Frankie Boyle set to front documentary about the Royal Family after ‘foul’ joke about the Queen

Frankie Boyle is set to present a documentary about the Royal Family after previously coming under fire for a ‘foul’ joke about the Queen.

The controversial comedian, 50, has been lined up by Channel 4 bosses to front Frankie Boyle: Monarchy, where he will explore the future of the monarchy.

The public service broadcaster claims that Boyle will ‘turns his wry eye to the state of the British monarchy and its future’, as he questions its place in the modern world.

It adds: ‘He wonders, ‘Will the monarchy soon be put out of its misery as it slips gently away under the soft pillow of our collective apathy? Do the Royal Family have any place in the modern world?’

The BBC was once forced to cut a line from its Comic Relief coverage in 2013 after the Scot, commenting on the Queen having been admitted to hospital, said: ‘I wished she’d died.’

In a revolting 10-minute routine on Russell Brand’s Give It Up For Comic Relief event at London’s Wembley Arena in 2013, Boyle also drew gasps from the 12,500-strong audience with a particularly crude jibe at Oscar Pistorious.

Boyle’s routine was deemed in such bad taste that it was axed from the ‘almost-live’ broadcast of the show on BBC Three.

And following his comment about Ms Price’s son Harvey and a series of offensive jokes about the Paralympic Games, Channel 4 bosses ruled out the possibility he would return to the channel in 2013.

In 2008 a ‘grossly offensive joke’ about the Queen broadcast on BBC2’s satirical panel show Mock the Week was cleared by the corporation’s governing body.

The highly personal remark about the monarch was made by Frankie and aired at the time of the Andrew Sachs scandal.

Boyle joked that you would not hear the Queen say during her Christmas broadcast: ‘I’m now so old that my p**** is haunted.’

The episode had first been shown in 2007 but was repeated in October 2008 during the furore over messages left by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand on Mr Sach’s answerphone.

A complainant said the joke was grossly offensive and added: ‘It would have been objectionable at the best of times but coming as it did in the midst of the Ross and Brand controversy it was quite unforgivable.’

An initial complaint to the BBC’s management had been rejected saying that, while the joke ‘was near the knuckle’, it was in keeping with the show.

The viewer then took his complaint to the BBC Trust which also rejected the complaint, despite admitting the joke had ‘sexist and ageist overtones’.

Richard Tait, BBC trustee and chairman of the editorial standards committee, said the joke ‘was well after the watershed, well signposted and within audience expectations for the show’.

He said: ‘The committee did feel this joke was in bad taste – it had both sexist and ageist overtones.’

However, a gag on a different episode of Mock the Week about Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington was deemed to have broken rules. Boyle said Adlington looks ‘like someone who’s looking at themselves in the back of a spoon’.

He also made a sexual innuendo about the gold medalists’ love life, saying Adlington’s boyfriend looked like a male model and continuing: ‘So from that I have deduced that Rebecca Adlington is very dirty – I mean if you just take into account how long she can hold her breath…’

One viewer told the BBC he was ‘appalled’.

The show’s producer later responded to the complaint, saying the ribbing might have gone ‘a tad too far’ and apologised.

The trust said that 75 complaints were received about the item, originally aired in the week that Team GB returned from the Olympic Games.

It found that, while Adlington was a public figure, she had not courted media attention.

The judgment said: ‘The joke about her appearance and the sexual innuendo were humiliating and there was no demonstration of a clear editorial purpose for the inclusion of these comments.’

The committee also noted that the commissioning editor had made her views known about preferring not to include the joke.

It said it was concerned she appeared to have been unable to obtain the edits she would have preferred.

Mr Tait said: ‘The committee felt that the comments about Rebecca Adlington were humiliating, and this was exacerbated by the fact that she had not sought celebrity status or courted media attention.’

Boyle’s sardonic and dark humour was put on display to the wider public for the first time on Mock the Week, making him a household name. 

The Scottish comic would leave the show in 2009, and later told the Mirror he was ‘bored’ when performing on it. 

He said: ‘I just felt I’d done it to death, then they could get someone else new in. But it was good fun and they guys are great.

‘There was no f******g animosity about it or anything.

‘You can stay too long in these things, and I think maybe I’m leaving it a bit too early, but there you go.’

Despite his long line of controversies, Frankie is still thought to be worth £3.3million.

Earlier this month, Boyle was slammed for making a ‘rape joke’ about TV presenter Holly Willoughby.

The Scot described a game about ‘killing and sh***ing’ people – which included Miss Willoughby – during a set at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk last weekend.

Sources recalled Boyle saying: ‘I’d obviously kill her and rape her afterwards. I’m joking – I’d rape her first.’

Boyle defended the remarks on Friday when questioned by an audience member at a Waterstones launch event for his new novel.

‘Can I just say, my routine about raping and f*****g Holly Willoughby was part of a very long routine about whether or not it’s OK to do a joke about that, and I look at it from both sides, there are pluses and minuses,’ he said.

Boyle added that comedy was in ‘the eye of the beholder’ and that he considered himself to be a ‘mainstream’ comedian.

Miss Willoughby, 41, has previously defended sexual abuse victims and spoken about her own ‘humiliating’ experience of ‘upskirting’ when paparazzi crouched to take pictures of her underwear.

Yesterday Boyle’s joke was heavily criticised by Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, chairman of the Women and Equalities Committee.

Ms Nokes, who attended the University of Sussex at the same time as the comic, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The Frankie Boyle I was at university with wouldn’t have found rape funny. It never is, and I’m disappointed that anyone would try to make a joke out of male sexual violence.’

A spokeswoman for the feminist campaign group FiLiA said: ‘We are horrified that some men in the entertainment industry continue to consider the abuse of women to be comedy material.

‘Seeking cheap applause at the expense of traumatising women speaks of low-quality material.

‘There is nothing funny about male violence. Women and girls around the country are not laughing.

‘Instead, women are angry and scared for their safety.’

She added: ‘We are grappling with a national crisis in which the police and the courts fail rape victims who are brave enough to come forward seeking justice.

‘We know from research that fewer than two per cent of reported rapes in England and Wales end in prosecution.’

It is not the first time the Glasgow-born comedian has made a rape joke.

In 2012 he posted a tweet referring to Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton in which he said: ‘Victoria can lift twice her own bodyweight. Sexy, as it means she still wouldn’t be able to throw me off.’

At the time, the End Violence Against Women Coalition said: ‘His tweet trivialises the experience of rape victims and sends a signal to those who might commit rape that it is not a serious crime. Revolting.’

Elsewhere in his Latitude set, Boyle defended people’s right to be offended by jokes but admitted he had stopped posting gags on Twitter to avoid repercussions.

He told the audience he had ‘never been so overwhelmed with the feeling that [his] work has been misunderstood,’ before making a series of dark jokes about Prince Andrew.

The comic, who has previously made jokes Katie Price’s disabled son Harvey, acknowledged that his new material might get him into trouble at the forthcoming Edinburgh Festival.

The MoS contacted Boyle and Miss Willoughby for comment.