Katie versus Frankie

If you've been reading the news at all, you'll probably have come across this in some form- Frankie Boyle, controversial Scottish comedian, jokes about Katie Price's disabled son sexually attacking her, she's not best pleased and is demanding an apology.

The child in question is Harvey Price, Katie's oldest child. He suffers from septo-optic dysplasia and is austistic. You can argue all you want about Katie/Jordan and her stardom and photoshoots and conquering of Heat, but the target of Boyle's joke was the disabled eight-year-old and not his mother.

Let's talk about comedy!

Ableism isn't mentioned much in the media- I'm not sure many people have even heard the word. Ableism is, basically, what at least three-quarters of us will have to deal with at some point in our lives- for themselves, or their children, or their friends. It's the thing that makes people avoid you when they discover you're schizoprenic, the thing that makes doctors throw tablets at you in the hope you'll go away, the thing that young children do to the kid with learning difficulties. The thing that made 'special needs' become an insult when it should have been a label, which in itself isn't a good thing to stick on a kid. You follow me, right?

Anyway, comedy- comedy takes powerful things and reduces their stature by making us laugh at them. Afflecting the comfortable, and maybe comforting the afflicted at the same time. Think The Producers, where Hitler suddenly becomes a hilarious figure. But Harvey Price and the many people like him- disabled children, children with austism- are powerless. Frankie Boyle is a white, straight, able-bodied male comedian, no-one's ever going to joke about the sort of person he is. But the disabled? Fair game! Why? Why make people with much less power than you even less powerful?

Don't watch if you don't like it, people have said- but it's gonna be there anyway! That powerlessness that Frankie Boyle so nicely contributed to is everywhere. Kids will always laugh at the ones who behave differently, who can't talk properly or write properly. Comedians will always joke about mentally disabled people who've made it into the public conciousness- hey, they're a public figure, it's allowed! And Little Britain thinks the mentally disabled are hilarious. I never thought I'd find myself in the position of agreeing wholeheartedly with Katie Price, but now I do: demand an apology. Straight to her son's face if possible.

Frankie Boyle is entitled to free speech, let's not forget that, but everyone else is also entitled to stand up and say not funny mate. And I reckon he's sort of getting to the end of his career now, nastiness only really gets you so far and he's not even on Mock The Week anymore. So we have that to look forward to. And, you know, at some point, like everyone else, he's gonna die and maybe run into St Peter or whoever. "So, how did you live your life? I see you were a comedian- did you comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable?" "Oh, bugger. Thought it was the other way around."