Channel 4 chief grilled over Frankie Boyle joke
Channel 4 boss David Abraham has been quizzed by MPs after he failed to apologise when Ofcom ruled an on air joke made by Frankie Boyle about Katie Price’s disabled son was “highly offensive”.
It saw Boyle joke that Price had married a cage fighter to ward off sexual advances from her son, who suffers from septo-optic dysplasia.
Abraham personally signed the joke off prior to broadcast but has been subjected to vocal criticism from MPs for failing to issue an unreserved apology.
The gag was uttered on Boyle’s late night sketch show Tramadol Nights earlier this year but the fallout from the affair rumbles on still.
Abraham said: “"He [Boyle] clearly works at the edge of taste but that is also the place where Channel 4 needs to be, but to be so in a responsible way. We obviously recognise that in that particular case a piece of humour that was contextualised in the programme late at night was then passed on in the media and out of context and did cause a reaction we had not intended."
Ofcom had labelled Abrahams decision as “erroneous” claiming that the joke “appeared to directly target and mock the mental and physical disabilities of a known eight year old child.”