Tough questions greatly preferred to easy laughs

You may have heard by now about Frankie Boyle’s tweets during the Paralympic Games opening ceremony on Wednesday night and, in particular, his crack about how the Saudi Arabian team consists mostly of thieves.

Chances are you caught some of the fallout, too. The Scottish comedian has long harboured a reputation for a brand of humour that makes people wince and chuckle in equal doses but his offerings haven’t exactly been isolated this last few weeks. They’ve just been better constructed.

To tell people that you would be covering the Paralympics this summer was to invite a host of predictable ‘gags’ that, like Boyle’s, elicited considerable discomfort and the most hollow of where-do-I-look har hars. Good people telling bad jokes.