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My Shit Life So Far
Frankie Boyle
Dedication
To all my enemies,
I will destroy you.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
One
I grew up in a Glasgow. It’s a disturbing but…
Two
Primary school was great. On the first day I was…
Three
I know one shouldn’t dwell on the past, so I’ve…
Four
The school had a nice policy of trying to do…
Five
Lust is a big part of most men’s personality. They…
Six
The summer I left school I got a job as…
Seven
Shortly after being sacked from the civil service, I found…
Eight
Going to Sussex University was great. Yes, a lot of…
Nine
After I graduated, age 22, I got a job working…
Ten
I’d been going out with a girl since working in…
Eleven
Having been going full time on the comedy circuit for…
Twelve
For a wee while I was quite happy travelling around…
Thirteen
At the same time as appearing on the Live Floor…
Fourteen
Live Floor Show was given a network series, but the…
Fifteen
Shortly after landing the job writing for Jimmy Carr, a…
Sixteen
Mock the Week had become inexplicably popular, so I went…
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
Back Ads
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION
I don’t think anyone can have written an autobiography without at some point thinking, ‘Why would anyone want to know this shit?’ I’ve always read them thinking, ‘I don’t want to know where Steve Tyler grew up! Just tell me how many groupies he fucked!’ I suppose I’ve just had to assume that anybody who buys this book has an interest in my life story, but I’ve covered myself by including long passages about all the groupies Steve Tyler has fucked.
I’ve been careful not to get too nostalgic. It’s the most retrograde, reality-denying emotion. How long before you’ll be standing at a bus stop hearing someone moan, ‘Say what you like about Saddam, but that country’s gone to hell without him’? Saddam did at least make the trains run on time. It’s just that they were DeathTrains to DeathCamps. To be honest, they were often late but people were too scared to say anything.
There’s a fair bit of swearing in this book. I wasn’t going to put in any at all but then I thought, ‘Fuck it, these readers are cunts.’ I know there’s an argument that swearing should only be used by a writer to underline a point that really demands it, or when strong emotions are in play. I think of this as a particularly English view, resting on the sad viewpoint that not much ever merits strong emotion or opinion. The whole debate is a bit pointless. I was in a hotel room recently and a show came on where Frank Skinner was talking about swearing on TV. I switched over and had a half-hearted wank. I’m one of about three people in the country directly affected, and I switched over. I would have happily watched Frank Skinner talk about anything else and I had a half-hearted wank over a presenter I know is a lesbian. For which I awarded myself double points.
There’s a genuine BBC directive that says you can’t use ‘fucking’ as a verb but you can use it as an adjective. So now you have to say, ‘Do you know what’s fucking great? Nookie!’ Ian Wright has criticised the BBC for dumbing down. I agree with him, but there’d be more weight to his argument if he’d stayed with the BBC. I’m glad he escaped from the relentless intellectual slide to present Gladiators.
This book isn’t entirely accurate. I have changed all the names and occasionally tweaked the order of events. I’ve also lied quite a lot. My favourite autobiography is Clive James’s brilliant Unreliable Memoirs. In the introduction he says that all the stuff that sounds true is made up and all the unbelievable bits are true. I’m saying that too, stealing it from him. I also stole his Chapter Four, for anyone who wonders why I went to sixth-form college in Australia. There are a few other instances of plagiarism; they’re mostly just the bits where I’m solving mysteries in Victorian London. Also, there are a couple of blatant untruths. The 1988 Scottish Cup Final was won by Celtic, rather than Dundee United, and I did not rape Tina Turner.
Sadly, there are parts of my life that haven’t made it into the book. In the Seventies I was involved in a top-secret project. I’m not really allowed to talk about it, but it was big. That’s all I can tell you about Operation C. I. AIDS. I went to some CIA seminars to begin with but I can’t remember much about them. All I know is that anytime I hear any of John Lennon’s solo stuff I go out and buy a harpoon. I still have the flask of Michael Jackson’s DNA I stole for Operation Timberlake. His DNA wasn’t hard to get. I dressed up as a schoolboy and hid the flask in my ass. I was also part of the plot to kill Castro, but it was impossible to get near him. I did manage to become his masseur, but even that he makes you do through a catflap with a snooker rest.
Being a special operative was a great job. How many people can say they got to meet all three Paul McCartneys? A lot of people wanted to strangle him after the Frog Chorus, but I was the one who actually got to do it. The CIA recruited me in an operation where they got prostitutes to spike people with acid and find out their secrets. They really had me over a barrel once they knew how much I liked to fuck prostitutes on acid.
There are quite a few drug-abuse stories coming up but I do urge you all to use drugs with caution. For example, never take cocaine before a group-therapy session. It’s really hard to interrupt a discussion on incest with a great idea for a song. Also, never take opium suppositories. I’ve never been in a situation where I thought ‘You know what would make this better? Hallucinating out of my arsehole.’
Another part of my life I’ve not been able to talk about is when I was spiritual adviser to the England football team. I had to leave because I just couldn’t handle their attitude to women. You’ve got to worry when the movie on the team bus is The Accused. But you had to admire the simplicity of Sven’s team talks. He’d simply stand in the dressing room and say, ‘There are women out there.’ The team wouldn’t even leave by the door. They’d eat their way out onto the pitch through the dressing-room walls. Then for a while I ran an art project getting sex criminals and serial killers to send their ideas to television companies. It was always something they’d already thought of.
It’s interesting for me to see the things people choose to get offended about and the things they let slide. Earlier this year I had to quit my Daily Record column over a moral disagreement. We disagreed over whether it was OK to make jokes about a dead child molester. It’s not that I wasn’t a fan of Michael Jackson – I was a big fan when I was 8. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was his ‘type’. For his London concerts Michael Jackson advertised for children in wheelchairs