HAS your moral radar gone on the blink?

If so, the return to York of Jimmy Carr and his Gag Reflex show on Sunday could point you in the right direction.

"This show is not for the easily offended," he says. "It's not even for people that are difficult to offend. Essentially it's for people who are without a moral compass."

Channel 4's man of lists and barbed social comment is well on the way to another sell-out at the Grand Opera House - 940 ticket sales so far and counting - following last October's full house on his ten-month tour of 100-plus dates.

As ever, he will be making no apologies for his material.

"In terms of taste and decency, I think you can say pretty much anything in a comedy show.

"I think being politically correct is important if you're a doctor or a lawyer or a policeman, or you work for social services or any of these important jobs in society where people are relying on you, but as a comic I say rude things and offensive things and it's not for everyone."

Carr's live show is "just a long list of jokes" with the title of Gag Reflex for "no real reason".

"There's no real theme to it. There's no method in my madness. It's just 45 minutes in the first half and then 45 minutes to an hour in the second half. It does exactly what it says on the tin for a comedy show, which I quite like," he says.

Jimmy owns up to having an anorak's interest in how jokes work and what humour is, and this has led him to co-write the book The Naked Jape with his friend, Lucy Greeves.

"A lot of people when they want to be taken seriously, they write a serious stand-up show about their life and who they are and stuff and I thought, I'll keep my live show exactly the same, I'll just tell jokes, but I would like to be a bit more serious about jokes'," he says.

"I'm very conscious of not wanting to be boring about a subject, so if you like a laugh but you don't want to know anything more about jokes and how they work, then just avoid the book. But I thought I'd write it because I would be very interested in reading it. It's quite a labour of love."

Along with essays on different elements of jokes and their history and anthropology, Carr has included the perfect list of 400 jokes "as a nod to all the people who have influenced it".

However, he wanted to avoid over-analysing humour. "There's a great quote in the book from a French guy, ironically, who said: Analysing comedy is like dissecting a frog. No one is that interested and the frog died'," he says.

Jimmy's own taste in comedy spans Stephen Wright and Emo Phillips to black American stand-ups Dave Chappell and Chris Rock.

"It's a weird thing but my taste tends to be quite far away from what I do; I've been influenced by TV and media. I don't have a great attention span, I get bored quite easily, so the biggest influence on my comedy is boredom," he says.

Hence his predilection for lists and one-liners.

"I think, I'll say something funny. I won't make it into a long story. I'll say it as quickly as possible and then I'll move on to the next thing', so there are lots of little bite-sized chunks in my act."

The original fast Carr, you could say.

Jimmy Carr, Grand Opera House, York, Sunday, 8pm. Tickets update: only a handful left on 0870 606 3595.