{"id":2882,"date":"2012-10-16T08:06:53","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T08:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=2882"},"modified":"2012-10-16T08:08:08","modified_gmt":"2012-10-16T08:08:08","slug":"racist-comedian-suing-for-libel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=2882","title":{"rendered":"‘Racist’ comedian suing for libel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A British comedian, Frankie Boyle is suing the Mirror newspaper for libel, over an article which labelled him racist.<\/p>\n

He is complaining about a story published on 19 July 2011, saying he was in talks for a new Channel 4 show.<\/p>\n

The first sentence read: “RACIST comedian Frankie Boyle could soon be returning to TV despite upsetting thousands of viewers”.<\/p>\n

The Mirror said it will defend itself “on the basis of truth and fair comment”.<\/p>\n

The trial, which is taking place at the High Court in London, is expected to last a week.<\/p>\n

Boyle’s lawyer told the court that the newspaper had also defamed his client, by asserting he had been “forced to quit” the BBC comedy show Mock The Week.<\/p>\n

His barrister, David Sherborne, said that to call someone “racist” was “obviously defamatory”.<\/p>\n

Mr Sherborne said Boyle’s humour was “deliberately challenging”.<\/p>\n

Controversial humour<\/p>\n

He said the comic did not object to being criticised but did object to being described as racist.<\/p>\n

“Saying ‘vile’ or ‘offensive’, or his material is ‘vile’ or ‘offensive’, is one thing,” Mr Sherborne told the jury.<\/p>\n

“He realises that that goes with the territory, so to speak. But accusing him of being a racist is an entirely different matter.”<\/p>\n

Mr Sherborne added: “You can call him ‘offensive’, you can call him ‘tasteless’. That’s fine. But he is not racist.”<\/p>\n

The Glasgow-born comedian’s humour has often proved controversial with audiences.<\/p>\n

Last year, broadcasting watchdog Ofcom upheld more than 500 complaints about his Channel 4 show Tramadol nights, during which he joked about Katie Price’s disabled son, Harvey.<\/p>\n

Ofcom ruled that the joke appeared to “target and mock the mental and physical disabilities” of the then eight year-old.<\/p>\n

In 2008, the BBC apologised when Boyle made a joke about Palestine on the Radio 4 comedy show Political Animal.<\/p>\n

Break from Twitter<\/p>\n

A year after that, BBC Two’s Mock The Week was criticised by the BBC Trust over comments Boyle made on the show about swimmer Rebecca Adlington’s appearance.<\/p>\n

As yet, The Mirror has not removed the article about Boyle from its website.<\/p>\n

A paragraph added to the top of the story reads: “Frankie Boyle is taking legal proceedings against us for the description of him as a ‘racist comedian’. He claims it is untrue and defamatory. We are defending this claim on the basis of truth and fair comment.<\/p>\n

“We are also defending his claim that we libelled him by suggesting that ‘he was forced to quit Mock the Week’ in 2009.”<\/p>\n

Boyle’s lawyer said any suggestion his client was forced to leave the show was “completely untrue”.<\/p>\n

Boyle has taken a temporary respite from Twitter. “I’m afraid I must disappear from Twitter for a while. See you on the other side of this thing.” – BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A British comedian, Frankie Boyle is suing the Mirror newspaper for libel, over an article which labelled him racist. He is complaining about a story published on 19 July 2011, saying he was in talks for a new Channel 4 show. The first sentence read: “RACIST comedian Frankie Boyle could soon be returning to TV … Continue reading “‘Racist’ comedian suing for libel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[422,3,123],"tags":[1811,1816,1812,1815,1813,157,1814,1817],"class_list":["post-2882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-news","category-world","tag-british-comedy","tag-channel4","tag-frankie-boyle","tag-libel","tag-mock-the-week","tag-racism","tag-racist-claims","tag-racist-comedian"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/frankieboyle.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2882"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2885,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882\/revisions\/2885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}