Frankie Boyle, The Comedy Unit, Channel 4 and the importance of Tramadol Nights

Its interesting how much credit the 'team' gets when things are going well. And Frankie Boyle must be more than a little annoyed that he is the only person getting abuse for Tramadol Nights. Channel 4 have had a little, but there is no campaign within the community to boycott them and there isn't likely to be. I guess the truth of the matter is that disabled people don't matter and Frankie Boyle revels in the infamy and in the not too distant future will find some way of benefiting from that fame.

But Frankie Boyle isn't the only person who is benefiting from the verbal abuse of more than one disabled child, The production company that produced Tramadol Nights was the Comedy Unit, based in Glasgow which made the decision to work with Boyle knowing he had form in this area. They would appear by and large to be ordinary people and if you look at their website they don't look like people who want to profit from such abuse. However, like most weak people they failed to see that even humour has some boundaries and that the vilification of vulnerable children is one of those boundaries. They allowed their organisation to produce something that they thought was edgy and somehow clever, and their judgement did not allow them to see that what they were doing was akin to the rankest homophobia and the vilest forms of racism.  None of the things that Boyle said should have made it through any form of quality assurance and production control, but the abuse of a disabled child wasn't deemed to be beyond the pale, it was just something that would generate attention and ultimately pave the way for more edgy clever success.

It was undoubtedly this strategy that appealed to Channel 4 when they commissioned this edgy and supposedly clever piece of television and then allowed it to be transmitted. Shocking people creates interest, it appeals to our baser instincts and just occasionally it says something important. I guess in a way Tramadol Nights did this too, it said something profoundly important about Frankie Boyle, The Comedy Unit,Channel 4 and about the people who today are still mocking Harvey. 

Frankie Boyle doesn't care what its says about him and neither do the people who overtly support him. Together they occupy a place in the world that they are welcome to, a place where being smug and cruel about a disabled child gives rise to a smile or a laugh. Tramadol Nights was important because it taught us that this is an unpleasantly large community, but if I were a shareholder of The Comedy Unit or Channel 4, I wouldn't be feeling too pleased about being seen to be a part of it.