The Mailbag: Late Night Frankie

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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.

Here with me in the studio is producer Andy.

Good evening.

Andy just nodded there.

Then remembered he was on radio.

And Andy, we're going to go through people's problems.

We're going to mend some hearts.

Let's find someone with pain.

Hi, Frankie.

Love the pod, but we need to hear more come chat as the quota is a bit light.

Got a career-based question I'd like to have your advice on.

I'm a welder by trade and found a good few jobs paying around 30k a year.

However, I've spotted a job that pays £45,000,

but this company are known very well for their business of supplying the military.

My question is: How to best shut out my moral compass, knowing I'd be contributing to the war machine?

Or should I sack it off and take a lower-paying job and sleep soundly knowing I'm not working for a company famous for cluster bombs and arming the Saudis?

Cheers, Matt.

Kiss.

Well, Matt, it's a question philosophers have asked themselves

over the centuries.

What is the price of of a human soul

if the price of your soul Matt is 15k a year less tax I mean what's it probably paying in tax on that by the time you get a hold of it and not substantially over 10 grand

is that the price of your soul

um

and also I think

Sometimes with these things, what's year three like?

You know?

Because you think, can I do this job and blah, blah, blah.

And then you're like, what's the third year of creating bombs, getting dropped on tents

like?

Like, what's that?

What's that breakdown going to be like?

What's the size of the

size of the first wave of the tsunami?

You know, the tsunami, there's an initial wave comes in.

And you think, oh, my goodness, we're all drenched.

That's actually just the kind of pre-come of the tsunami.

And actually,

there's a towering wave beyond it.

I sort of wonder if

year three of your job,

the big wave comes in, the big moral wave.

And you know,

we have to live with ourselves, don't we?

You have to wake up every morning and have a cliche look yourself in the mirror.

But it does actually

get difficult when you're not doing the things you want.

And that could be not being with the person you want to be with.

That could be not being the parent you want to be for your kids.

But having a job like that is going to definitely give you that kind of moral dysmorphia, that inability to

look at yourself.

And I'd suggest you don't do it.

Also, if you don't do it and you've got a job where you can def you like, you can definitely get a job and it's 30 grand.

I mean,

I might do the 30 grand job slack off a bit and

try and monetize some other area of my life you know that's the horrible thing though isn't it this whole new monetize this this other bit of your life do you know what I mean so myself and producer Andy we were just talking before we started about

doing a documentary about

going to like really obscure Scottish football clubs and really obscure grounds and what the people are like and those things that's the deal thing you might kind of go and talk to folk.

And immediately, I started going, Well, I know a company you could take that to, and blah blah blah.

And that's even that is sort of like

the purest way of doing it, Andy, would be we produce it ourselves and we just fund ourselves.

And I go and do some horrible fucking gig somewhere and go, Well, that's

that's a documentary.

I went and you know, entertained this

group of

I presented the awards for sheet metal worker of the year or whatever it is, and we get to go and talk to these folks.

Do you know what I mean?

I think when I was growing up, or when I was younger anyway,

there was much more of an attitude of how do we fucking get round this?

How do we get round capitalism?

How do we sort of do our own things and kind of

just use that as a thing to pay the rent?

And now it's come to like dominate people's lives more and more.

So I would say definitely don't take the job.

I like my hobby of going around and watching football teams in Scotland.

The idea of monetizing,

it would take away, I think, the joy I get from slogging three hours north on four buses.

Sure.

Well, this guy's job is like, do you want to go and see Forage Mechanics this weekend?

But you've kind of got to kill a kid on the way back.

That's essentially his job.

Yeah.

It does seem a bit horrifying.

I don't think I could

take

more money knowing that I'm going to be

assisting in genocide around the world.

I think take the lesser paid job and have a bit of a laugh.

I think there's like

there is that thing where you're like, when you're younger, you don't really understand it.

So I used to like do some corporates and just give the money away'cause I thought, you know, otherwise that's money that some horrible T TV presenter is going to use to build an ugly conservatory.

And I didn't really enjoy doing the gigs, but I would try and check them out, you know, so that I would go, who's it for?

And I'd look them up and blah, blah, blah.

But sometimes you just don't understand what the industry is because these things are really good.

So I did one for like an industry called Reputation Management, which you think is PR.

right and how do you change my wikipedia entry and all that stuff it's absolutely not that it's like if Roman Abramovich has bought a bunch of shares that tripled in value, how do you keep that out of the times?

You know, it's like a really networked thing where people work for incredibly shady people.

But, you know, some charity got a payday.

So there is that, there's always the excuse of ignorance.

I'm always fascinated by it.

You see this on the left a lot.

People go, ignorance is no excuse.

Ignorance is every excuse.

You know, you live in a fucking society that's trying to keep you ignorant.

You can't then turn around and go, ignorance is no excuse.

But yeah, we're firmly against

you doing a job, but best of luck in your new life.

Sounds like you're moving anyway.

Sleeper cell, though.

Sleeper cell within.

Change the target systems to headquarters, the CEOs.

Holiday home.

Monaco.

Monaco.

The whole of Monaco is just absolutely wiped out.

They try and bomb Gaza and everything starts heading for Monaco.

It'd be fucking amazing.

DC.

You're right.

Well, maybe this you've got all fucking bin Laden now.

I was trying to keep it light.

But maybe that's what needs to happen.

Maybe my kind of preserve your moral integrity thing is

that's kind of what's holding us back as much as anything.

And maybe actually I um you need to get in there and start

causing havoc and sexual havoc as well.

Just like manipulate people within the

thing like it's a fucking Mexican daytime soap.

If you're not in HR by the end of your first day,

you've done it wrong.

Yeah.

I've never had a HR

department.

Do you have a HR here?

We do.

All right.

Ever been there?

I have not.

Does Des get prob presumably gets hauled in and told to maintain form?

Yeah.

Coming in here at 6 a.m., I have to request that he changes back to his

known for zero.

You come in early in the morning, there's fucking Hunter S.

Thompson.

And you're like, what the fuck is it?

But it's just Des

larking around.

Yeah.

Smoking heroin.

Did he smoke heroin?

Very probably, very unlikely that he didn't.

Yeah.

He doesn't seem like a not-for-me thanks kind of guy.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Got work in the morning.

Just the one.

One for the road.

I thought we dealt with that well.

What's next?

Dear guillotine operators.

I'm a young man from Dublin and I am currently searching for some meaning from life.

I feel the need to get away from the internet, and yet, for my generation, the internet seems necessary to engage with the world at large.

I want to find community, but I also feel feel the need to travel.

But what's the point in either when there's so much chaos and trauma in the world?

I want to do humanitarian work, but none of the systems available feel effective.

I want to create art, but I rarely feel inspired by the horrors of the world, only numb.

I know that purpose is created by each person for themselves, but how do I create purpose in my life?

Thanks,

Siegfried.

Siegfried, a rare Irish Siegfried.

Yes.

I would say, first of all, the internet isn't offering real connection and isn't offering real community.

And you can sort of discount that.

To get anything from it, you have to accept its limitations.

You know?

The people you meet on there aren't your real friends.

The communities you establish aren't real communities.

They aren't real places.

As for wanting to do humanitarian work

and

not feeling the systems work, I mean, like, the humanitarian work exists because the systems don't work, because capitalism doesn't work, because, you know, if you just look at a basic example, like borders, you know,

have been kind of weaponized against people and stuff like that.

There are things that you can do within that that are useful.

It doesn't undo all the world's pain, but if you went and worked for medicines on Frontier or something like that, or you worked for a

Worthwhile Migrations Charity or something, or if you had an ability that you could use, some people are very good at some things,

then that's certainly worth doing.

And because it doesn't, you know, one-shot

all misery in the world, you know, I don't think that's the kind of reason.

I'd also say, like,

artistically, the world isn't there to inspire you.

I almost think the reverse it's like you're there to inspire it.

You know humanity is there or artists are there to

offer an inspiration or to offer even if it's just their point of view, a different point of view

and not not to

not to view

the world whether it's nature whether it's other people or whatever as a as a kind of thing that's supposed to be giving them them something.

I think exactly the opposite.

It's almost like you

have a kind of duty to give them something, and that's kind of what art comes from.

You feel, you know, you're writing something, it's difficult,

you hit a trough,

you're not getting very many words out of day.

I'm obviously just describing myself really blindly,

but

you do feel a sense of duty to push through that because at the end, you have something that other people might find

useful or interesting or inspiring or whatever.

So,

I don't know.

I just think you're all at that point at some point in life, don't you?

You go, well,

community here, or travel, or you know, you've kind of got to do something.

There's a great thing with life, you've kind of got to do something.

Even like hermetism is very rare, very difficult to

survive

without social contact.

So, whatever it is for Siegfried, Siegfried, he will end up doing something.

And

the name's a conversation starter, you know?

The name with an Irish accent.

And when you're in fucking Barcelona or something, you know.

So get out there and travel if that's what you feel.

Or do some humanitarian work if that's what you feel.

You can do both together.

It's pretty easy.

And good luck.

What's your thoughts, Andy?

I think travel is a great way to understand

where you might want to help.

If you want to help refugees or care for older people or

plant trees locally in your immediate environment, it's a great way to

find where you think you might belong.

It's a nice thing to travel.

It's a privilege, though.

So we're assuming you can get far.

I find pleasure in just going 10 minutes down the road to the canal by my house and seeing the swans.

But but also I've been to Minsk and I was very lucky to visit there.

And it did give me a perspective of what it's like in Eastern Europe at the moment as well with everything that's going on.

This is a very downbeat mailbag, by the way.

Is that not the late night feel that we're trying to do?

It is a late night feel.

We want people just swerving off the road

into the fucking headlights of an oncoming truck.

Yeah.

As you're waiting for that early morning train.

Consider your next stop.

Yeah.

I think there's that thing, isn't it?

When you go travelling and

it makes your own country less annoying, you know?

So I used to think British people, Scottish people, but all like particularly in London, it's so fucking annoying getting on a train.

They really panic.

The seating's reserved anyway.

There's, you know, this fucking stampede for the train, all that stuff.

And then you go to Central Europe and they they fucking like it's up it's up there the panic it's like it's such a kind of like

almost screaming face clawing level of I want to get my seat on that fucking train that's already reserved and they're just running up the fucking platform if you ever get a train like across Europe from like France to Switzerland or to Germany or something like that I mean it's fucking hysteria.

It's like the evacuation of fucking Saigon getting on a train.

And then you sort of come back and you go, oh yeah, this is just something people do.

You know, nobody loves

the liminal space between when you're essentially a human fucking pigeon in Houston, you know, clucking about, waiting for, you know, the chance to sit down and have a fucking sleep and a

listen to you know what I worked out to last night?

This is a sign of fucking deep mental breakdown.

The magnetic fields.

If you can work out to the magnetic fields, you're pretty much on

the last

final ledge before the abyss.

You've done your last lap.

Yeah.

This is it.

So long, everybody.

The deep end of the pool arrives.

You might just stay there.

Yeah.

From a sinking boat, that was actually the song I was rowing to.

I feel we dealt with that well.

Thank you, Siegfried.

Thank you, Siegfried.

Thank you for listening to Here Comes the Guillotine mailbag with 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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