10. Rebecca Adlington
It seems appropriate to begin with a joke that received a great deal of media attention despite appearing pretty innocuous at first instance. Boyle, on an episode of Mock the Week, made the "observation" that Rebecca Adlington's face was as if it was a reflection in the back of a spoon, and then proceeded by suggesting she would probably be very dirty in bed due to her boyfriend being extremely attractive. This was in 2008, and Boyle returned to this topic when prior the 2012 Olympics he wrote on Twitter:
"I worry that Rebecca Adlington will have an unfair advantage in the swimming by possessing a dolphin's face." This brought about a great measure of support of the double gold medalist and condemnation towards Boyle. In my opinion, in this regard the Scot was probably overstepping the boundaries of taste by simply making Adlington a target of his comedic barbs simply due to the way she looked. Making jokes about somebody's appearance for no other reason than to make fun is not really excusable. However, what Boyle did here is no worse than certain tabloid newspapers and magazines' tendency to ogle beautiful women and develop a perfect figure of womanhood that everybody should be aiming for, and then proceed to pick out the faults in any that don't fit that particular mould. So maybe they should look in the mirror before employing scapegoats to shield their own actions.