The comedian Frankie Boyle today won a cool £54,900 against the Daily Mirror newspaper after the paper wrongly described him as a racist.
If there’s one thing you’ll learn from going to comedy clubs on a regular basis, it’s that you’ll seldom win an argument against a comedian. Today, the Daily Mirror found that out the hard way after a High Court jury concluded that the paper had libelled Frankie Boyle by describing him as “racist”.
Boyle, 40, from Glasgow in Scotland, said the Daily Mirror had defamed him with an article that was published on July 19, last year. The paper said he was “forced to quit” Mock the Week after an episode where Boyle took on the persona of a racist, however, this was not true.
The loud-mouthed comedian said he had been “pretending” to be someone with racist views during the episode and that the accusation of racism “goes against everything I’ve tried to do in my work, to do in my life”.
Jurors awarded Boyle £50,650 after deciding that the racist description was defamatory and a further £4,250 after they found that the Mirror’s report saying Boyle had been “forced to quit” Mock the Week was also defamatory.
So what’s he going to do with his £54,900 damages?
Fair play, Frankie. Fair play.
