Comedian already has plans for a second novel

Frankie Boyle says he’d like to quit touring as a stand-up and stay at home writing books instead.

The stand-up – whose debut novel Meantime  has just been published – told the Edinburgh Book Festival that he’s already planning a second.

‘I would much rather, if I could, segue into writing novels and just stay in the house and not travel so much.’ he said in comments reported by The Scotsman. ‘I would happily do that if I could.’

He says writing helped him deal with the comedown of performing stand-up and filling ‘the sheer blankness of having done a show and being in a hotel somewhere…. You might as well write because you are not getting to sleep. You have so much adrenaline.’

Asked if he found writing more enjoyable than stand-up, he replied: ‘Yeah, because you don’t have to do the gigs. You don’t have to go and sell it to people.

‘There is that thing sometimes with stand-up where you have a funny idea, but will a bunch of people in a basement agree? You don’t quite have that same dilemma when you write a novel. But it took equally long and it was equally difficult.’

He also said he and his 14-year-old son Thor had discussed an idea for another novel, Target Man, about a second division footballer for Dumbarton ‘who gets involved in an Alfred Hitchcock-style North by Northwest conspiracy, which he never understands’

Published: 18 Aug 2022