Daily Star's dubious Frankie Boyle story

The Daily Star has falsely claimed that the BBC has ‘scrapped’ Frankie Boyle in the face of tabloid-fuelled fury.

The paper today reports that BBC Two dropped a planned repeat of Never Mind The Buzzcocks that he hosted following ‘outrage over his obscene jokes about Aids and cancer’.

‘Bosses at the BBC have abandoned plans to repeat the broadcast after complaints from viewers and uproar on Twitter,’ the paper trilled.

However, the show – which attracted only a small handful of negative comments online – was never scheduled to be repeated yesterday.

Listings magazines published as long ago as last week, long before the supposedly contentious episode had been broadcast, advertised last night’s show as a ‘best of’ compilation hosted by David O’Doherty.

Nonetheless, the Star said: ‘Last night the Beeb scrapped its usual Wednesday repeat, instead choosing to show a compilation of series highlights.’

And it quoted a conveniently unnamed ‘source’ saying: ‘In true BBC fashion they’ll try to close ranks, refusing to admit publicly that they’d made a mistake. Privately they realise they did and it is unlikely to be shown again. Frankie went way too far.’

The show is still freely available on iPlayer.

Published: 6 Jan 2011