Jimmy Carr

[faceless]

Here's Jimmy Carr on today's Richard and Judy show. I never used to be able to stomach the guy, but I've started to like him more recently.

[nekokate]

I'm kind of with you on this. I always thought he was a massive arse, but that book "The Naked Jape" sounds pretty interesting. I'm a sucker for lame one liners.

[Bob]

I think he's great, got a couple of the dvd's and would love to get the new one

[luke]

he was on tv heaven telly hell last night and was pretty funny

[faceless]

Jimmy Carr (34) is a comedian.
September 02 2007
www.independent.ie

Most days I gig. I work an awful lot and the way I see it -- and I'm only half joking when I say it -- is that being a comedian is kind of like having a footballer's career, in that you might have a couple of great days in the sun, a couple of great seasons, but it might not always be that way.

A lot of people take it for granted and I think it's really nice not to. I work when I can and it's nice that people want to come and see my show but they might not always. I suppose it's insecurity in one sense. You've got this tremendous opportunity to do stuff -- just to be a comedian, to be what you've always wanted to be -- and I think it's so wasteful not to do that all the time. I don't like to take a lot of time off. I've just finished my last tour, Gag Reflex, and I did 139 dates for that. It just means that you go to every small town. I live in North London and unless the gig is a long, long way away, I'll be back home of an evening. When you travel a lot, the nicest thing is to sleep in your own bed. I tend to drive home very late after a gig, listen to DVDs or the radio in the car, get in, watch a bit of TV and then I go to bed at three in the morning.

One of the main reasons I got into comedy was that I said it won't be a proper job where I have to get up in the morning, but weirdly, because of the busy-ness of it, I'm always up in the morning, trying to do something. It's like I do two jobs -- I work at nights but during the day there is writing and TV shows. I'm not a morning person in any way, shape or form. I'll get up begrudgingly and drink a load of coffee, more coffee than you could imagine.

I'm self-employed and I've got a terrible fucking boss and I'm up on sexual harassment charges. Karoline works in TV, a proper grown-up job. If she's lucky, she won't be around by the time I get up. I'm not domesticated in the least. I don't cook at all but I always say I can cook; I count coffee as cooking. There's boiling water here and toast is delicious -- don't fix what ain't broken.

If I'm making a TV show, I have to pop into the office to write and that's kind of that day sorted. I used to write for other people years ago, but I stopped when I stopped needing to. I think it's nice to write for yourself and it's heartbreaking to write jokes for other people. I don't really want to talk about it because it was years ago. It's like talking about what I used to do for a living before I was a comedian. I'm not interested in talking about that because I've been doing this since the turn of the century, as I'm fond of saying. I'm bored reading articles about what I used to do for a living.

You ask what if everybody hasn't read those articles. I say -- fuck 'em. There's only so much you can say about one thing. I've been doing this eight years now. I'm not quite sure how interested people are in my day. A comedian tells jokes. Surely that's what you're good for. I don't get nervous on the day of a gig -- there's none of that. I'm not like a performer in the traditional sense. I'm not trained to be a performer. I never envisaged this life for myself. I've got very little ability and I've gone a surprisingly long way on virtually no talent. There's nothing that can really go wrong. If you don't have a talent, you can't fuck up. I'm not like an opera singer. I don't have to stretch my voice and vocal ranges. I'm just standing there telling jokes. What could go wrong?

And I've never understood when people go on about timing. I always think it's something people say about comics when they can't think of anything else. "I really like his timing." What does that mean? The punchline should always come after the feedline. That's as fucking complex as it gets. I play a bit of tennis twice a week, I'll mooch around and I'll eat far too many lunches -- I'm losing my looks. I don't sit down to write my jokes, they occur to me as I live my life.

I don't do a lot of observational stuff and a lot of my observational stuff in my act is made up, not stuff I've observed. People often say to me, 'don't put me in your show', when they have said fuck all to me. Why would I put you in my show? My act is three jokes a minute, each minute, and one-liners. I've always liked short jokes. I'm quite into the art of jokes and I wrote a book about jokes last year. I like presenting new jokes every year. I find it a very exciting thing, very rewarding. I'm a huge fan of Billy Connolly and Tommy Tiernan and the way they tell these very long, involved stories. They are the sort of performers that you love. I don't think I am a very lovable character. I think people like my comedy in spite of, not because it's me. They like the jokes.

If I have an 8pm start, I'll start to think about the gig around 7pm. If it's a new tour, I might spend a bit more time going through things, checking that I know the order of stuff and doing any amendments. In each show, there are 250 jokes. I think the best gigs are when 20 per cent of it is messing around with the audience. But you need to have a show in the middle of all that before you start. You can't wing it because maybe you won't get anything back from the audience. It could be a wet Tuesday night and maybe they just want to be entertained and don't want to join in. But I love when people have the confidence to join in.

But heckles are different.It's a different thing if you're in the International and it's your first time getting up on stage, and someone shouts, 'Fuck off, you're shit.' That's a tough thing to deal with when you're starting out and you don't really know what the next line is, but I was the king of that, fucking brilliant at it. The secret of it was that you'd respond to them, not just with a line, but you would talk to them, talk about who they were, put them on the spot. I wouldn't describe my comedy as offensive. I would describe it as edgy. It's exciting to hear someone say something that they shouldn't say. In my show I'm not trying to get across any political agenda, I'm just trying to say the funniest things I can possibly say for over an hour and a half, that's sort of what I see as my job.

Who would do this job if they didn't want to be loved? I'm as emotionally retarded as every other comedian. You just want attention.

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Apollo triple for Carr
Marissa Burgess
26/10/2007
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk

I'M on my way to Reading, then I'm in Warwick then Cardiff, every weekend a different place. I like it," explains Jimmy Carr chatting to CityLife on his hands-free while travelling to his next gig. Well at least it gets you out of the house. "It does," agrees Carr, "like a pensioner," he adds laughing.

Since he last played Manchester in October last year, (when he's not in the studio hosting Eight Out Of Ten Cats or Big Fat Quizzes for Channel 4) much of his time is spent getting out of the house and exploring theatres across the country: "I do 140 dates a year. There's not a lot of hanging out down the park."

He's particularly looking forward to Manchester: "It's quite nice to be in the city for three days because you're not driving around crazily. You get a chance to see your mates up there, hang around a bit, it's a pretty nice place to stay these days."

Are you planning on dropping in on anyone in particular for a cup of tea and a bun? "I imagine I'll see a few Manchester people, Justin Moorhouse is an old mate of mine, Jason Manford of course (his Eight Out Of Ten Cats co-star). I'll try and catch up with the funny boys while I'm there."

The show he'll be performing in between cuppas will be like the other shows - "exactly the same apart from every single word'', he jests. "I mean that half as a joke and half seriously because it's exactly the same in that it's me, doing setpieces and chatting to the audience and messing around, but it's basically 250 new jokes."

No mean feat, though, when you're in the one liner business and you're touring a new show every year. That's a lot of jokes to write. But these days to discipline himself he commits the show to DVD, so he can't repeat any. Not that Carr's complaining, simply making the most of his blessed situation: "I'm trying to make hay, I'm seeing it as very much a footballer's career. People might be sick of the sight of me tomorrow, I'm sure someone is reading this thinking 'why am I reading this? I hate him'."

After all some of the material can be quite cruel. "It is quite..." he hesitates, "if you wanted to take offence there are plenty of places where you could. Without employing too much humility or having a downer on myself it's not for everyone."

For those faithful fans he's decided to make a bit of an effort and get to know them. "I've been doing this thing the last couple of years where I wait around to say hello to people, like if anyone wants an autograph or anything, it only takes 45 minutes or something and it's quite nice to do." People are often surprised that Jimmy isn't as 'evil' as his telly and stage personas. "It's a weird thing, some people are amazed I'm not a total d@!*. "There's room for you to think 'I'm a bit of a d@!*," he counters smiling, "but I think people think I'm going to be super aggressive because my comedy's kind of barbed. I'm not very likeable on stage, I'm not trying to be your friend on stage. I'm just trying to make you laugh."

Though he's certainly a household name these days, Carr only started out in comedy eight years ago. "I think partly it was boredom with my life, I didn't really like what I was doing at the time. I wanted to do something exciting and that was a very exciting thing to do. Much more so than jumping out of a plane." In addition he had already been a big comedy enthusiast. "It was partly a love of stand up I was really into it, I'm a comedy fan first and foremost and a performer second, I'm really into it so it seemed logical to give it a go and then, when I did give it a go, it seemed to work and here I am."

For a man who started after getting bored at work, he's not done badly given all the TV work in Britain and some appearances in the States. This year saw him appear at the Montreal Comedy Festival where he met a comedy hero of his: "I got to meet Billy Connolly which was quite a cool thing. It's like meeting the guy who invented what I do for a living. It didn't exist as a job before he was around. Extraordinary."

In addition he's had some film work making small appearances in Ant and Dec's Alien Autopsy and the wedding comedy Confetti. Any others coming up? "I don't think so, I'm thinking of going to see a movie this afternoon if I get the chance," he muses. "But other than that I don't think so, though if something gets offered to me I'll do it. I think it's been amazing the last couple of years that comedians who started with humble beginnings on Channel 4 or on the circuit have really taken off in Hollywood. Simon Pegg's the new Scotty (in the forthcoming Star Trek film) and Ali G's making his third movie and working out there, doing loads of stuff."

Though he's unlikely to follow in their footsteps. "I think you have to stick to what you do best. Those guys are all fabulous actors and I think what I do best is stand up." And that's the kind of modest, nice guy he is. Who would have thought it that the cool cat with the razor sharp tongue was more tabby than tiger?

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Jimmy Carr cannot be serious
Jimmy Carr is worried – what if his audience believes his jokes? The hardest-working man in comedy reveals his deepest fears
Stephen Armstrong
October 28, 2007

There is a curious moment in Jimmy Carr’s latest DVD when he’s bantering with a Yank in the crowd. “If it wasn’t for us, you’d all be speaking German,” the American cries. Without a pause, Carr shoots back: “What is it in your experience of the British that makes you think we’d have picked up the language after 60 years?”

The rata-tat is strange, because Carr seems such a scripted comic. His delivery and gags are so tight, you suspect he can’t freestyle. “It’s the way I speak,” he explains when I bring this up. “I sound quite scripted. I remember, early on, people used to think that, but those moments are where the best gags come from – because it’s just adrenaline.”

Perhaps it’s that voice that leads to misunderstandings for Carr. He became very successful very quickly – his first solo Edinburgh show, in 2002, led to a lucrative Channel 4 deal – and comedy snobs like to slag him off for that: too much ambition, too fast, too soon. Meanwhile, he has quietly become the hardest-working man in comedy, touring constantly, playing every weekend and even performing the first stand-up gig in the computer role-play world of Second Life. He estimates that more than 200,000 people have seen him live. He also estimates that he takes three weeks off a year.

“I think of funny things for a living,” he shrugs. “Who wants a day off from that? It’d be mental. Live work is the most important thing. Everything else is gravy.” He grins and puts on a big showbiz voice. “It’s all gravy, baby.” Perhaps he works so hard because comedy rescued him from a quarter-life crisis. Trapped in marketing, he went on a holiday retreat in a commune in Greece, where someone suggested he do stand-up full time. Voluntary redundancy and 200-plus gigs later, he was making a living from gags. Success brought further stress – his mother died before she could see him make it, and he fell out with his father – so maybe it’s important to maintain momentum to avoid another crash. He has also faced bad press for the edgy nature of jokes such as: “Cats have nine lives. Which makes them ideal for experimentation.”

“It’s only in interviews that you suddenly feel like the bastion of taste and decency,” he smiles, when I raise this. “Putting comedians in charge of what you can and can’t say is like giving the job to the Least Responsible People in the World. There are certain rules that are simple for a comedian: don’t be racist; don’t hate anyone; don’t say anything with malice. In terms of protecting minorities and social rights, I’m literally just saying the funniest things I can in the shortest possible time.”

But, I venture, his first Edinburgh appearance was in a show with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant: three politically incorrect comics sharing a stage at a time when the festival was filled with worthy turns or character skits. “It’s difficult for journalists not to try to find the new Britpop in comedy,” he says carefully. “But, actually, I do what I do because it’s all I can do. If I could do character comedy, I would. There’s a very small gap between the jokes I tell my friends and the jokes I tell the audience. When interviewed, you take on the persona of a comic with an agenda, because you’re asked about what you can and can’t say, and you answer that at face value. But, really, it’s just silly wordplay. Everyone realises that.”

He explains how his audiences are surprised when he meets and greets them afterwards. “They’re expecting me to zing them with insults,” he says, seeming slightly baffled. “It must be difficult if you’re a beloved comedian such as Peter Kay, who has to be super-nice the whole time. For my audience, it’s a pleasant surprise to find I’m polite.” His favourite moments are watching the laughs roll round the theatre, followed by “ooh”s as people realise that what they are laughing at is a little bit wrong. “Rude jokes are titillating in the same way as pornography, and that makes it curiously intimate. There’s one joke in the new show you couldn’t do at the start. I have to break down their moral sensibilities before they’re ready for it.”

He catches my eye and decides to make it clear, in case I’ve misunderstood: “But nobody takes it seriously. If they do, they’d have to think I’m the worst man that’s ever lived.”

Jimmy Carr – Comedian is out on November 5; details of his current tour, Repeat Offender, are at www.jimmycarr.com

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My hols: Jimmy Carr
America is fun, but comedian Jimmy Carr gets his best laughs on British shores
Lizzie Enfield

‘I GO ON HOLIDAY, but I don’t travel. No Michael Palin-style nonsense from me. We go to Barbados every Easter and do very little for two weeks. It’s the perfect place for sitting around, having a bit of a swim, eating nice food and looking at turtles, in between watching DVDs. Barbados may seem a long way to go to watch telly, but it’s nice to do so in beautiful surroundings and, of course, we don’t want to miss an opportunity to increase our carbon footprint.

I love going to America, partly because of the exchange rate, but also because of the fantastic service culture. One of the best times I’ve had was in New York when, by chance, we arrived on the first anniversary of 9/11. Everyone was very pleased to see tourists; on one occasion, we were looking at our map in Central Park and five joggers stopped in the middle of their runs to help us.

The first time I visited the States was as a very young man with my good friend Henry Nichols. We got a Delta pass, which allows you unlimited air travel for a month. We took about 30 flights in 30 days. It became a compulsion. The most ludicrous flying bout was from Seattle. We arrived when there was a festival on and no hostels were available. So, we were literally sleepless in Seattle. After about 36 hours of wandering the streets in the cold and rain, we decided to fly to Florida. Five flights and plenty of carbon emissions later, we were warm and comfortable in Key West.

The best part of that trip was doing the national parks. My inclination was to stick to cities and visit all the stuff I’d seen in films. But Henry is a natural scientist, and wanted to go to Yellowstone and Yosemite, stay in lodges and do nature. The parks were truly awe-inspiring, and Henry knows his stuff, so I picked up a lot that I would not have done had I been left to my own devices.

My favourite place is probably Ireland. I love Dublin and Galway, and go a lot for work – although my work is pretty much a holiday. It’s not like I have to dig ditches or anything, and I only put in a couple of hours a day, so I’m free to wander around, waiting for the next meal and fending off offers of drinks. I don’t drink, which makes being in Ireland rather odd. Everyone assumes you are a reformed alcoholic, but that whatever you are, you will have “just the one”.

My parents are Irish, and all our family holidays were to Kilkee, which has a big long sandy beach, surrounded by some lovely countryside. We used to rent a cottage and spend a month every summer – just long enough for the malleable young person I was to pick up a bit of an Irish accent. Actually, I still do that when I’ve been in Ireland for a bit. I start lilting, asking what people “will be having” to drink and generally sounding a prat.

I’m a big fan of the UK at the moment, too. Places like Manchester and Birmingham have really taken off in the past few years. When I first started touring, about seven years ago, Birmingham was in a bit of a state. Now it’s this fabulous place where you can’t fail to have a good time.

The other place I love is Edinburgh, and, thanks to the festival, I get a month’s holiday there every summer. I stay in this fantastic bed-and-breakfast called One Royal Circus. The best thing is the Parisian-style salon on the first floor, with a baby grand piano and a painted ceiling. It leads to the lounge bar, where guests gather before going out for dinner. It’s like living in another age, and it is truly the Learjet of B&Bs.

I have had one life-changing holiday – on the Greek island of Skyros, which is basically a hippie commune where you can join in for a couple of weeks. Everyone seemed to be in a transitional phase of their lives. Some had lost their partners, others had just got divorced and I had just given up my job with Shell. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with my life, so I enrolled on a creative-writing course and learnt how to do massage, in the hope that something would occur to me. People kept saying that I was really funny, and ought to be a comedian, so I thought I’d give it a go.’

[faceless]

Jimmy Carr heckled by a baby?
October 23, 2008

Jimmy Carr's live stand-up performance was interrupted by a bizarre heckler wearing a nappy last night. The drunken nutter shouted at the 36-year-old comedian "You're boring me" at the performance in Margate, Kent before going to the toilets and stripping off to return dressed only in a DIY baby outfit made of loo roll.

Audience member Lorraine Pattola, 25, told the Daily Star: "The behaviour of the nappy man really was embarrassing - he was knucklehead. At one point I thought a fight would break out." Jimmy had the heckler removed.

An earlier performance at the venue by 40-year-old comic Al Murray had also been interrupted by badly behaved audience members, one shouting "I should have stayed at home smoking crack."

-----------------

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What matters to me: Comedian Jimmy Carr
29 November 2008
By Gaby Soutar
The Scotsman

What's the best bit on your personality CV?
It doesn't matter, because you can turn me off if you don't like me. Either flip this page or switch channels.

And the worst?
I don't suffer fools gladly. I really should be more patient.

What are your earliest memories?
Having a lumbar puncture at a hospital in Limerick when I was three years old – the doctors thought I had meningitis. I remember it so clearly because it hurt – a lot.

Describe yourself as a food/car/drink.
I'm very British, so I'd be a Sunday roast. As a drink, I'd be a Starbucks Americano, as I'm a massive fan. As a car, I'd be an oversized Bentley – it's an acquired taste.

How do you stay in love?
It sounds incredibly twee, but love is a verb, not a noun. You have to work incredibly hard at it.

What keeps you up at night?
Trains going by – we live near a railway station. Either that or our cat, Cookie, jumping up on to the bed.

Who or what makes you laugh?
There's nothing that compares to being in a room watching live stand-up. I also laugh a lot in the writer's room, when we're working on 8 out of 10 Cats.

ho's your biggest influence?
I'm most influenced by British popular culture – Jeremy Clarkson's writing, Jonathan Ross's show and the music of Morrissey.

What object would you save in a fire?
All my flammable things.

What was your life's main turning point?
Meeting my girlfriend Karoline. Losing my religion (I was once Catholic) in my twenties. Leaving my job as a marketing person for an oil company and taking up comedy full time.

Who would play you in a film of your life?
It should be George Clooney, because whenever Hollywood stars have to look ugly for a part they always win an Oscar – so he'd definitely want to play me.

Which song is the soundtrack to your life?
So You'd Like to Save the World by Lloyd Cole. I like the lyrics and I look a bit like him too.

Tell us about your first date?
I honestly can't remember.

If you could meet any famous person who would it be, and why?
Adolf Hitler, so I could punch him squarely in the neck.

Perfect Sunday?
I always buy two tabloids and two broadsheets. Then I'll have an absolutely huge breakfast and hope I've eaten it early enough so that I'll still have room for a massive lunch.

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INTERVIEW: Comedian Jimmy Carr
8th June 2009
newsshopper.co.uk

Jimmy Carr is, no question, the hardest working man in comedy. He tours constantly, writing the next show whilst performing the current one, notching up over 160 gigs in front of 250,000 people in the last 12 months. He’s performed the first ever stand-up show in online nerd world Second Life. Indeed, if you add together all his live shows over the last seven years, assuming an average of three gags a minute, you’re looking at well over a thousand jokes.

And if you doubt the three gags a minute thing, see how long it takes you to trot out these one-liners to your mates: My dad's dying wish was to have his family around him. I can't help thinking he would have been better off with more oxygen. My girlfriend said she wanted me to tease her, so I said: "All right, fatty." Throwing acid is wrong,¬ in some people's eyes.

There is also the telly work – 8 Out of 10 Cats on Channel 4, appearances on QI, Have I Got News For You, The Flight of the Conchords radio sitcom, but he did find the time to chat to Stephen Armstrong about his act. Jimmy Carr tells around three jokes a minute

SA: So why do you do so many gigs every year? Aren’t you tempted to do fewer, bigger arenas?
JC: No, there’s nothing else really I want to do. I wake up in the morning, might play a game of tennis or have meetings or TV stuff to sort out but generally if I’m doing a gig, I drive there, which takes a couple of hours. I then mooch about, look around the town, have a coffee and a bite to eat and wherever I go in the country I meet people. People come up, say hello and have a chat. If you’re on TV, people think you’re very approachable. I’m not a movie star or a singer or someone who’s impossibly talented, I’m just a bloke with some jokes. It’s nice; it makes the world very friendly. If I’m eating, people wait until I’ve put down my knife and fork before they come over. It’s great.

The nicest thing is when you meet young guys and girls coming to comedy for the first time. What’s slightly strange is that they’re clearly expecting me to insult them. It must be difficult if you’re a beloved comedian like Peter Kay who has to be super nice the whole time. For my audience, it’s a pleasant surprise to find I’m polite.

SA: You don’t get people who are intimidated?
JC: In showbusiness I’m the lowest tier aren’t I? Just one step above the clown. If you do well at stand-up maybe you’ll go on to do something else. No famous actors go, “you know, I really fancy doing a bit of stand-up.”

SA: You say one level above the clown but I read recently that in the medieval court that the jester was the only person who was allowed to mock the King.
JC: I think you read that in my book!

SA: Even so!
JC: Well, yes, for instance, the emperor who built the Great Wall of China initially planned to paint it as well and it was the jester who basically said, ‘are you crazy?! Do you realise how much that is going to cost?’ So the jester stopped him doing the stupidest job in history.

SA: So doesn’t that mean that being a comedian is a really important job?
JC: I don’t agree at all. I don’t take the piss out of the government. I don’t do political stuff; I don’t feel that I’m part of that tradition. People like coming out, watching a show and not being preached to. The reason comedy attendance is up and church attendance is down is that I’m not telling anybody how to live his life. If you don’t think this is funny, don’t come again.

SA: I’m not saying your job is to bring down a government.
JC: Although I could if I wanted to.

SA: Well, yes, of course, but it can only be healthy to have a society where people go out and tell jokes where people aren’t taken too seriously.
JC: I suppose the best you could say about us is that we are an embodiment of the freedom of speech. As soon as you stop doing jokes about one thing then that’s the thin end of the wedge. I’m an equal opportunity offender. Which religion would you like me to be rude about? ‘If we are all God's children, what's so special about Jesus?’ Or¬ ‘suicide bombers - what makes them tick?’

SA: So if you tour a show for a year, how do you keep the timing tight every night?
JC: It’s tougher with my stuff than observational jokes because if you’re just trying to paint a funny picture with words in people’s minds, that’s fine. With mine, it’s very often the exact order of the words that make them funny. If you mispronounce a word or get the order wrong, it’s not funny. Like, ‘I'm not worried about the Third World War - that's the Third World's problem.’

SA: Do you ever lose focus?
JC: No, you’re literally terrified all the way through. And you’re also in a heightened state -¬ you’re watching everyone all the way through. It’s a weird thing when you can tell when an audience is having a good time, especially when it’s the same show that you’ve done loads of times on the same tour. You try to get a feeling for what the reaction is going to be to a joke¬ like, ‘when I was a kid I was scared of the dentist. He was a paedophile.’ Now, I know what reaction that should get from the audience if I time it right from my end. If I don’t get the right reaction, I have to up the level of the performance, change my game.

SA: Don’t you ever think¬ ‘sod it, I’ll just write a sitcom.’
JC: I feel that’s such a different thing. It’s a Herculean task. I could try and do a sitcom,¬ I could unpick my jokes and work them into a sitcom, but it would seem a waste.

SA: Why do you love jokes so much?
JC: It’s almost autistic, isn’t it? A really boring guy might be obsessed by crosswords, right? How they work and how best to do them. I’m exactly the same except I’m obsessed by a slightly different bit of word play. My father always used to say: ‘What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Before the accident.’

SA: So what got you started? Comic heroes?
JC: Eddie Izzard was very big when I was at college. I remember seeing him at the Cambridge Corn Exchange - I still get goosebumps even just walking into the building. But what he was doing was essentially the same thing: a man on a stage telling jokes. He’s dressing them up as whimsy, but they’re just one-liners with a surreal element.

SA: And so you started at college?
JC: No, not Cambridge Footlights. After college I went to work for Shell. I didn’t like it - I was a bit bored by the whole thing. So I was looking for something, a few people said, ‘you’re funny, maybe you should be a performer.’ And I suddenly thought oh yes, maybe I should. My first gig was called the Tut ‘n’ Shive, which is no longer going. ¬ It’s a little pub on Upper Street and the gig was upstairs. The guy gave me a go, five minutes.

I thought I had all the jokes I could ever think of. In fact, there was one joke in there that’s still passable. ‘You hear about all these working class kids making it because there was only one way out. When I was growing up I was very middle class. I lived in a cul-de-sac. There really was only one way out.’ You can see that that’s obviously a joke.

SA: It’s obviously a Jimmy Carr joke too.
JC: Well, that’s because you can see the mechanics. I started with ‘one way out’ and went, ‘oh, cul–de-sac, that’s quite funny.’

SA: In your book you say that in a room of 300 people the comedian is the one facing the wrong way.
JC: What's true about comedians is that we've all got a hole in our personalities. I have a desire to get up on stage and perform. Most people don't need that. I suppose it's a desire to be loved. I don't see that as a psychological failing. I mean, I like to think there’s very little gap between my show and the kind of jokes I tell with my friends, and that’s a good thing.

SA: True. I’ve used this one in the pub loads of times¬: ‘A lady with a clipboard stopped me in the street the other day. She said: "Can you spare a few minutes for cancer research?" I said, "Alright, but we won't get much done.'"
JC: My favourites are the jokes where the laughs roll around the theatre, followed by ‘oohs’ as people realise what they’re laughing at is a little bit wrong. Rude jokes are titillating in the same way as pornography and that makes it curiously intimate.

There’s one joke in the new show that you couldn’t do at the start. I have to break down their moral sensibilities before they’re ready for it. It’s only in interviews where you suddenly feel like the bastion of taste and decency. Putting comedians in charge of what you can and can’t say is like giving the job to The. Least. Responsible. People. In. The. World. There are certain rules that are simple as a comedian; don’t be racist, don’t hate anyone, don’t say anything with malice.

But in terms of protecting minorities and social rights, I’m literally just saying the funniest things I can in the shortest possible time. I plan my gigs so that people come away going ‘those were very funny jokes’ rather than ‘he was a very nice man,’ just because that’s what I like. I love jokes. I love material you want to use the next day because there’s no higher compliment to a comic than people telling their mates your jokes.

Jimmy Carr – Joke Technician, Fairfield Halls, Croydon. June 12 and 16. 8pm. 020 8688 9291.

[faceless]

Anger over Jimmy Carr's joke about war amputees
Jimmy Carr has been criticised for making fun of British soldiers who have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
25 Oct 2009
telegraph.co.uk

An audience of around 2,500 people heard the 37-year-old comic make a joke about troops who have been blown up on the front line. Five minutes from the end of his show at the Manchester Apollo on Friday, he said: "Say what you like about these servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a fucking good Paralympic team in 2012."

It comes after Carr had visited seriously injured troops at Selly Oak military hospital in Birmingham and the Headley Court rehabilitation centre near Epsom, Surrey, earlier this month. Carr, who was due to appear at the Manchester Apollo on Saturday and Sunday night, apologised for any offence he may have caused.

He said in a statement: "I’ve got nothing but respect for the young men and women who put their lives on the line for this country. I’ve visited Selly Oak and Headley Court on many occasions. "I’m sorry if anyone was offended but that’s the kind of comedy I do. If a silly joke draws attention to the plight of these servicemen then so much the better. My intention was only to make people laugh."

But Diane Dernie, the mother of 25-year-old Ben Parkinson, who lost both legs and suffered 37 other injuries, including brain damage, when his Land Rover was blown up in Afghanistan three years ago, condemned the comedian. She said: "I hope Jimmy Carr realises that these soldiers have lost their limbs fighting, before he makes jokes like that. Soldiers are fighting for freedom of speech. I hope Mr Carr remembers that when he makes offensive jokes ridiculing them. There’s no one with a better sense of humour than the lads who have lost limbs. It’s unfortunate that people like Jimmy Carr abuse them."

Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said: "These remarks are completely disgraceful. Carr clearly has little understanding of what these chaps go through." Patrick Mercer, Conservative MP and former infantry commanding officer, added: "This was a remarkably dim and foolish thing to joke about. It’s not funny and this man’s career should end right now." Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said: "Our Armed Forces put their lives on the line and deserve the utmost respect.

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Anyone who's enough of an arsehole to volunteer for the army deserves to be laughed at. The thick murdering bastards.

[faceless]

What a pussy to not tell the joke again - if the person who heckled him knew that he might do it and they paid to be there even though they didn't like the idea, then where's their head at? Up their arse, that's where!

The irony that these killers are apparently killing partly so that us 'leftists' have the right of free-speech shouldn't be ignored, of course.

[Sera_6969]

I don't get it. Carr hasn't said anything derogatory at all. He's actually bigging up our chances at the Paralympics by suggesting the calibre of participants will be improved by the inclusion of (sadly) seriously injured ex-soldiers. This also assumes those soldiers' successful rehabilitation.

What are all these complainers actually saying then. That amputee war veterans shouldn't seek sporting success? That soldiers fighting for the flag and injured in war aren't good enough to represent our country at the Paralympics?

Bloody scum these complaining media types!

Personally, i think they don't have a leg to stand on. Er...

[faceless]

'I thought my Paralympics joke was totally acceptable'
The comedian explains, for the first time, why he doesn't regret telling his notorious gag about amputee soldiers
Stephen Moss
The Guardian,
5 November 2009

I have interviewed performers after a show but never, as far as I recall, during it. Most prefer to use the interval to relax, but not comedian Jimmy Carr. He has just spent an hour amusing a Sunday-night audience at the Winter Gardens in Margate with several hundred rapid-fire jokes, and will do so again in the second half, but still I am whisked into his dressing room where, shinily made up, bright-eyed, intense, inexhaustible, Carr is happy to be cross-examined. He asks the technical manager for some hot water – I never do find out why – and then sits down next to me to answer questions.

Or, rather, one question. This meeting is a sequel to a long conversation we had a couple of weeks earlier in a trendy private members' club for creative types in Soho – about as far from the Margate Winter Gardens as you could imagine. I'd always intended to come to Margate to see the show, part of his 10-month, 100-date tour, but this supplementary meeting is necessary because of the metaphorical hot water he was plunged into following a gig in Manchester on October 23 where he told that joke.

OK, here goes (apologies if you've heard it before and don't want to hear it again): "Say what you like about those servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're going to have a fucking good Paralympic team in 2012." Pretty much standard-issue Jimmy Carr: tasteless, offensive, short, targeting disability – one of his key subjects alongside rape, paedophilia, prostitutes, homosexuality, Aids, the physical and sexual abuse of pets, sex of all kinds (but especially anal), penises, breasts, vaginas ("Where did you lose your virginity?" someone in the audience at Margate asks him. "In a vagina," he fires back), excrement, the awfulness of the Welsh, the even greater awfulness of the Scots, fat women, fat children, fat pets, fat Scots, and people (fatness optional) with ginger hair.

What was exceptional was the backlash. "TV comic's slur on amputee soldiers," screamed the Sunday Express on its front page; "Families' anger at Jimmy Carr's 'disgraceful' joke about war hero amputees," countered the Mail on Sunday. The "disgraceful" came courtesy of the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan; the families of wounded soldiers were vituperative; the defence secretary was said to be furious; Liam Fox for the Conservatives was incandescent; even the prime minister's office made a statement. Carr issued a qualified apology. "I'm sorry if anyone was offended, but that's the kind of comedy I do. If a silly joke draws attention to the plight of these servicemen, then so much the better. My intention was only to make people laugh."

Tonight in Margate is the first time he has talked about the furore. I wonder, as I sit down on the dressing-room sofa, whether I should ease my way in. But he introduces the subject straightaway.

"I've had some controversy in the papers," he says, in case I'd missed it. "It was really genuinely stressing." This surprises me. He doesn't strike me as easily stressed. But then he explains: "Radio stations and newspapers were phoning up the mothers of soldiers who'd been killed or injured fighting for their country, telling them a joke down the phone, and saying, 'What do you think of this?' I can't think of anything more inappropriate."

Carr says the storm was concocted by the media. "I played to 9,000 people that weekend. I did Manchester and Stockport, and two people complained. My audience aren't offended, but this other audience that reads the papers are offended. They're totally entitled to be offended by those kind of jokes, but they're normally not exposed to those kind of jokes. I know what the rules are on TV – what you can and can't say. There are a hundred jokes in the show that are worse than that, so if you want to be offended you can find a lot of stuff."

He does not repeat the joke in Margate tonight, though some in the audience are goading him to do so. He makes do with noting the fact that no one watches the Paralympics anyway, and a few throwaway jokes about people without arms. Why not do the controversial joke? "I thought I'd leave it," he says. "Otherwise it looks like you haven't taken it [the furore] seriously. I didn't write the joke and think, 'That's an unacceptable joke, that's an unacceptable thing to say, but will I get away with it?' I thought it was a totally acceptable joke and a point to make, but now it's become something else. The other reason not to tell it now is that people have heard it." He is wearing a poppy tonight, and admits he has put it on a week earlier than usual.

Carr, who has in the past visited injured soldiers in hospital and at the Headley Court rehabilitation centre in Surrey, reckons the squaddies themselves are on his side. "If you look at the young men and young girls who come to my gigs, a proportion are in the armed forces." His defenders say his black humour precisely mirrors that of the troops, who have to laugh in the face of possible injury or death. So does he feel he was unfairly turned over by the tabloids and bandwagon-jumping politicians? "No, I think it's fair enough," he says. "I think it was my turn. I've been telling these kind of jokes for 10 years, and it could have been any one of a hundred jokes that became a cause celebre. I think there's a climate out there."

I try to get him to expand on his "climate" comment, but he says he's not "qualified" to talk about it – an odd remark, since if a comedian can't talk about it, who can? But there does appear to be a growing campaign against so-called "edgy" comedy – witness the attacks on Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand for their hounding of Andrew Sachs, and on Frankie Boyle for his remarks about the swimmer Rebecca Adlington. Boyle, who has written for Carr's Channel 4 game show Distraction, quit the BBC show Mock the Week recently in protest at the producers' preference for "light, frothy stuff" and unwillingness to "frighten the horses". Battle lines are being drawn, and the issue has even been aired on Newsnight. The c-word that comics worry about these days is compliance.

Carr makes no clever defence of his joke. "There is a tendency, when someone is upset, to say, 'Well, I was highlighting the tragedy.' I wasn't. I was trying to make people laugh." He says this almost in the manner of one of his jokes. Languid first sentence to set it up. Rapid middle sentence. Punchline. Carr seems to think in comic constructions.

I ask him whether he thought it odd that the prime minister's office got involved. "I think it is, but I don't know who fuels that fire," he says. "The great thing about comedy is it's not accountable. Is there a prefect of comedy that decides what can and can't be said? It wasn't broadcast. People came to the gig, and two people out of 9,000 that weekend – and I've told it to 100,000 people so far on the tour – said, 'I didn't pay to hear this kind of rubbish.' But they did pay to hear that: they paid to be in that room with that group of people. They found one joke offensive because it applied to them [he thinks they had a friend or family member who had been wounded], but everything else in the show that was horribly offensive they laughed at."

I have also been told to take Carr to task because of his fondness for rape jokes. There are plenty of those in evidence at Margate, including one near the end of the show: "What's the difference between football and rape? Women don't like football."

That, I would say, is more offensive than the army joke, yet no one seems to take offence. In fact, after the show there's a 300-strong line of fans – many of them young women – queueing up for him to sign tickets, programmes and DVDs. Several of them are extremely fat, but seem to have taken his obesity jokes in good heart. The burly security guards on either side as he shakes hands and signs at a little table are not called on.

Carr has played the Winter Gardens every year for the last four, and he greets some of his fans as if they were old friends. There is even a soldier in the line who is off to Afghanistan next week. "He said, 'I thought it [the controversial joke] was funny. Will you sign this for the lads?'" Carr tells me when every hand has at last been shaken, every camera-phone picture taken.

I had brought up Carr's fondness for rape jokes at our initial get-together in the Soho club, and thought he might go on the defensive. I couldn't have been more wrong. "I do a lot of jokes about rape," he admits, "but it's not a discourse on rape. I do jokes to get laughs. I happen to think the construct of '99% of women kiss with their eyes closed, which is why it's so difficult to identify a rapist' is funny. It's not really about the act of a serious sexual assault. You have to go out of your way to take offence over, 'I bought a rape alarm because I kept on forgetting when to rape people.'

"If a friend of yours was raped and your reaction to that news was jovial, you're mental. But the context is, you're on stage, it's about making people laugh, and it's about the world we live in. I'm just an entertainer, but things have moved on and it can't all be about nice stuff. My favourite noise in comedy is the laugh followed by the sharp intake of breath."

Is there any subject he wouldn't touch? "No is the short answer," he says after a moment's hesitation, "if it was funny enough. If you come up with a joke about something that's uncomfortable to talk about – abortion, there's a good example – it's not a difficult moral decision not to do the joke if it isn't that funny. But if you come up with a joke about abortion and you tell it to your friend, and your friend goes, 'Oh my God, you can't say that on stage – but that is fucking wicked,' then suddenly morals go out of the window and you go, 'We're definitely doing that.'"

Carr says he treats the audience which comes to his gigs as he would his friends. "There's no difference between the jokes I would tell out there on the stage and the jokes I would tell to my friends in the pub. There's no edit."

I tell him I got a lot of negativity from people when I mentioned we were going to meet. Does that bother him? "It does," he says, not entirely convincingly. "There's a weird paradox in comedy. People who get into it desperately want to be liked. It's almost a personality disorder. There's a big hole in me that means I go out 200 times a year and talk to strangers, and crave their approval. And I'm the only one in that room facing the wrong way. There's something odd about that. But the paradox is that while you crave approval, if you've got any sense you also realise that a sense of humour is never universal. You're always preaching to the choir: at this stage, people come to the show because they like your sense of humour."

He thinks some people who object are being hypocritical. "Sometimes people get offended on behalf of other people, and you think, 'You know what, don't be a dick.' You often get people coming up and saying, 'I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but I think some people – not me because I get it – could take that the wrong way.' And you say, 'What, some fucking idiots? There are no idiots at the show. It's fine. Don't worry about it.'"

Carr sees himself primarily as a technician. He writes his own stand-up material, and reckons to write at least one joke every day. Doesn't he aspire to be an artist? Won't he get bored telling jokes in Margate for several decades? No is the firm answer to both questions.

"The question I really dread in interviews is, 'Well, what next? What about the sitcom? You don't say that to anyone else with a job. You don't meet a fireman and go, 'Right, you've been a fireman for a few years. What next?' I'm happy. I like this life. I like travelling round the country and writing my jokes. I sound a bit special-needs now. I can write jokes: that's what I've got. If I was an incredible violinist on the side, I'm sure I'd be incredibly frustrated, but I'm not."

The day before we meet in Soho, the Guardian had given his performance at the Cliffs Pavilion, Southend, a two-star review, referring to Carr's "smooth cynicism". "I take that as a compliment," he says. "Really, genuinely. Also, you know what, the Southend gig was always going to be rough."

Even after three hours with Carr, I don't have much idea what makes him tick. He is smart, that's for sure, was a star at school, went to Cambridge, has immense verbal dexterity, which is the key to many of his jokes. One critic said his jokes had the formal perfection of a haiku. I don't think the critic was a woman.

Carr was a Christian until his 20s but has now – under the influence of Richard Dawkins and a friend at college – turned on God with a vengeance. He was very close to his mother, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2001. ("It was a brutal time," he says, "slow and unremittingly bleak.") After her death, he and his elder brother fought a very public battle with their father over their younger sibling, who had chosen to live with his brothers.

In his mid-20s, Carr says, he was so unhappy he could hardly get out of bed. He was a virgin until he was 26 ("it was a weird thing"), hated his job in the marketing department at Shell, chucked it in and turned to comedy (and therapy) instead. He reconstructed his life, with comedy as its driving force.

Now, at 37, he is wealthy, in a long-term relationship with a Canadian-born TV executive called Karoline (Any chance of children? I ask. "You can't have kids the way we do it") and lives in trendy Islington. Despite his non-PC stage persona, he calls himself an "uber-liberal", and when someone in the Margate audience asks him a dubious question about immigration, he avoids making a joke and says he thinks immigration is a good thing.

As I'm leaving the Winter Gardens, I see his Bentley coming out of the car park. I wonder if he sees me, but there is no acknowledgment. Tomorrow he will be in Birmingham, with another couple of thousand close friends, then on to Wolverhampton and Stoke. Just don't ask him where he goes from there.

Jimmy Carr's latest DVD, Telling Jokes, is released this week. His tour continues until June 2010. Details on jimmycarr.com