Author: Howard Wilkinson

Director of Satire, Paradise Circus. Howard adds stability at the top, taking a strategic overview of operations whilst also stepping in from time to time in a caretaker author role.

Brummie of the Year 2021: Nigel “Ian Buckells” Boyle

For many of our 18 years we have asked and answered the question: who is the most quintessential brummie of the moment. As we celebrate the moment of our 18th birthday, it’s time once again to crown a new champion for our city.

We didn’t announce a Brummie of the year in 2020 because… Covid, I guess. Shall we say it was Covid? It was Covid. But the thing is, The Brummie of the Year, the award itself, was always there waiting patiently… much like this year’s winner. Step forward (fourth) man of the hour, Nigel Boyle, aka Ian Buckells off of the very brummie telly bollocks Line of Duty.

Brummie of the Year 2021 Nigel Boyle as Ian Buckells in Line of Duty

He was there in 2020, when you were so busy looking for toilet roll you didn’t stop to ask “who is the best of us?”. 

He was there in 2019 when you thought we’d forgotten about this feature but we said it was Stephen Duffy. 

You didn’t see him much between that and Kevin McCloud’s controversial crowning in 2015 but he was there somewhere,—probably playing golf. How about back in 2005 when we gave it to a Red Panda? He was around, serving beer to underage kids in The Inbetweeners.

So why Nigel Boyle? And why now?

Nigel is as brummie as they come, that’s a given, but here’s the sizzle reel for how he embodies brummie ambition and attitude as it is today in 2021:

  • His signature character, Ian Buckells, never blew his own trumpet. He just quietly got on with being a bit crap until he was in charge of… well everything. The OCG. Major police investigations. All of it, and he always looked a little worried about it all and like he hoped you’d fuck off and leave him alone a bit. That’s hardcore brummie posturing.
  • Buckells turned out to be the final boss in long running police procedural The Line of Duty, which is Birmingham to its core. Crimes in the first series took place on our estates and in the old Aston fire station—and the original AC12 mezzanine leans were near the escalator that goes both ways in Millennium Point.
  • For extra brummie points, the show moved production for its later seasons (following the public money trail that had probably brought it here in the first place). How brummie is that?
  • Despite being filmed in Belfast, the reality of the show remained in a sort of Birmingham of the imagination (you can still maps of Sutton Coldfield Constituency, where someone got merced in season 1, hanging on the investigation wall right at the end)
  • Nigel, who was born in Moseley, trained at Birmingham School of Acting (now part of Birmingham Conservatoire) and is so proud of his city right now
  • As far as we can tell, Nigel has buggered off to London. 100 Brummie points, our kid.

So that’s why it should be Nigel. As to why it should be now…we’ve got a book to sell, to be honest, and we needed your attention for 5 minutes.

You can back Birmingham it’s not Shit: The Book on Kickstarter today.

This is Bollocks. Total bastard bollocks

Is this controversial? Maybe. Is it satisfying? If it’s not then you’ve not really been paying attention. Ian Buckells is the best of us, in a lot of ways, and Nigel Boyle is Ian Buckells, Fourth Man, H, and Brummie of the Year. Definately.

Cheers, Nigel.

Nigel as the barman in The Inbetweeners

Revealed! Brum’s commonwealth games mascot

We’ve obtained a leaked internal email showing early designs and concepts for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games mascot. No bull. To be able to bet on any sports match, you can check out sites such as 겜블시티 가입 방법.

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Christmas Market Jokes to Continue Despite COVID 19

For Immediate Release 

Paradise Circus is saddened to hear that there will be no German Christmas Market in 2020 but has vowed to continue in their annual tradition of poking fun at the “well-loved” institution.

As such we are announcing, today, that we will continue making the same jokes about Birmingham’s Christmas Market but in a COVID safe manner including:

  • Regular hand-washing using soap from one of 27 identical fancy soap stalls
  • Order the joke direct to you using our app, currently being built by Capita
  • Second-best track and trace in Europe so we can try to locate every current line up of UB40
  • We will make sure the hundreds of identical stalls selling polished rocks in our jokes are spaced out

We are very sorry that due to the required hygiene protocols you will no longer be able to return the joke at the end of the evening to get back your deposit, instead, you can keep it as a souvenir.

During these unprecedented times we will be pleased to serve you from a limited menu of other jokes from our repertoire, which have also been prepared in line with current advice:

  • You can now go up the Ackers so long as you are in your social bubble 
  • You may not blow trumpets, whether they are our own or not
  • That picture of Albert Bore and the clock but photoshopped so they’re further apart 

Our popular book with 101 of our best jokes is available for takeaway orders only.

Jokes about Andy Street’s absolute failure to tackle homelessness and reduce the number of rough sleepers will be suspended completely. Because it’s not funny. It’s really not. (You can help with a donation to a local charity, maybe?) 

Please be patient with us at this difficult time, and kindly remain 2 metres from Twitter when reading our jokes.

Now, more than ever, it is important we find King Kong and embrace the new normal.

101 Things Birmingham Gave the World. No. 98: Israel, and tensions in the Middle East


Of all the things Birmingham has given the world – there’s more than 101 – nothing provides a glow of pride quite like the bloodshed in the Middle East.

At the close of the 19th century, an area known as Palestine was home to Arabs, Muslims, Christians and Jews, who lived among each other in relative harmony. True, the banter got a bit lively on the local newspaper’s forum but it wasn’t an accurate reflection of how well the various people got along.

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People hear two different things from the same audio clip and the internet is going bananas

If you haven’t already, listen to this audio recording right now.



What do you hear?

Some people hear the name of the car race that was held on the streets of Birmingham city centre in the 80s, where as some hear the Mayor of the West Midlands – who has been spending time trying to bring the car race back rather than doing, y’know, anything useful like tackling homelessness in the city – being insulted.

If you heard the second answer, you’re technically correct. Apparently it’s all due to your hearing, and gullibility. It’s like that other thing on the internet where some people hear the word ‘laurel’, which you might win for winning a car race, and ‘pranny’, which you might be if you where an elected official and spent your time working on vanity projects rather than sorting out the people who are homeless, or hungry in your area. #WMGeneration

Satirical cartoon: Carillion and Chamberlain Square

Two council officials, in hi-vis vests and hard hats stand outside a locked building site. You know the council officials are Council officials as it says BIRMINGHAM CITY COUNCIL OFFICIAL on their hi-vis where it would say ‘Beckham’ if it was a late ‘90s No 7 Manchester United replica kit.

You know it’s locked building site as it says that on a poster across the way in. ‘Closed due to liquidation of contractor’ it says.
One official is reading the paper. It has a paragraph which reads…

“One Chamberlain Square will be eight storeys tall and is due for completion in summer 2019 when financial services firm PwC, which is handling the liquidation of Carillion, will move in.”

No caption is needed as this is the perfect satire of late-capitalism already.

Break the Brum listed building code

Signs and symbols used as a code to mark listed buildings in Birmingham before a suspicious fire or a demolition order have been revealed, and now ‘experts’ have explained how to protect yours. Look out for these drawing on walls, doors and even bins outside your property.

Some indicate that it’s not worth the effort of battling local opinion, others that they may be a prime target.

Do they know it’s bin day? We release charity single in support of bin strikers

Last bin day, we went out to see if the bags had been collected outside PC towers and instead found a package addressed to us. It contained the master tape for a song with more hooks than we have different types of bins to sort our recycling into. No other details were provided, it’s like the bin made a record. So we’re putting it out, and leaving it out.

(I’ve Lost All My Respect For You) Since the Bin-Men Went On Strike is the first release on Paradise Circus Records.

The way the strike has been covered in the media has created a bit of a bad smell with a lot of rubbish spoken, recycled with dumb opinions all over social media. No-one goes on strike lightly, it’s always a last resort for workers to give up pay to protest, and we felt that they needed to hear that a lot of Brummies appreciate how hard they work to keep our city clean and the collections safe.

Without our refuse workers things have wheely bin bad, and that shows how much we need them. We hope the single is picked up, and makes a clean sweep in the charts.

The single is on sale on iTunes, everywhere else you can buy digital music, and you can stream it on Spotify.

All proceeds will be donated to the union strike fund.

Support the Brum Bin Strikers on Facebook.

Up the charts, up the workers!