Jimmy Carr review a relentless wallow in grubbiness

Rose theatre, Kingston
Despite occasional glimmers of subversive wit, Carr continues to rely on dubious jokes about dwarves, fat women and FGM

‘Welcome to 90 minutes of your life you’re never getting back,” runs the caption at the start of Jimmy Carr’s touring show, Terribly Funny. That’s what you sign up for when you go to see Carr: a grubby pleasure that may be more grubby than pleasure. We know we shouldn’t. We’ll regret it afterwards. There’s certainly no deviation tonight from the formula that’s served Carr well – commercially if not always creatively – for 20 years: blue humour, playground abuse, jokes about rape and paedophilia, and (according to taste) just enough wit and joke-writing flair to keep the stench and squalor at bay.

Who knows what need Carr’s comedy is meeting in some of us for jokes about dwarves, fat women and FGM? Carr’s closing apologia insists he doesn’t mean to hurt anyone, that his material is “joyful” in intent. And certainly there is some subversive joy in having humour applied to such subjects. Deep-rooted convention is destabilised when Carr appears to laugh at the Nazi extermination of Gypsies. We gasp at the flouted taboo, then laugh to recall that – here at least – there are no consequences.

Or no immediate ones. But, even if you agree that all subjects are fair game for comedy, Carr’s relentless downward kicking (“Is a dwarf an abortion that made it?”) argues that jokes about lesbians, Gypsies and sexual violence aren’t just acceptable, but something – over two long hours – to revel in. Many of his one-liners are barely jokes at all, just boorish cliches about vegans being boring or Germany being humourless. And you can’t miss the “my mother-in-law” echoes in his battery of one-liners (some neat, all unlovely) that each begin, “My girlfriend …”

By that stage, I wasn’t feeling the joy. But then, joy isn’t exclusively what Carr’s humour is about. It’s a mug’s game trying to parse other people’s laughter, but at some points – as with the applause that greets a weak joke championing the use of gendered sexual swearwords – there seems to be some free-at-last sense of escape at play from the liberal consensus on what we are and aren’t supposed to say. It’s immaterial to point out that Carr, like many other middle-aged male standups, broadcasters and columnists, has been saying this stuff for years and no one has censored or marginalised him yet.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Carr is perfectly capable of joking across wider territory – as with the pert gag about Meghan Markle’s feminism. I did find this show a little funnier than its recent predecessors – the quality of the wordplay a mite higher, the thuggishness less relentless. Carr even briefly parks the trademark one-liners and tries his hand at observational comedy, although the routine – about how rubbish old tech (Blockbuster video, Yellow Pages) looks in contrast to the new – treads familiar standup ground. As with previous shows, there are vox pops, too, when the audience volunteer their own words for vagina and female masturbation. The results are not elevating.

But elevation’s not what we’re here for. Carr has cornered the blue-humour market, delivering sordid comedy with relentless efficiency to people who find more joy in that than I do. And he shows no signs of surrendering it.

At Buxton Opera House, 18 June; Floral Pavilion, New Brighton, 19 June; then touring.

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