NO thank you, said a colleague, he would rather not review the acid comedy king of the moment, Jimmy Carr. Why not, I inquired. "He's got one of those 'punchable' faces," he said, walking off, with his own punchline newly stinging the solar plexus.
Carr, the stand-up, put-down specialist with the neatest parting since Kenneth Williams, can handle any such abuse, as he contemplates his return to York to play the Grand Opera House tomorrow.
"It's a nice town, York," he says, sounding ever so civil. "I did a beautiful little downstairs place a while ago the Basement Bar at City Screen... but now I'm a big TV name... I'm doing a big theatre."
The tone of voice may be as crisp as a new £10 note but the tongue is pushing back the cheek.
He loves the chance to live by the sword, die by the sword, in his pursuit of the offensive one-liner.
"I really enjoy hecklers, whereas I know other comedians who feel 'I've got all the jokes, I don't want to be heckled', but I think there's plenty of room for people to chip in with something. Generally, you find it's people who are funny at school or college or work that see a gap to say something, and why not?" he says.
"My ego has already been satiated by being on stage under the lights; we're not going to go half on receipts."
What differentiates the stand-up from the would-be-funnyman heckler or pub wit?
"It's the economy of words; it's actually what you're not saying, rather than saying. On stage I'm trying to do four gags a minute, whereas in a pub you can do four in a night, one every half hour, and you're the pub joker. On stage you're trying to be funny every 15 seconds, so what you have to do is edit things from life. You just need the set-up, then the gag," Carr says.
He is not merely a master of the one-liner.
"I've got jokes that are eight words long and jokes that can take five minutes to tell: shaggy dog tales. Whatever the length, my first priority in comedy is telling the joke. If you have that skill, you'd be crazy not to show it off," he says.
"On chat shows or in interviews, we don't want to hear if comedians had a bad childhood. Most people aren't interested in how you wrote your jokes, they just want you to make them laugh.
"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."
Carr acknowledges his dry humour is not to everyone's taste, but says that applies to all comedy.
"The thing about a sense of humour is that it's very like your sexuality. You have no choice in the matter. You have no control over that. You either find something funny or you don't. It's pretty much on or off, and you have to respect someone's opinion," he says.
"What separates comedy from other artforms - though it may not be an art at all - is that there's no bull****. You can't bull**** a laugh. You either laugh or you don't."
Those who don't laugh have branded Carr as "perverse" and "sick". "I have no problem with that, no problem at all," he says. "It's slightly lazy journalism but I can see what they're getting at. My humour is all wordplay, and there's a huge difference between comedy based in opinions and comedy based in wordplay."
Fact File
Name: Jimmy Carr
Occupation: Slick but sick dapper comedian, list-making television presenter and game-show host
Education: Cambridge University
Suitably slick first job: Marketing an oil company
Television: Hosting Channel 4's Distraction and Your Face Or Mine; guest-hosting Have I Got News For You; guest-appearing on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross (last Friday), Parkinson and Jay Leno's Tonight Show
Radio: Regular show on XFM
Speciality: Wordplay and one liners
Such as: "Cats have nine lives - which makes them ideal for experimentation"; "Feminists say a woman's work is never done ...maybe if they organised themselves a little better..."
Coming soon: Stand-up comedy special for US network Comedy Central; The 100 Best Christmas Moments, The Comedians' Comedian, and end-of-year quiz, all Channel 4
Coming fairly soon: Film debut in Brit flick Confetti next year
Where, when and why in York this weekend?: Grand Opera House, tomorrow, 8pm, performing his Edinburgh Fringe hit, Public Display Of Affection, on first nationwide UK tour
Tickets: £15 on 0870 606 3595.
Updated: 09:35 Friday, November 19, 2004
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