“But you are a faggy twat” – This line was not delivered by Jimmy Carr himself but an Irish Highschool pupil who made the trip over to London for the live performance. Hecklers come in all shapes and sizes. Most are drunken morons who, in a desperate attempt to distract from their midlife crisis, will spout any old nonsense in order to win any kind of attention. Then we have the rare breed of heckler who, like this young man, are annoyed at something and react by shouting some home truths at the performer. This was his response to a joke about bullying. Jimmy suggested that since tackling the bullies hasn’t helped a great deal perhaps the victims should stop being such “faggy dicks”. The young man in the audience asked Jimmy if he was bullied at school, the response was a short but sweet “no”, and then came the line – “but you are a faggy twat”. Perhaps Jimmy should have responded with “touché” rather than joke about how people from the Republic of Ireland have speech impediments but each to their own. It made me laugh either way.

I like Jimmy Carr but in my eyes he is a watered down version of Doug Stanhope. The same can be said of Frankie Boyle who is also a watered down version of Stanhope although slightly edgier than Carr. Nothing wrong with that though. I prefer the bluntness of Stanhope but it’s not a requirement as long as the material is funny and the additional offense, as Carr himself might say, is really just a bonus. The problem with watering down material is that while it becomes more family friendly it can lose whatever bite it had to begin with. This is largely how I felt when Jimmy sat down and used a series of “visual aids” (the explanation of the words was the funniest thing about the segment) while firing out a barrage of short jokes. For me this was the low point in the show as it wasn’t that funny and seemed like little more than a time-filler. I also noticed he made fun of the Welsh, Scots, and Irish, this is of course perfectly fine, but carefully avoids saying anything negative about London which, despite the fact I have a few friends down there, is by far the rudest city I have ever visited.

I would love to accuse Carr of having an influential personality and blame him for the above negativity but I’m afraid it’s just the way I am. That being said I did enjoy watching this DVD and there were some very funny moments. The joke I found funniest, spoken in a Yorkshire accent – “in my day there were no Paedophiles…we had to buy our own sweets.” This isn’t just funny it is also very smart. I think my earlier negativity stems from the fact that Jimmy Carr is much smarter than many of the jokes he tells and I find it frustrating when any comedian aims their material at the lowest common denominator. To put it another way, that particular joke on Paedophilia reminds me of the genius that was Brass Eye and their Paedophile special while the jokes about fat people make me think of Roy Chubby Brown’s material and I have never found him funny.

The most enjoyable segment for me comes right at the end when Jimmy toys with the boundaries of taste. Religion, abortions, and the Holocaust are a few of the things Jimmy tries on for size and I laughed out loud at each of them. As far as I’m concerned this is comedy at its best as serious issues need to be laughed at more than anything else just to lighten the mood a little and avoid us all jumping from the nearest tall building. I hoped for more of this type of material and because of that I found it a bitter-sweet way to round off the show.

I found the extras to be a disappointment. A selection of out-takes and deleted scenes which aren’t very funny and deserved to bet cut from the final edit. A Comedy Central special for the US audience which, given that I described the main feature as being watered down, can be likened to Niagara Falls. Last but not least is a collection of Jimmy Carr’s tweets. For those who aren’t aware a tweet is a comment you leave on the social networking site Twitter. Having a 20 minute selection of tweets as an extra on a DVD really is scraping the barrel and no amount of “but, we must move with the times” can change the fact this is time-filling nonsense.

Ignoring the poor extras, because no-one buys a stand-up DVD for the extra material anyway, this is an enjoyable DVD and for big fans of Jimmy Carr this will undoubtedly deserve an even higher rating.

7/10

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