Frankie Boyle calls Ricky Gervais ‘lazy’ for trans people jokes: ‘I would like him to have the same respect for trans people as he has for animals’

Scottish comedian discusses his career, views on comedy and ‘woke’ culture in the UK during Louis Theroux podcast interview

Frankie Boyle has called out Ricky Gervais for a “lazy” joke he made about transgender people.

The Scottish comedian was the latest guest on Louis Theroux’s Grounded podcast for the BBC.

During the conversation, Theroux referenced Boyle’s TV comedy special Excited For You to See and Hate This, in which he took a swipe at fellow comedian Ricky Gervais over his jokes about trans people.

In the special, Boyle referenced Gervais’s own bit in his 2018 Netflix special Humanity, where he repeated Caitlyn Jenner’s dead name then suggested a trans person was like him “self-identifying as a chimpanzee”.

“My genuine reaction was, it’s not that much weirder than Ricky Gervais saying that he’s a stand-up comedian,” Boyle said in his TV special.

“I mean, look, we know Ricky Gervais, he’s a brilliant actor, he’s a brilliant writer, he’s not a f***ing stand-up comedian! Just ‘cos Ricky Gervais self-identifies as a stand-up comedian, am I supposed to say that he is one? It’s f***ing political correctness gone mad!”

“I thought his routine about trans people was very lazy,” Boyle told Theroux. “I would like him to have the same respect for trans people as he has for animals. I think that’s not a lot to ask.”

Ricky Gervais at an event for his Netflix show, After Life (Getty Images)

Later, when Theroux asked him about whether he felt culture was “too woke”, Boyle said he felt a lot of pressure comes from the right, who are “not genuinely offended by that stuff”.

Boyle agreed with Theroux that he was cancelled “before it was cool”, suggesting he was “almost repeatedly cancelled” while he was appearing on Mock the Week and his Tramadol Nights sketch show.

He also said the press have become good at taking jokes by a comedian and presenting them to an audience the jokes weren’t intended for, “to create a scandal”.

“People think context means, if you give me a second I can explain that to you,” he said. “But actually context means ‘you had to be there’…it’s actually quite complicated to explain.

“It’s that the press realised that is a story, a really easy, sometimes three-day story… sometimes they can get a week of headlines.”

Theroux’s interview with Boyle and other Grounded episodes are available now on BBC Sounds.