‘A big girl once came up to me after the show and said ‘I think you’re fatist.’ I said ‘No love, I think you’re fattest’…
Society at the moment is treading an awful line between making sure the world is an inclusive and caring place without becoming a race to the bottom to see who can be the most outraged by innocuous and light-hearted comments. In an age where most people are genuinely terrified to say anything even remotely controversial in case they are destroyed by a baying online mob, it is vital that there are still bastions of freedom of speech left. Comedians like Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr have caused offence with their brutal comedy style on many occasions but I subscribe to the notion that if you don’t offend somebody, you’re doing it wrong…
Jimmy Carr is a regular at the Doncaster Dome but more than that he is a live comedy veteran. This really shows in his delivery and handling of an audience. Donny on Mad Friday is difficult terrain for any comedian but Carr shuts down all hecklers with minimum fuss and maximum style. He begins with the usual acknowledgement of how strange a venue the Dome is, commenting ‘I usually start by saying what a beautiful theatre I am in, but here I will just say, if you have come for Badminton, you’re in the wrong room’. This is all handled with warmth however and his various jibes at Doncaster earn some of the biggest cheers of the night.
One thing that Jimmy Carr cannot be accused of is being discriminatory. He jokes about rape, paedophilia, disability, race, infanticide and most importantly himself in a tour de force of bad taste and quips. Carr is the king of the one liner and the sheer scope and range of his jokes tonight is breathtaking. At over two hours the Donny crowd certainly get their moneys worth and Carr is energetic, almost frantic, throughout.
After the interval, texts from the crowd are projected on the big screen leading to much hilarity and confusion as nobody in Doncaster seems to be brave enough to claim the texts they have wrote, besides one LAD who keeps shouting the name ‘Turner’ over and over again, only to be routinely shut down and mocked by a relentless Jimmy Carr.
To conclude, it is so important to have skilled performers like Jimmy Carr tackling taboo topics. If you advocate the theory that you should be able to joke about anything, then this is the show for you. Love him or hate him, Jimmy Carr is going nowhere…
This article was written for Doncopolitan magazine:
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