...says terror survivor Lord Tebbit

Norman Tebbit has called on Frankie Boyle to be banned from the BBC for joking that he wished the IRA would murder leading Tories.

The comic was speaking about Theresa May meeting Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith and Chequers to thrash our a Brexit deal when he said: ‘All in one place. Where the fuck are the IRA when you need them? All these groups that keep getting back together. What about the guys that would really help us?’ 

Lord Tebbit, who survived the IRA bombing of the Grand Brighton Hotel in 1984 which paralysed his wife, said  Boyle should no longer have a voice on the BBC.

'The man should be banned from broadcasting on the BBC,' he told the Belfast Telegraph. 'What he said was highly offensive. IRA terrorist attacks are no laughing matter and the BBC shouldn't have him on television.'

Fellow right-winger Gregory Campbell of the DUP described it as a ‘stupid, puerile pathetic so-called joke’ that went ‘well beyond bad taste’

He added: ‘This is not humour. It raises serious questions that the BBC broadcast such distasteful material.'

In an accompanying opinion piece, Belfast Telegraph columnist Fionola Meredith wrote: 'Did any of the Tristrams from Oxbridge who gave the thumbs-up to the inclusion of this quip stop to think of the ongoing pain of IRA victims? The BBC has decided that it's now OK to make a cheap gag out of the slaughter of innocent people.'

However, a poll on the paper's website currently stands a 2:1 in favour of the joke being allowed to air.

The Corporation defended the comments, which came on Frankie Boyle's New World Order, and pointed out that the comic later spoke of the brutality of the IRA when speaking about a possible return to a hard border within the island of Ireland.

A spokesperson said of the show: ‘Its content is within audience expectations for a post-watershed, topical, satirical programme from a comedian whose style and tone are well-established.

‘Within the same programme, Frankie clearly acknowledges the brutality of the IRA's activities.’

Published: 4 Apr 2019