The Mailbag: Late Night Frankie IV

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This is Producer Andy, and you're listening to Here Comes the Guillotine: the mailbag with Frankie Boyle, Susan McCabe, and Christopher MacArthur Boyd.

If you have a problem, issue, or a dire need just to be heard, then email hctg at global.com.

Enjoy the episode.

Late night.

Frankie Boyle.

Frankie Boyle.

Frankie Boyle.

Frankie Boyle.

Hello and welcome to Here Comes the Guillotine.

Here Comes the Mailbag Special Edition, which I'm doing myself.

It's me, Frankie Boyle, in the style of a late night radio host.

Getting you through the night on a long drive home by listening to Scottish People's Problems being dismissed.

Hello, guillotiners.

As you enjoy pointing out the inadequacies of Rangers as both a football club and fan base, can you please explain to me what in the actual fuck their anti-woke ideology banner was all about?

As is often the case with the cerebrally challenged, their messaging was very mixed, and I'm none the wiser as to what's got them angry enough to make a banner.

Thanks and keep up the beautiful sponsor-repelling work, Mark.

Should we look up the banner?

Well,

yeah.

I think

sometimes, because we live in Glasgow and me and Susie are both Celtic fans, we won't really see each other much outside of the pod.

We talk about things like range as if they're more important than they are.

I mean, I see them as almost a kind of vestigial institution that will, you know, that was necessary for Scottish hegemony, you know, and for the propagation of certain ideas of conformity.

That's kind of lost its meaning and might acquire a new meaning, you know, so it might get bought by a big American company and run as a kind of nostalgia franchise or whatever, right?

I'm not saying that, you know, that's as valid as fucking what's happening at Leeds you know it doesn't mean you're not a valid club or whatever but the the idea that they're

this kind of important institution that we all talk about I mean just seems like

not justified to me and to me that's kind of what that sort of banner is it's like people trying to join in we MAGA and we right-wing stuff and it's kind of where all the clicks are you know what I mean so if you see like left-wing people now sort of in England post-Corbyn right they kind of all have a kind of all the cliques are kind of right wing people and controversy cliques right so they try and how do I bend my brand towards oh I've always been quite interested in traditional architecture

like let's all fucking support local businesses or

all this kind of pattern where you try and frame yourself as a slightly more acceptable

socially conservative

version of a left-wing person, blah blah blah.

Imagine how much more that is if you don't have any of the kind of

ethical anchoring of

that politics, right?

So, if you're a comedian at the moment, you're like, well, how do I get on fucking GB News?

Because all the panel shows have gone.

Like, GB News still does a kind of panel show around the papers, and it's a fee and it's exposure, and I've got fucking gigs to sell and blah blah blah.

I sort of try not to judge people for that everybody's got work but at the same time you're trying to get some of that dollar you're trying to go how do I get those hate clicks do you know what I mean and rangers as a fan base has been kind of ignored over the last couple of decades not a lot's happened really um since they went bust

and they're like well where's our attention do you know what i mean so when celtic have all that palestinian stuff and it's online and blah blah blah and there's a lot of love from around the world for that stuff, they're like, well, like it's kind of like Rangers are getting espanoled.

Do you know what I mean?

We're the fucking club that everybody's forgotten about that's dominated by this kind of bigger neighbor.

And so yeah, you start to behave worse to get attention.

That's a big part of modern politics.

Trolling, if you were to look at the effect of trolling in the last 20 years, some people voted for Brexit to troll people.

You know, people voted for Boris Johnson to troll people

people put Boris Johnson on TV shows to troll people

and platformed him in the first place Nigel Farr is pretty much a professional troll you know and and

everybody who's in the attention economy in in whatever way looks at all this stuff and goes how did I get my kind of percentage of this well maybe it's reframing myself if I'm not going to change my politics or maybe it's just flat out joining joining in with kind of MAGA bullshit.

I find what's happening at Ibrox to be completely troubling as a

buyout.

No, I mean the buyout, you know, businesses come and go.

Charles Green came and went, Craig White.

It's wild that they were called green and white.

Do you know what I mean?

It's just that feels like a troll.

It feels like so fucking on the nose.

As a script editor, you're like, oh, come on.

If that was written into Shot at Glory, you'd be like, it's a bit much.

Yeah.

The banner said, keep woke foreign ideologies out.

Defend Europe.

Defend Europe?

Yeah.

Funnily enough, Rangers can't defend at the moment on the pitch.

But they can in Europe, you know.

Yeah.

Defend Europe is a

basic stop the boats type thing, isn't it?

Yeah.

Defend Europe.

So the idea is that Europe has been flooded with migration, which is

it's not really, I think, something to worry about.

In that you need that to happen economically, and it's kind of inevitable.

It's a bit like saying, stop the tides, you know, like there's always been migration, and there's going to continue to be migration, and climate change is going to ramp that up, and having things like wars in the Middle East is going to ramp that up, you know, and like we had loads of refugees going into mainland European countries from from the Syrian

civil war, which was backed in various ways by kind of major powers.

We will now have another refugee crisis in the Middle East.

But there's already, I mean,

there's already just cities of people who are refugees, like sitting around

that area in various different countries.

So how you imagine you're going to magic that away

and people aren't going to migrate into Europe?

I mean, it kind of defies belief.

But really, it's that borders are kind of weaponised now.

So, you know, you can be inland and you're still, where's your passport?

Where's your papers?

All that kind of stuff.

You know, and people in the United States, you know, they've got this

stuff now where protections that were offered under Biden to people from various countries, including Cuba and Venezuela and so on, have been withdrawn.

And that's purely sadism.

It's also massively bureaucratic.

I mean this is something no one talks about.

They always talk about wanting to get rid of red tape and blah blah blah and you're like you're establishing incredible, almost unworkable bureaucracies.

If you try and work out which Venezuelans, Cubans and Haitians in the United States, which numbers, you know, into the hundreds of thousands of people

legitimately qualify for your newly designed visa criteria, that's an enormous bureaucratic civil service operation.

But they're actually, you find this, I mean, both right and kind of liberals are always invested in bureaucracy.

Because every time a fucking form gets passed around, someone gets paid.

You know, it makes money.

Cutting red tape is just getting rid of safety nets for environment, for people.

It's making things that used to be crimes, not crimes.

And if you think that it's a good idea, you know, I don't know.

I'm reading a book about Grenfell at the moment.

And part of that comes from,

you Remember this whole thing of there's got to be three regulations go for every new one that comes in.

That was part of that culture

that led to Grenfell.

But you know, as for Rangers, I don't really have that much to kind of say.

I don't know that they're really

a very relevant institution at the moment.

And they may become relevant in a different way, in the same way that you know, the fucking New York Giants are relevant or something in New York.

It's a big giant franchise thing,

and you know, people go along and have a day out and kind of that's kind of what I think it'll be because it can't remain you know this bastion of conservative thought in a society that no longer needs any of that stuff that it used to offer when Rangers do the loving cup this banner seems to go against what that is.

What's the loving cup?

There's this cup at Ibrock's in the trophy room and each

Hogmane, the first home match in the new year, they share this cup around and it's to toast the king, to toast the country and good tidings for the new year.

And they do that as like a ritual they've been doing for a long time.

I couldn't tell you what's in it, whether it's whiskey, blood,

a mixture of each.

A concoction.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

How do you feel like going, like as a Rangers fan?

You don't go to the ground and go, oh, I'm hearing a lot more

right-wing power, do you?

Because if people go to Chelsea or something, they go, I hear a lot of fucking mad stuff.

You know, Chelsea fans go, fucking hell, over the last 10 years, I've started to hear a lot more Canwarian stuff.

Yeah.

We've all seen like the SS style flags appearing at high rocks.

But is that just a troll?

It could be.

I also

just see Rangers as, like you said, they're trying to throw attention to themselves by doing outlandish things,

terrible things.

Like Rangers should be for everyone, as any football club should be.

But I'm very disenfranchised with the way that a certain element of the

fan base seems to be lurching far right.

For

I think the only reason is because Celtic Celtic fans tend to fear left.

I think like this is something I often say.

I think it's quite a cruel thing to say.

So I don't really, I wouldn't ever mention any people I think are in this category.

But like in show business, the people who are the most better are the people who got what they deserved.

Do you know what I mean?

Because if you, if you kind of got lucky, you've got to have a certain

you kind of got to have a certain charm charm or people won't like you you know and

not many people in that category Ricky Gervais maybe he know he got lucky he doesn't realize he got lucky and

it makes it makes him kind of a little grating right but most people who get lucky have some kind of

oh fucking hell that was that came along that red time kind of thing most people who get overlooked so glenn will who we haven't had on the Aberdeen show I mean I'm sure Glenn would say he didn't, he's probably not had the opportunities in his career that he should have had.

I mean, it was definitely a long period where he would have been one of the best comic minds in the country.

But you've got to develop a certain shrug with that.

What the fuck are you going to do?

Because

if you sit and dwell on that, you're kind of going to go mad.

Because, you know, all your friends are fucking millionaires.

And you've just kind of got to shrug it off.

But the people who kind of got what they deserved are really better you know so the guys who got you know a bunch of radio 4 shows and tv appearances and you know it you know it looked like if they did this thing really well or if this show took off or one series of a sitcom or whatever thing and it didn't quite happen and they're the bitterest dudes um and they are all men and

Rangers are a bit like that for me where you're like

you're second in your league

Consistently.

Consistently, very consistently.

You have good runs in Europe, like some people would say, implausibly good runs in Europe.

You have a high turnover,

a reasonably high turnover for

somewhere that's pretty much the equivalent of playing football in fucking Finland, right?

Scotland is not a major football nation anymore.

And, you know, you have a certain

worldwide brand, right?

You know, loads of sports clubs worldwide.

That's kind of

what your club deserves.

Do you know what I mean?

You're not fucking Real Madrid.

You don't have something like the Irish diaspora, like Celtic, to kind of feed off.

And that's, you've kind of got what you would imagine, you're kind of doing as you would imagine a club like Rangers would be doing.

And that is often a source of kind of great bitterness.

And then that's when you start to troll, as as those comics start to troll, because

you want some attention that you don't really deserve.

Yeah, I can see Rangers not winning a league for another five years, and then winning one, and then another seven years, maybe winning one.

We'll see how this takeover goes, but they've just become a kind of constitutionally smaller club.

I don't know, like if we looked at their social medias, Rangers and Celtic, right?

I bet you Celtic's kind of 15, 20% more, you You know, because they're just more people are interested and they have a bigger fan base and they have a bigger stadium and they make more money.

And you're like, well, yeah, you're going to win

like a smaller club would.

You're going to get a good team together and hold it together for a couple of seasons.

And sometimes you win two in a row or whatever.

But the days of you being the kind of dominant club are probably, probably over.

I don't know how

investment from big fucking you know, also at the same time, Celtic are a badly run fucking club run by horrible Tory cunts

who don't really like their own fans.

There's lots of weaknesses there.

Do you know what I mean?

You can see why a big takeover would happen at some of Rangers because you're like, well, how do we make money?

We get in the Champions League.

You know, who do we have to beat?

Well, this kind of slightly mismanaged, slightly archaic club where it takes a long time for things to happen.

Okay.

I mean, it's a decent bet.

My dad started one of the first Ranger sportist clubs in Canada, and the Irish diaspora, diaspora, of

supporting Celtic really helps.

But you don't, as you said, you don't get that anymore in Canada.

What's happening, and I think it's a good thing because you should support local football, is that my dad used to take me to the sportist clubs in Canada,

and everyone was, you know, 50s, 60s, 70s.

Their children went along who, you know, were young.

But now,

getting to my age, kids are coming through and they're going to Toronto instead.

They're going to MLS teams.

They're going to the Canadian Professional Leagues and they're not watching Rangers anymore.

So these clubs across the world, even though NARSA, the North American Ranger Sporters Association, is still a big

conference.

These clubs are dwindling because they don't have the interest to look back at Scotland anymore because you've got three, four generations down the line and they're like I don't really relate to that I relate to this team that's down the road for me sure and it's I mean I think it's healthier to do that yeah I agree I remember like when rangers were going past so I was I was quite fucking gleeful right and I used to train with a bunch of like Celtic guys at the time and every you know everybody found really funny right but as a socialist you're like well that's a fucking working class institution people have turned up and paid at the fucking turnstiles every year for fucking over a a hundred years.

And then it's getting sold for a pound between two fucking rich businessmen and maybe getting liquidated.

And on that level, you're like, this is fucking disgusting.

It's disgusting that institutions that are paid for very directly by people, you really need in our league for people to go to the games and to buy the fucking shirts, right?

That's where your money comes from.

It's not like the premiership.

And

for them to have no ownership and no say on the direction of that and no input whatsoever seems to me kind of disgusting.

And, you know, when it gets taken over by a big fucking conglomerate, you know, more of the same.

Yeah.

People who don't know what govern is, class of self-side,

the history,

you know, I hate to say it.

The term gets bounded around, but like Rangers people.

But what is is that?

Like,

I think you could be anyone.

You can come in and buy a team, like, look at Newcastle and try and make them successful.

But

you kind of want that romance of someone who knows, like, Fergus McCann,

the bunnet.

Yeah.

He came, saved Celtic, did his thing, and then left.

But we never had that same arc.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

is that the thing where you think about institutions?

Are they reformable?

You know so anytime left-wing people go to me, oh I fucking hate the BBC or blah blah blah and you're like like you gotta fucking be practical.

The BBC is reformable.

Like everybody's on short-term contracts.

You can come in if you're government and impose a bunch of quotas.

You know what about imposing a quota?

You only have the number of people who work in the BBC who went to public school, who went to public school in the general population.

So you've got 7%

cap, you know, and all that kind of of thing.

So it's reformable.

Other institutions, the Home Office probably isn't reformable.

The Met, you know, if I was like a fucking dictator in Britain, one of the things I would do, I would get rid of the Met because I just think that culture is

undilutable.

Do you know what I mean?

And then you come to something like Rangers and you know,

well, is that reformable?

You know, and you look at the kind of fucking military day where they try and get their fans signed up to, you know, the army for patents in the middle of a fucking war and you kind of like i don't know i mean i don't know enough about it because i'm not a fucking rangers person but i think that's the thing anytime you want to invest emotionally in an institution you've got to say is it reformable you know

i think rangers being so close to the you know the monarchy and

the britishness and they want to exude power across Scottish Leagues in Europe.

So their idea is that we should always always be spending money.

We should always be dominating rural Britannia as they sing.

Supremacy, that's the same kind of ideology.

They've lost that.

They don't have supremacy.

And now

the Toys are at the prem and they don't know what to do.

They're not going to win any trophies this season.

They were embarrassed by Queen's Park, who put on an excellent show at Ibrox.

Probably my favourite stat ever.

It was the first time Queen's Park ever beat Rangers in the Scottish Cup since 1887-ish.

And that was that's wild.

You sort of don't realise what that dominance is until you start seeing all the statistics where they go, oh, this is the first time Rangers have ever lost three games in a row at home and stuff.

Oh, ever?

What in a hundred and odd?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I couldn't believe that either.

Yes, Rangers went through on penalties, but within 90 minutes, they lost that game.

Look at Knott's Forest and all that, and they're paid.

There's that thing where you get a good manager and you get a good crop of fucking players, and you hold it together for a bit.

And you can dominate, you know, and anyone sort of can, you know.

Alex Ferguson came through and did it, and you would argue, much more difficult set of circumstances than any Rangers manager is going to be faced with against the current Celtic team.

You know, much bigger gap when he takes over at Aberdeen.

So, you know, it can happen.

I'll just go to Cambyslang Rangers now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Keep it real.

Conscious.

Late night.

Frankie Boyle.

Frankie Boyle, Frankie Boyle, Frankie Boyle, Frankie Boyle.

Thank you for listening to Here Comes the Guillotine Mailbag for Frankie Boyle, Susie McCabe and Christopher MacArthur Boyd.

If you have a problem, dilemma or issue that you think Frankie, Susie and Christopher can fix, email hctg at global.com

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