32 dates next year

He famously said his last live show would be his final one – but now Frankie Boyle has announced another farewell tour.

The controversial comedian has revealed details of 32 dates next summer and autumn, kicking off in Blackburn on July 4.

Marketing blurb for the show, titled The Last Days of Sodom, says: ‘He has been pilloried, misrepresented and demonised. And for what? For Telling It Like It Is. Now he will attempt a final tour, to heal Britain's fools. To support its rioters. To offer the inchoate laughter of despair to a culture in freefall.’

Boyle has been talking about quitting stand-up for almost three years, saying as long ago as December 2008: ‘I’m not a performance junkie. I don’t need the fix of adulation. I’ll give it two more years and then retire.’

In 2009 he gave an interview to the Radio Times ahead of I Would Happily Punch Every One Of You In The Face, which he described as his ‘last tour’, adding: ‘After 40, very few comedians are very good. Very few anybodies are good at anything. The focus really goes.’

And when he had a run-in with the parents of a girl with Down’s Syndrome who took offence at one of his shows last year, he told them: 'This is my last tour. I don't give a fuck what people think.'

Boyle turns 40 in August next year – midway through the Last Days of Sodom tour. The dates run through to November, and cheekily include two nights in the Edinburgh Playhouse on the two days before the Fringe starts.

Boyle is also set to make a comeback to Channel 4, with Frankie Boyle's Rehabilitation Programme currently in development. The broadcaster’s head of comedy Shane Allen has called it a chat show ‘very much like Parkinson or Wogan, but with paedo jokes’.

Tickets go on sale at 9am on Friday. Click here for the full schedule.

Published: 14 Nov 2011