August 4^th 2005 and Jimmy is papped leaving The Ivy restaurant. Alamy (images here) didn’t seem to know who Frankie Boyle was and who could have predicted 2 pap shots would have sent me down a rabbit hole of looking into the 8 Out of 10 Cats launch and early series?.

In March 2005 it had been announced, by C4, that they were hiring Jimmy to front a new panel show, that would be based on opinion polls: 8 Out of 10 Cats.

See the announcement, here, in Chortle

Frankie contributed (as a writer) to some of the shows in Series 1-5 (series listing here) and was a panellist on 7 shows (up to 2007) and a final one in 2008.

One of the shows Frankie guested on was S1 Ep10, broadcast on August 5^th 2005. Presumably the 4^th was the record date, which is possibly why they went to a restaurant together.

Jimmy and Frankie were part of the writing team on this show – as was Charlie Brooker and Charlie Skelton. The latter is still working on Frankie’s shows and also LOL UK (see his credits list here).