Jimmy Carr

Quotes

All comedians are a bit attention-seeking and I'm no different. Anyone with the audacity to want to be listened to for an hour and a half must be.
- Beverley Lyons and Lee-Ann Fullerton (28 February 2004) "The Razz: Jimmy's Brent on being funny", Daily Record.

To me, my approach is the most sensible. You're a comic. Therefore you want to get laughs. How do you get the most laughs in an hour? Tell short jokes. And don't say boom boom at the end. Just let the audience laugh then tell another joke. It's the shortest route to where you want to go.
- Allan Brown (1 August 2004) "Benefits of being game for a laugh - Edinburgh Festival", The Sunday Times.

My writing process is editing. It's taking all the funny thoughts you've had over the last 12 months, and editing out everything that's shit. You're left with an hour and a quarter of funny stuff.
- Alastair McKay (10 August 2004) "Obsessed by punchlines", The Scotsman, p. 4.

I think that comedians, more than any other type of celebrity, have to keep their humour and keep their feet on the ground. If they start taking themselves too seriously, they're heading for a fall.
- Charles Hutchinson (19 November 2004) "Preview: Jimmy Carr , Grand Opera House, York November 20", North Yorkshire County Publications.

I love those people who do story-telling and who ramble on, but I don't do that, I tell jokes - the sort of jokes that anyone really could tell in the pub.
- Nick Ahad (19 November 2004) "Comedian who delivers some nice lines", Yorkshire Post.

As soon as I did my first five minutes of stand-up I knew that I would rather be a failure at comedy than a success in marketing.
- Will Hodgkinson (16 December 2004) "Comedy's overgrown schoolboy", The Irish Times.

I literally can't believe my luck. Torturing Americans should not only be easy, but a pleasure!
- On hosting the American version of his game show, Distraction — reported in James Rampton (19 February 2005) "Comedy: Pick of the Week", The Independent.

I'm a stand-up. And no one on the circuit's terribly impressed if you're on TV. I suppose I've stolen my ethos from Jay Leno. You can do all the TV in the world, but that's a team game, and anyone can be dropped from the squad. And if you haven't gigged in a while, you're not firing, you're not match fit. So I try and do it whenever I can.
- Ed Caesar (21 February 2005) "Think this is a laugh? You must be joking", The Independent.

TV's not the same buzz. If someone tells you three million people watched the show last week, that's good but, when you walk out in front of 1,000, you think, 'Oh my God, this had better be good'.
- Paddy Hoey (15 July 2005) "Carr's a comic with universal appeal", Daily Post.

I did quite a lot of TV shows over the latter half of 2004 - all those 100 Greatest and 100 Worst and all that kind of stuff. So I was a little bit overexposed. But I think you need to do that once in your career, and that's how you become famous. You get overexposed once, and then people know your name and you can relax a bit.
- Peter Ross (14 August 2005) "The Joker As the face of Channel 4 he's known for his sharp suits and sharper one-liners, but what has spurred Jimmy Carr on during his swift rise from anonymity to ubiquity?", Sunday Herald.

The great thing about being a comedian is that it kind of doesn't matter how you look. It's actually a disadvantage to be too good-looking. There's a Darwinian advantage to being funny. If you're a good-looking fella, you can't be bothered to make up jokes.
- Simon Mills (14 November 2005) "Top Table", Daily Mail.

So they've laughed and then they've thought, should we have laughed at that? Well, too late now. You did. I imagine I get more than my fair share of that.
- Patrick Barkham (9 September 2006) "Here's Jimmy!: Jimmy Carr as Jack Nicholson in The Shining", The Guardian.

Jokes spread around the world and embed themselves in our shared culture; the most resonant of them get lodged in the language in the same way as clichés or old wives' tales do.
- Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves (21 September 2006) Only Joking: What's So Funny About Making People Laugh?, Gotham, ISBN 1592402356, p. 3.

But what's true about comedians is that we've all got a huge hole in our personality. In a room of 3,000 people, we're the one person facing in the opposite direction - yet we have this overwhelming desire to be liked.
- Stephen Armstrong (3 December 2006) "He who laughs last... - Comedy", The Sunday Times, p. Culture 10.

I immediately adored performing. It really empowers you when everyone's laughing. It gives you an immense buzz. You just feel on top of the world.
- Paddy Hoey (6 April 2007) "Football's loss was definitely stand-up's gain", Daily Post.

I think being successful in comedy is being funny and making jokes - anything beyond that is the icing on the cake.
- Charlotte Cripps (31 January 2007) "Stand up and be counted, comedians", The Independent.

If only Africa had more mosquito nets then every year we could save millions of mosquitoes from dying needlessly of AIDs.
As head of the Catholic church, Pope Benedict is the boss of every Catholic priest in the world, he's effectively king of the pedos.
- Being Funny (2011)

The highest terrorist threat level, as we all know, is “I don't care if this does look racist, I'm getting off the bus... That backpack is huge and he doesn't need to be saying his prayers.”
- Laughing and Joking (standup DVD, 2013)

When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of 6 million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis.
No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.
- His Dark Material (Netflix special, Christmas Day 2021). Cited in Jimmy Carr condemned for 'abhorrent' Holocaust joke about Roma people" The Guardian (4 February 2022)
- The Guardian quoted Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the UK's Holocaust Memorial Day Trust: "We are absolutely appalled at Jimmy Carr’s comment. ... Hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti people suffered prejudice, slave labour, sterilisation and mass murder simply because of their identity – these are not experiences for mockery"

His idea of wit is a barrage of filth and the sort of humour most men grow out of in their teens.
- Ann Widdecombe in the Daily Express after an appearance with Carr on Have I Got News for You, cited in "Widdecombe disgusted by Carr's 'filth'" The Guardian (28 November 2007)

He's basically the only comedian on telly at the moment and the rest of us are all jealous.
- Howard Read — reported in Leo Benedictus (16 August 2005) "Edinburgh: Trendspotting: Carr crash humour", The Guardian.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has an article about:

Jimmy Carr