Carr Crash

I’ll admit it: I’m nervous as I dial Jimmy Carr’s number. Images of the cold-as-Kraftwerk comedian whose audiences (as he puts it) “laugh begrudgingly” are reeling through my mind.
He picks up the phone in Manchester. My heart stops.
“Ah, hotpress: the NME of Ireland! How can I help you?” says a cheery voice.
Preconception one – Jimmy Carr is terrifying – eliminated.
To make sure it’s true, I test the waters. Carr can be cruel, so I ask him how he gets on with the people he encounters on tour.
His response is almost diffident: “I don’t seem as friendly as I could. You walk up to people and say hello, and they’re surprised and go, ‘Oh, he’s not a total cunt.’”
Hold on a minute – is this really Jimmy Carr? The same one who sets attack dogs on the contestants of Distraction?
“99.9% of the time, people tend to be just sweethearts, and when they’re not, usually they’re just a bit drunk and it’s fine.”
Yes, this is Jimmy Carr, the comedian who can’t hide his affection for his fans.
But with such devotion, he can’t get much work done, right? Er, actually...
“I finish my tour tomorrow night [Friday], and I start the next one [Repeat Offender] on Thursday. I’ve got warm-up gigs, so it’s three days off. I’ve got 140 gigs in a tour – it’s a full 12 months, every year, and that’s what we’re planning for next year.”
His work-rate offstage is equally phenomenal: film appearances in Confetti, Stormbreaker and Alien Autopsy; two hit Channel 4 series with 8 Out Of 10 Cats and Distraction; and six acclaimed tours since 2002.
With all this success, you’d expect him to have a seething sense of rivalry but, once again, Carr subverts expectations. Despite securing 2006’s British Comedy Award for Best Comedy Tour, he remarks: “I don’t think it’s about achievement, it’s about funny. It’s a really friendly competition with your friends. There’s a great level of support in that as well. It’s like with any other business, there’s a level of camaraderie. It makes for easy conversation, you’ve got your war stories”.
I’m about to cancel the counselling I’d booked for after the interview, but then I ask him if he thinks his shows are offensive.
“If I was a doctor, in a doctor’s surgery, I wouldn’t use the word ‘cunt’. I would call it a ‘vagina’, because I’m a doctor, in a doctor’s surgery. I’m a comedian. I’ll call it what I fucking well like.”
He’s contemptuous of the late Bernard Manning (“a racist old man”) because his act was based on being offensive. Carr, however, uses vulgarity as a byroad to hilarity.
“When people go, ‘Oh, that’s a bit much’, I don’t set out to get that noise. I do it because those are the jokes I find funny.”
He puts the controversy caused by some of his gags down to misunderstandings, both wilful and accidental.
“For some reason, somewhere along the line, some journalist got the idea that a comedian is saying what he thinks is true. I’m just saying the funniest thing I can think of.
“To go, ‘Ooh!’ is not the same as to go, ‘Oh, that was a bit edgy’. My audiences are not actually offended. They’re not walking out. It’s titillating. My jokes make you go ‘Oh, God, I knew he was going to say something, but not that!’”
As for the controversy caused by his “gypsy moth” gag on Radio 4’s Loose Ends programme in 2006: “I think jokes are sometimes a really nice way to publicise an issue. If you have a pressure group, no matter what pressure group it is, you’re going to want greater publicity and greater rights for your people, then sometimes a joke is a great way to go, ‘Well, actually, I’m not that offended if I’m honest’ – and who doesn’t have a great sense of humour in these pressure groups? – and they think, ‘Well, okay, if we pretend to be a little bit offended, we might get a little bit more publicity.
“I’m never gonna discuss individual jokes and apologise or not apologise. That’s nonsense. As soon as you get into that, you’re finished. I think Frank Skinner said probably the most pertinent thing about this. He told a joke about someone being run over and someone came up and said, ‘My father was run over and died’. And he said back to them, ‘Well, someone, somewhere, was very fond of the chicken that crossed the road.’”
But, while he’s unrepentant about his material, he remains sensitive to his audience. Although he credits them with the “same liberal attitude towards everything” as he has, he also says: “If you’ve got a joke about someone in a wheelchair and there’s someone with a wheelchair in, and you think, ‘Oh, I’d better not tell that joke because he’ll be offended’, never, ever tell that joke again. If you’ve got a joke about a fat chick and there’s a fat chick in the front row, never perform that joke again, because if you can’t tell that joke in front of her and share it with her and it’s fun, then you shouldn’t be doing it.”
Carr seems happy about his Dublin jaunt, as you’d expect from a man with close Irish connections (he was born in Limerick to Irish parents, and is a perennial favourite at the Kilkenny Cat Laughs Festival).
Unlike in Montreal, where the “really edgy stuff” doesn’t go down so well, he finds that “everything’s just sound out” in Ireland. He’s also pleased by the “peculiarly high standard” of heckling from Irish audiences.
He finds that festivals give comedians time to swap schemes, and the pickings are rich in Ireland.
“I’ve always liked Steven Wright and Emo Phillips," he says, "but I’ve actually been more influenced by people like Tommy Tiernan, Des Bishop and David O’Doherty than I would have been by Woody Allen. Just people who are around now and in the same scene. They’re all doing something interesting.”
Elsewhere in the interview, he singles out his “mate” David O’Doherty as a comedian whose standards he’d like to top, and calls Dara O'Briain a “magnificent performer”.
He also likes the ‘trickle-down effect’ the big draws at festivals create for novice comedians.
“I think of myself as the marijuana of comedy. Whenever I play a big room in Edinburgh lots of people come and say, ‘I liked that, so now I think I’m going to try some smaller stuff.’”
So, what’s different about the next tour?
“2004, 2003, 2002... I was very kind of staccato, just doing the jokes, and there was very little personality. The thing I try to do now is to have as many jokes as I ever had, but bring a little more personality to it. It’s a better show, in every way, every year.”
Though Jimmy Carr is passionate about comedy at its most elemental (“I love this idea of saying, ‘This is a joke – not a true story; just a joke – and you either laugh or you don’t laugh. It’s a success or a failure,’”), he’s made his act more flexible: “On the best nights, you want 20% of the show to be audience stuff.”
And, if you live in fear of his put-downs, don’t worry: he’s only joking. It’s not the real Jimmy Carr talking.
“I certainly like meeting people. You get to meet people after the show and find out what they liked and what they didn’t like. And if you’ve got my sense of humour and you like what I do, there’s a bond there before we even start.”

Jimmy Carr plays Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on September 20 and 21 as part of the Bulmers International Comedy Festival. The festival also features Rich Hall, The Panel Live and Ross Noble, and runs from September 3 to 23. For line-up information, visit www.bulmerscomedy.ie. To book tickets, phone 0818 719 300.