One of the UK’s finest-ever comics is back on the stand-up circuit in the biggest way in 2023, as Frankie Boyle spoils us with three North East stops on his journey around the country for the ‘Lap Of Shame’ tour.
Boyle has toured sparingly on a national level in recent years but is back in action in a major fashion with this bumper nationwide jaunt. He takes in a triple-header of Newcastle’s Tyne Theatre on Monday 27th February, the Stockton Globe on Tuesday 28th February and Middlesbrough Town Hall on Wednesday 1st March across back-to-back nights this winter.
Recently, the Scottish comedian, having previously penned several documents of his fascinatingly twisted worldview, became a first-time fiction author with the essential debut crime novel ‘Meantime’. And recently, he’s been hunkered down in the bunker of the Glee Club in his home city of Glasgow, experimenting with material around the latest incarnation of his BBC2 pearl, ‘Frankie Boyle’s New World Order’, which aired for its sixth season and corresponding end-of-year special from October to December.
As ever, the show distinguishes itself as one of the finest items of programming on British television, a show which is scarcely believable as a terrestrial TV flagship in our staid era, as Boyle and a rotating cast of left-leaning comics effortlessly eviscerate hapless politicians, appalling billionaires and delusional tech moguls, with the apocalyptically-inclined show bookended by Boyle’s flame-thrown stand-up segments and surreal, regularly jaw-dropping monologues.
Boyle’s imprint in the public consciousness remains widely trenchant and unsurprisingly divisive, his scathing wit and take-no-prisoners style having been introduced by his late-Noughties stint on ‘Mock The Week’ during that show’s creative apex. His jokes and takedowns in this period were firmly centred on the pop-cultural and saw him lobbing grenades in all directions with an impressive hit rate, but no shortage of collateral damage.
In the intervening years, Boyle’s lesser-exposed but more easily acclaimed work has seen him shift crosshairs firmly upwards. And the political focus of his more recent material, clearly inspired by the pathway of his idol Bill Hicks, has helped to iron out many of his complexities as a comedic performer and to emerge as one of the scene’s most fiercely compassionate artists, without making a single compromise with regard to envelope-pushing or venturing into taboo territory.
It would be very difficult to imagine more exciting dates on the North East’s stand-up calendar for 2023 than these.
For further information, head to frankieboyle.com.
