Jimmy Carr: Public Display Of Affection
Reading Concert Hall, and touring
'Don't watch this if you're easily offended,' warns a screen at the beginning of Jimmy Carr's show. There's a pause before it adds, 'Or gay.' Carr goes on to explain that his show will contain bad language and sexual material, 'so if you do find that kind of thing upsetting, for heaven's sake don't be a cunt about it.'
Carr has cornered the market in post-political correctness; as fans of his Channel 4 game show Distraction will know, his Cambridge degree and middle-class smugness give him licence to say the most outrageous lines because the ironic intent is understood from the beginning. He knows he's saying the unsayable, and that you feel guilty laughing at it; he also knows that you laugh none the less.
For a long time the well-crafted joke went out of fashion; Carr has established himself as one of its most skilled practitioners, and he is at his withering finest doing these two-part gags at the expense of just about everyone: fat girls, religion, Gypsies, gays and children with learning difficulties, but he doesn't need to quote his own reviews for you to be aware of his brilliant timing.
