In reluctant defence of Jimmy Carr

I have a confession to make – I don’t find Jimmy Carr funny. I don’t say that to knock him; he’s doing his thing and good luck to him. I merely make the point, no matter how many rave reviews I hear, I’ve always found him to be a shock jock without a punchline; rude, rather than funny.

I was also hoping not to have to write this piece; firstly, because it’s always preferable defending your heroes, and secondly because I expected the furore would have died down by now. It hasn’t. Attempts to silence Carr are still in motion.

Last night’s gig in Cambridge for instance was met with a 100-strong crowd of protestors; people bearing placards such as, ‘Genocide is not a subject for mockery’, or, ‘Mass murder in the Holocaust is no joke! Never again!’ Which leaves one the distinct impression that the protestors not only believe Carr’s humour is in bad taste, but also fear it likely to cause ethnic cleansing.

This is the Netflix joke which sparked their initial outrage:

When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of six million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.

Because the outrage mob often make the non-sequitur that comedians they do not like are automatically not funny, I’ve tried to analyse why I don’t share the consensus that Carr is a good comedian. I think it comes down to this: comedy is a complex interaction between many factors, of which the joke is merely one. There’s timing and delivery to consider, and often crucially, the vessel which performs it.

If you compare Carr to Bernard Manning for instance, you can clearly see the difference. Sure, they both shock their audiences, but with Manning the jokes were deeper, more intricately woven, and delivered to perfection.

Here’s a few of Jimmy Carr’s best:

• I worry about my nan. If she’s alone and falls, does she make a noise? I’m joking, she’s dead.
• Throwing acid is wrong, in some people’s eyes.
• See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Rohypnol.

And here’s Manning:

• Two old maids on a beach, streaker ran past, one had a stroke, the other one couldn’t reach.
• If you want to drink, have a drink… if you want to drive, then drive… there’s nothing worse than having a smash sober.
• I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, toys not included.

Then, there’s the persona of Manning himself. ‘Who takes more stick than me?’ Manning liked to quip, and he was right: fat, ugly, working-class, with Irish and Russian Jewish ancestry (of which he was apparently very proud). Nothing was off-limits for Manning– he had a go at everybody (especially himself). Yet ironically, there was real warmth in his performance, something lacking with Carr, whose deadpan delivery leaves me cold.

The shock is a key component of great comedy, which all its finest exponents have exploited to the full: Pryor, Williams, Carlin, Bruce, Connolly, Gervais, and Mason, to name but a few. Indeed, good comedians who don’t rely on shocking their audiences are rare: I can think of only Tim Vine and Eddie Izzard off the top of my head.

Anyway, I digress – let’s get to the argument at hand, which seems to have two prongs: A) Jimmy Carr’s joke is not funny, and B) He should not be allowed to tell it. In the first case, I disagree. I think the joke is quite funny – but only because of its shock value; there is no real joke there. The beauty of comedy however, is that the market regulates itself. No matter how much Mary Whitehouse and Esther Rantzen screamed, Manning was Britain’s number one comic for a reason. If anything, the perpetually offended need to take issue with his audiences, rather than him (be careful, that may be coming).

The second issue, what jokes you are allowed to tell, has always been the left’s Achilles’ heel. The double standard they operate has now reached epic proportions: if you’re black, making jokes about ‘killing whitey’, the BBC will stand by you, as this is clearly ‘satirical content’. But if you’re from the wrong side of the patriarchy, what constitutes ‘edgy’ material today, is tomorrow’s hate crime. None of which matters however, because you can’t enforce rules on what is funny.

I do not believe a single protestor who claims to be offended by Jimmy Carr, genuinely believes he thinks the genocide of gypsies is a positive. Which means, as usual, they are using the pretext of ‘minority interests’ to control speech. I think the world has had quite enough control freakery during the pandemic, and we could do with a few liberal Liberals right now, if any remain?

Carr has not been silenced yet, but he has obviously agreed to omit the ‘offensive’ jokes from his shows. This is not just a tactical error in my opinion (give them an inch, and all that), but also impractical. Depriving a shock jock of his best shocks, doesn’t leave much material to work with.

We need to stand up to these assaults on free speech. With demand for offence vastly outstripping supply, I do not believe the left will be content until we are all applying for speech licences. And for anyone who was actually in Jimmy Carr’s audience, you’d better hope you didn’t laugh too loud!

Despite not being my cup of tea, I hope Carr continues to work. But I would advise anyone in his position – the right answer is never to cave to woke demands (which will have changed by next week anyway). Instead, take a leaf out of Bernard’s book, when asked what he thought about people who were offended by him: ‘I’ve made millions of people laugh; and to those I’ve not made laugh, get fucked!’