Frankie Boyle - Work! Consume! Die!

Surely the easiest way for the Met to prove they weren’t being bribed by the tabloids is to point to all the newspaper sellers they’ve killed.

Strange times. If you can’t trust the police, politicians and journalists, then who can you trust? Police officers have been resigning, politicians have been compromised and journalists are being arrested over the phone-hacking scandal. So it’s reassuring to know that their conduct is being investigated by the police, parliamentary committees and the Press Complaints Commission. There really needs to be an inquiry by a less corruptible group, though, like FIFA. David Cameron said the hacking inquiry will widen – or in other words, he shouted, ‘What’s that over there?’ and ran off.

Of course, let’s not forget that Murdoch’s decline will largely benefit the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail. Papers whose worldview could best be summed up as mentally ill. I also catch a slight air of monied celebrities and critics telling poor people what they should be interested in. Inequality in our country is so rampant that a big chunk of what was the News of the World’s circulation isn’t literate enough to read a broadsheet. Also, broadsheets are partly about consumption. Who wants to read about box sets, holiday homes and beauty routines they can never afford? Much as the whole thing was hugely enjoyable, I feel a slight prickle on my scalp wondering who might replace Murdoch as an owner, and how many decent billionaires there are around.

It would be great if the tabloids went back to being investigative, campaigning papers, but I think that muckraking and perverse nosiness are actually part of their function. Maybe the tabloids are a kind of Jungian ‘shadow’ of intelligent inquiry, addressing the wearying and disappointing part of ourselves that wants to see who Rio Ferdinand is fucking. The newspaper proprietor William Randolph Hearst pursued a vendetta against Mae West because of the forthright sexual confidence of her work and because he was appalled by how much money she made. Meanwhile, he had affairs and built a business empire. Perhaps we just project hatred onto things we see as embodying what we hate about ourselves, and perhaps tabloids simply embody the worst of us.

‘Haye punches his arm so hard that he falls over screaming’

First thing I do when I get back to Glasgow is I phone this drug-dealer lassie and get some pretty hefty Valium and some acid. We walk round a park for a bit before she hands them over. I’d always felt guilty about the chit-chat with a dealer, trying to hide the fact that you’d just like to buy the drugs. For the first time I’m aware that she is doing the chit-chat but would just like to sell the drugs. I gub two in the local coffee house and everything, the fact I’ve left my bike on the other side of the park, the fact I’ve agreed to do 8 Out of 10 Cats, the rapist, everything is OK. In a way they are all positive developments.

I’m trying to place some short stories I wrote ages ago. My agent is struggling to get me on anything (‘They’re scared’), and tidying them up is something to do. I get a big bag of Diet Cokes and chocolate at the newsagents on the high street.

‘Some rain, eh? It looks crazy out there!’ says the young assistant lassie and I switch into banter mode. A mere observation about the weather turning her from drone snack-parcel conduit into chatty fuck-target.

I sit in the kitchenette and go through the net-checking procrastination I always need to do before work. Some guy has Facebooked me about Tramadol Nights. His daughter is disabled, blah, blah, he’s going to kill me, blah, blah. Of course, I can’t really say that I think some people get sympathy and attention from their link to a disabled person. That (like anything) people laughing about it dilutes the horror but also dilutes the attention those people get. That all the disabled people I’ve met hate those people, blah, blah. Instead, I befriend him on a page where I’m pretending to be a woman and think listlessly about destroying his marriage.

I understand but genuinely despair of people speaking up for the disabled. They have enough taken away from them in our society without taking away their voices as well. People like that sector of society to be invisible. I had a lynch mob on my tail for making a joke on tour that wasn’t disablist in any way and that nobody had heard. Luckily, I’m mature and sophisticated enough to realise that being given a hard time by the papers doesn’t mean you’re a bad person (I’ve read a lot of Spiderman). Rather than feeling prejudice, I’m just someone who doesn’t see why there’s anything that shouldn’t be talked about. I was criticised by people who stereotyped the disabled as ‘weak’ and ‘vulnerable’, something I would never do. People with disabilities are people, just like anybody else and, strangely, that is a real taboo.

We live in a culture where the only time you see someone with a disability is on a freak-show documentary. The Man with an Arse for a Hand and a Hand for an Arse, that kind of thing. Is that really where we’re at with this? Where the Victorians were? I’m generalising, but disabled people are often more fully realised human beings, in that they have been forced to think about the nature of existence a bit more. It’s the ‘average’ person that should be in a freak show. The Man Too Busy to Love His Kids. Show that on Channel 5.

I get a cab down to BBC Scotland studios. It’s brand new and at its centre is a big staircase with bits off it with couches, tables and so on. The idea being that people meet in a village-type way, sharing ideas and energising each other. There is no cunt there.

My company is making a game show for Scottish TV called Dullion. It’s based on a dead-arm game from school. Contestants can win the opportunity to punch their opponent on the arm before they perform a manual-dexterity test.

Kevin Bridges is doing a fine job of hosting it. A gallus local DJ contestant is well in the lead until the other contestant plays her joker, which here is called Hauners. World boxing champion David Haye comes out to deliver the dullion. The DJ is not that bothered, clearly thinking it’ll be a bit of a love tap for the cameras. Haye gets a big laugh by putting in a gum-shield, then punches his arm so hard that he falls over screaming. We make the cunt try to play a game of Operation afterwards and it’s hilarious.

I go home and try to have an early night but there are big scratches on the front door. I think someone tried to break in, so fuck, it’s normal for the area. Then I go back a minute later and they look like animal-claw marks or something.

I take two Valium and try to sleep but downstairs is blasting out cheesy Top 40 pish. I will try to buy downstairs’ flat off them in the morning. I go through to the stateroom and get the model of the guy downstairs and I think I’m cool about everything but I end up holding him up by his wee neck, this tiny wee man, and punching the fuck out of him against the wall.

I used to think that we live in a wedding rules society. Like the way that the playlist at a wedding will be a load of shit records that nobody really likes. Because, while everyone can be disappointed, not one person can be offended. Conversations at weddings have the same rules … conversations everywhere have the same rules. So we all go through the motions, while the DJ plays ‘Born to Be Wild’ and some shit from The Commitments soundtrack.