Price urges Boyle to meet son
Katie Price has challenged Frankie Boyle to meet her disabled son Harvey after the controversial comic made a joke about him.
The former glamour model will appear in a one-off documentary later this month about life with her son, who she described as “a wonderful boy”.
She said: “I am so proud of how he deals every day with his disability. He has been my one constant over the past eight years and, alongside Junior and Princess, remains the most important person in my life.
“But of course Harvey doesn’t have the voice to defend himself, so through this documentary I hope to encourage other people to appreciate the difficulties that children with disability and their parents face every day.
“I am lucky to be able to make this film and hope it helps those who struggle to cope with disability and prejudice without the support network I have.”
Boyle caused controversy when he made a jibe in his Channel 4 series Tramadol Nights about Harvey making sexual advances towards his mother.
A spokesman for Sky Living, which is broadcasting the show, said: “In a bid to explain how the ’joke’ affected her personally, Katie’s ultimate wish is to speak directly to Frankie, and even encourage him to meet Harvey for himself. Will he agree to a meeting or will he avoid explaining his position? Will he apologise?”
Harvey, who is Price’s son from a relationship with former Manchester United footballer Dwight Yorke, suffers from autism and life-threatening hormone deficiencies.
Channel 4’s chief executive was attacked yesterday by an MP for making the “appalling decision” to broadcast the joke.
Asked why he had not apologised for the broadcast, chief executive David Abraham told the House of Commons Culture Media and Sport select committee that the remark caused offence because it was taken “out of context”.
He said: “We obviously recognise 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, did cause a reaction which we had not intended.
“We only ever had satirical intent. We did not intend in any way to focus the humour on a disabled child in this instance.”
Mr Abraham did not rule out working with the comedian again, and said: “We have a bias against censoring artists. We want to support freedom of expression and his humour is very much in this area of challenging political correctness.
“But we do recognise that the reaction out of context here wasn’t what was intended.”
Best-selling author and Conservative MP Louise Mensch repeated the joke to Mr Abraham, telling him: “This is a disabled little boy that we’re talking about.
“I am bewildered that you can sit here and say that it’s challenging political correctness and that you will not apologise to a little boy for having put him on a television programme in this context.
“Surely no cultural remit can ever possibly justify such a joke.”
