Scottish comedian Francis Martin Patrick Boyle, known to all as Frankie, is one of the UK’s most popular and most controversial comics.

His genres are listed as one-liners, black comedy, blue comedy, surreal humour, improvisational comedy, insult comedy, pessimistic humour and political satire and he is exceptional at all of them, if not everyone’s cup of tea.

He once said he planned to quit stand up before he turned 40, but thankfully that age has passed and he’s still performing live. Frankie’s currently doing ‘work in progress’ shows around London. He did a short run at The Phoenix near Oxford Circus, where I caught up with him… with some trepidation, given his stage persona.

But I needn’t have worried, he was extremely pleasant as he arrived and headed to the basement performance area, in spite being interrupted by a ‘grapher wanting his pencil scribble signed at the precise moment his pen decided to slip through the hole in his jacket pock and lodge in the lining…

I quickly grabbed another pen from my bag and thanked Frankie for his patience and for his ‘graph and dedication. Sigh of comic relief… reminding myself of the first rule of autograph collecting, make sure you give them something to sign with!