Sophie Duker is one of the five comedians making up the latest series of Taskmaster - but she is no stranger to TV. She has been a regular feature on Mock The Week and Frankie Boyle's New World Order - the latter of which she is most famous for.
If you ask any comedian, they will be the first ones to tell you that their job consists of walking the fine line between making people laugh and offending them deeply with every joke (sometime both). Sophie is no stranger to this experience.
She joked about killing white people on Frankie Boyle's show and it sparked an Ofcom frenzy - with 1,300 complaints, which were duly dismissed. The 31-year-old features alongside the likes of Chris Ramsey and Judi Love on the latest iteration of the Channel 4 show, reports Birmingham Live.
Duker was born in London to a family of African descent and studied French and English at Oxford University. Her first stand-up show, "Diet Woke", was premiered in 2018. The Ofcom complaints followed an appearance on Frankie Boyle's New World Order in September 2020.
When the host Frankie Boyle proposed the motion "Black Lives Matter Glosses Over The Complexities Of A World Where We All Need To Come Together And Kill Whitey", a follow up joke she made was taken out of context and spread on social media. She said at the time: “Like white power is Trump Tower. When we say we want to kill whitey, we don’t really want to kill whitey,” she continued, but then quickly added “we do" and adding "not today,” eliciting laughter from fellow panel members.
A Greater Manchester police hate crime investigation was opened after a report in early January and closed a week later with no action. The BBC refused to discuss the reasons for their decision.
But in a statement said: “Frankie Boyle’s New World Order was shown after 10pm and its content is within audience expectations for a post-watershed, topical, satirical programme from a comedian whose style and tone are well-established.
"Every week on the show Frankie puts forward a number of topics for debate, this episode was no different. The panellists’ comments were in response to a motion that was written and presented in line with the programme’s tone and style. Sophie Duker is a talented comedian and a regular panellist on Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, and we look forward to continue working with her at the BBC."
Taskmaster begins on 14 April on Channel 4
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