British Queen when he said “I am now so old, my pussy is haunted” The BBC Trust rapped Boyle on the knuckles saying the joke was sexist and ageist.

Since quitting Mock the Week, Frankie Boyle has had a number of television programmes, most of which have courted controversy. The first of which was 2010’s Tramadol Nights, where he hit the headlines for making fun of the child of Katie Price. She and her partner at the time Peter Andre were in a custody battle over her son Harvey, who’s father is former Manchester United player Dwight Yorke. Harvey suffers from a rare disease and Boyle joked that the loser of the custody fight would have to keep the poor lad.

Boyle has long been a supporter of Palestine over the years, during a BBC 4 radio show in 2010 he described the conflict as “a cake being punched to pieces by a very angry Jew”

And again in 2018 he accused BBC television producers of “editing out” comments he made on New World Order (his latest BBC programme) about Palestinian deaths on the Gaza border and his joke about “Israel being an Apartheid state.”

In July 2011 he sued the Daily Mirror after the called him a ‘racist comedian’ in an article that alleged he was forced to quit Mock the Week. He won and donated the damages of almost 55,000 pounds to charity.

A supported of Scottish Independence, Boyle is a former alcoholic and drug user, who drank solidify from the ages of 15 to 26. He’s also a massive hiphop fan and supported of Glasgow Celtic. He has said that his biggest comedic influences were Billy Connolly and Bill Hicks

Quote: If you get offended by any jokes tonight, by the way, feel free to Tweet your outrage on a mobile phone made by a ten year old in China.

Finally then we welcome Wexford band Tuesday at 6 onto the podcast to speak about their debut EP, writing and recording their own material and how things have changed in Wexford from being a place where original music was frowned upon in my day to being a hive of new music now.

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