In October 2009, Boyle announced online that he would be leaving BBC panel show Mock the Week after seven series to focus on his tour and "some other funny things I'm writing".
[4] An appearance on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross followed, when Boyle revealed that the show was originally called Deal with This, Retards, but had to be changed to avoid offence.
The first episode, broadcast on 30 November 2010 after an advertising campaign on London buses, attracted a "modest" audience (1.54 million viewers including the time-shifted repeat the same evening).
[6] The free daily newspaper Metro applauded the first episode's blend of stand-up and sketches, that "cantered gleefully – but never gratuitously - past the boundaries of taste and decency" with "some fantastically acerbic rants about religious people and the mentally ill."[7] The Independent's Rhiannon Harries felt "the best of the sketches were those that satirised the bland inanity of TV culture" but was "less comfortable with the jokes about mental illness" that more or less "conflated religion and autism", concluding that there was "something very brittle about the laughter.
"[5] In The Guardian, John Crace, noting that the absence of previews was usually PR speak for "We don't think it's much good and we want to avoid it getting a kicking,"[9] implied that Boyle's standup sequences were re-hashed from his recent "least exciting" tour.
[13] Metro withdrew its support, claiming "laughs were thin on the ground" in the second week[14] and that in the third episode "almost without exception, the sketches were wholly unfunny and the in-house audience seemed to be struggling to raise even the smallest of titters.
"[17] In a response, Katie Price said: "If Mr Boyle had a 10th of his courage and decency he would know that to suggest, let alone think funny, that Harvey may sexually attack me is vile and deeply unfair.
Both have confirmed that they are seeking legal action and have written a complaint to Channel 4 regarding Boyle's jokes with Katie saying "To bully this unbelievably brave child is despicable; to broadcast it is to show a complete and utter lack of judgement.