Jimmy Carr’s been in the business for over a decade, now, touring almost constantly. For the last five or six years, he’s performed about 250 shows per year in venues which hold between one and three thousand people. Where his peergroup (many of whom are unfit to recycle his cast-offs) have “graduated” to performing a handful of shows in horribly impersonal arenas, Jimmy has remained true to his craft and continues to deliver his material in an intimate setting on a near-nightly basis.
But, today, he might be regretting it because, this morning, Jimmy Carr woke up, gazed at his hotel ceiling, and remembered the night he was upstaged by a clockmaker, a pharmacist and a woman from the social security.
The Laughter Therapy tour rolled into town and proved to be a far more interactive affair than previous shows. For sure, Jimmy delivers the six-jokes-a-minute repartee that keeps us going back year after year, but both halves of this year’s show are built around his new experiments in audience participation; an interview with someone with an interesting job (enter Andy the clockmaker, a ball of alcohol-, adrenaline- and pure nervous energy-fuelled neuroses, to tell us about the £26k special limited edition he’s been making for Wills and Kate) and a contest to turn a punter into a comedian (Susie, the woman from the social would have won on any other night, but she had Benal (or Ben-Al, or maybe Bin Al – apparently his dad couldn’t spell it, either) to deal with.
As seen in The Huddersfield Examiner!
Benal’s a locum pharmacist who missed his vocation because a sizeable chunk of last night’s sold-out audience would pay good money to see him again.
Jimmy? He was Jimmy. If you read the HateMail or the Express, you think he’s the anti-Christ. Those of us who are already wondering when next year’s show will reach us just know he’s a contender for funniest -- and unquestionably the most consistent -- comedian of this golden age of stand-up.
