Frankie Boyle - A let down.

Having been a fan of Mock the Week for a while I was really looking forward to seeing Frankie Boyle live at the Colston Hall last night.  A matter of weeks after seeing his fellow comedian and Mock the Week colleague, Russell Howard wow Bristol with his weird and wonderful mind I was looking forward to another top night of comedy - I was, on balance, disappointed.

For fans of BBC 2's Mock the Week many of Frankie's jokes will have sounded strangely familiar, being that Frankie had worked many of them into the topical comedy TV panel show, so in some respects it felt  a little bit like watching a TV repeat.

Frankie Boyle is known for pushing the boundaries of comedy, for crossing the line that others simply don't dare to cross and it's from crossing these lines that he gets much of his humour but I'm sorry I don't agree with his sentiments (Daily Telegraph interview 20/11) that there is "no line that you can't cross".  Frankie himself included a couple of jokes that he told the audience the BBC had cut from the Mock the Week shows as they found them too offensive, it struck me that if Frankie also applied the same editing of his routine he'd be a lot funnier.

I'm no prude and don't believe myself to be overly sensitive but jokes about the death of Baby P, jokes along the lines that Shannon Mathews might not have survived had she been more attractive (including a line about sticking a photo of Madeline McCann to her face) I just don't find funny - in fact I found the Frankie Boyle's jokes offensive. It's almost as if Frankie Boyle believes that all he has to do to be funny is to cross the lines of taste and decency. There just wasn't any inventiveness in his jokes, what's suprising is that so many appear taken in by his brand of comedy.

Some of his jokes were funny, but his quality control is lacking and I felt cheated that most the funny material had been aired previously - interestingly Frankie Boyle's material on Mock the Week isn't as off the cuff as first thought.  So all in all after expecting so much I felt let down, and, perhaps it was just me but, I felt that much of the audience wasn't entirely convinced by his routine, there certainly wasn't the same buzz as for Russell Howard show a few weeks earlier.

Were you at the Colston Hall last night for Frankie's performance - what did you think of his routine - whether you agree or disagree register as a site member and let us know your thoughts.