| 03 August 2009
Seriously funny
Behind the machine gun gags and deadpan delivery lies a surprisingly modest performer who is passionate about the business of making people laugh.
Big name comics usually flee the Fringe once they’ve got a TV show. When they can pull in an audience of millions at home, why submit themselves to the annual bearpit of Edinburgh’s notoriously critical comedy crowds for the laughs of just a few hundred?
But Jimmy Carr keeps coming back: this will be the 7th time he’s done the festival, using it as both a launch for new material and to renew his faith. For Jimmy – who in conversation is much more diffident than his abrasive stage persona – is clearly a man in love with comedy. He describes stand-up as his “job” – his real job, not the ubiquitous TV appearances - but it’s probably also true that it’s in fact a way of life for Jimmy.
He insists on staggering his Fringe run into two blocks so that he can take time off in the middle to go and see other comics. “Edinburgh is very much about new acts and I find it inspirational. I’m not a player hater, I’m a celebrator,” he says drolly. “Everyone’s different, no one’s coming through who’s the new me and I just like going to see live comedy – it’s a great night out.”
Yet these days Jimmy is almost an elder statesman of the scene, with mainstream recognition from his appearances on game shows, list shows and radio. “I’m very much the marijuana of comedy, I lead to more dangerous drugs,” he says, arguing that the ‘big name’ comics might be someone’s first introduction to stand-up but if they have a good time, they’ll go on to check out lesser-known talents.
Jimmy loves his audience too, waiting around after most gigs to say hello. “My thing is to treat an audience as you would treat your friends, to entertain them and say the funniest thing you possibly can. I do feel quite connected because having the same sense of humour can bring you closer together than just being in the same family or something.”
This sunny, hippyish vision of bonding through humour is somewhat startling, coming as it does from a man regularly described as one of Britain’s most offensive comedians. Three years before the outcry over Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s rude phone call to Andrew Sachs, Jimmy was in the headlines after a radio joke about gypsies drew widespread offence. The BBC apologised, but Jimmy himself didn’t – and says now, “As soon as you start apologising for jokes, it never fucking ends.”
In some ways, he dodged the bullet that hit Ross and Brand and he’s well aware another controversy could easily blow up. “At any stage there will be jokes in my act that a newspaper could run a story on,” he shrugs. “There is a new Puritanism, people are saying they don’t want swearing or taking risks, although the offence is usually taken by third parties who didn’t even see it. I am in the best place I could be on TV, as Channel 4 lets me do what I want pretty much, but the live space is so freeing.”
In defence of his ‘anything’s game’ style, he suggests: “As a performer, you can tell when people are ready to hear something. I just write jokes, no one’s coming to me for morality or wisdom, there’s no way people could think they were all my opinions.”
It’s a bit of a cop-out: the off-stage Jimmy is, by most accounts, a genial, polite fellow who can’t be unaware that some of his “300 gags a show” (he counts them) gain laughs not by their witty wordplay but by appealing to ugly prejudices and lazy stereotypes. But he’s likeable too – he keeps the interview going until he’s made me burst out laughing and seems relieved when I do. And his sheer love of comedy, I think, makes him put it on a pedestal where it excuses everything.
His new show, Rapier Wit, will doubtless be as barbed as usual but perhaps one day – who knows? – Jimmy will be a beloved light entertainer. In the course of enthusing about Morecambe and Wise’s Bring Me Sunshine and Ken Dodd’s Happiness, he surprisingly admits: “I’m not above doing a song, something to break up the pace. That’s Christmas Future to me; if I could be doing this at 70, I’d be happy.”
Jimmy Carr, EICC, 20-23 & 27-30 August, 9.30pm 0844 847 1639
If you like this, try Des Clarke: Clarxism at Pleasance Courtyard, 5-31 August (not 12, 19)
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