Frankie Boyle is a Scottish comedian who is known for cynical, dark, insulting and offensive jokes; he continues to be popular because he is quite funny.
Most people were first introduced to Frankie as a panelist Mock the Week, where he was known for derailing the conversation with morbid and often hilarious one-liners; he got in trouble with the BBC for jokes insulting an athlete's appearance ("[Rebecca Adlington] looks like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon") and commenting, while pretending to be the Queen, "I've had a few medical problems this year. I am now so old, that my pussy is haunted". While these don't seem too terrible by the standards of American television, it took a while for the BBC to decide exactly how bad they were and what should be done ('rather' and 'not much', as it turns out).
In 2009 Frankie left Mock the Week and started his own Channel 4 sketch show, Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights (2010), which lasted only one season, with lots of viewer complaints and censure from Ofcom. In 2017 he started a satirical chat show, Frankie Boyle's New World Order, on BBC Two, which is still running as of 2020.