Frankie Boyle: BBC editor admits she wasn't a fan of Adlington joke

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/18/frankie-boyle-adlington-joke

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The former BBC production editor of Mock the Week has said she "wasn't a fan" of Frankie Boyle's controversial joke about Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington in 2008, but gave it the green light after a discussion with BBC producers.

Suzanne Gilfillan, now the executive editor at Remedy Productions, told the high court on Thursday that producers agreed to include Boyle's joke if they could also show the response of Mock the Week host Dara O Briain, which was "sympathetic" to Adlington.

Boyle was censured by the BBC Trust in 2009 after he described Adlington as resembling "someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon".

Gilfillan gave witness testimony in support of Boyle at the Scottish comedian's libel trial against the publisher of the Daily Mirror. Boyle is suing Mirror Group Newspapers for libel over an article that described him as a "racist comedian". He also claims he was defamed by the article because it said he was "forced to quit" Mock the Week in 2009.

She told jurors: "In the case of the Rebecca Adlington joke, people have said comedy is about the context and that week the Olympics was the big story ... We discussed it and I wasn't a fan of the joke, as many people weren't, but in the context of the show and after discussions with editors [we decided to keep it in].

"If we keep the joke in and we keep Dara's response, which was quite sympathetic and quite outraged, it sort of makes the joke feel less cruel in isolation."

Asked by the Mirror Group Newspapers counsel, Ronald Thwaites QC, whether it was correct that the joke was included as a matter of compromise between producers, Gilfillan replied: "Absolutely."

Boyle told the court earlier this week that he had asked producers not to cover the Olympics on the show that week. He added that producers wanted him to make a joke about a photograph of Adlington returning from Beijing.

Gilfillan said producers had decided there was not many other light news events to discuss on the show that week, because the news had been dominated by deaths of troops in Afghanistan.

She emphasised the BBC had hoped Boyle would return to the show as a guest after he left in 2009, and denied that there was any pressure from BBC bosses for him to quit.

Gilfillan was one of two witnesses to give evidence in support of Boyle on Thursday. The other witness was his manager, Hannah Chambers.

The trial continues.

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