Even though the BBC has had to apologise for his comedy, Jimmy Carr is not racist, homophobic or misogynist - just charmingly offensive, writes Brian Boyd
For his first gig in Ireland Jimmy Carr was dressed in his trademark suit and talking in his trademark posh accent. He explained to the audience that he was born in Limerick to Irish parents and that his family had moved to Britain when he was young. "I am living proof to all you Irish people that, with a little bit of application, you too can dress like me and speak like me."
The crowd loved it, as they loved all his barbed remarks about Ireland that night. He is, though, one of the most unlikely first-generation Irish people you could come across. "People in England are generally surprised to find out that I'm originally Irish, and people in Ireland are generally surprised to find out that I'm originally from Limerick," he says. "Growing up, I definitely had an Irish way of speaking, which was very different to how the kids around me spoke. I'd use a word like 'grand', as in 'that's grand', and I'd talk about going to see a 'fillum' in the cinema. I think that maybe the accent I have now is just me overcompensating. It's ridiculously English. But there is nothing premeditated about my voice or style; this is how I act and talk in real life. The funny thing is that the further I get away from England, the more English I get. When I get to America I just sound stupid."
Carr has always been popular on the comedy circuit. His increasingly high television profile means that, for his appearances at last month's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, he was performing in a 1,200-seat conference centre. Much of his appeal lies in his ability to get away with being charmingly offensive. He's not racist, he's not misogynist, he's not homophobic; he's an equal-opportunities comedian who will talk about anyone or anything.
"I was really surprised to find that, early on, I was being described as this edgy bad-boy comic," he says. "I just talk about stuff that I think is funny. I talk the way I would do with my friends in the pub. I tell jokes about something or somebody, not against something or somebody. If people want to be offended, there are plenty of shows out there I could direct them to. I don't do hate or malice, and I don't set out to offend people. The term used about me a lot is 'politically incorrect'. It's a worrying phrase. I really do believe that doctors, lawyers and politicians should be politically correct. I'm presenting a comedy show; it's a totally different thing. The way I like to describe what I do is that I don't put up any barriers in my material, and sometimes the only way to find where the edge lies in terms of taste is to go over it. I used to do this thing where I would search for the most offensive phrase in the English language, and I'd tell it to the audience. But that was in the context of searching for the most offensive phrase in the first place."
Don't expect any surreal flights of fancy at a Carr show; he is one of the most precise comics around, and he hones his material to the essentials. "Other comics can do long and rambling, but I can't," he says. "If, for example, I know I have five minutes somewhere I'll try to get in 20 jokes. If I'm doing 75 minutes I'll try and make that 200 jokes. I'm big into wordplay. I have a line that goes: 'Throwing acid is wrong - in some people's eyes.' And I'm always on the lookout for stuff like that. For example, yesterday I was in a restaurant and the service was really, really bad. When the bill came, it had printed on it 'Service not included', and I thought, well, no, it wasn't, was it? That's something I can use."
He says he never apologises for his jokes, although in January this year the BBC had to apologise for a quip he made on Radio 4 about gypsy women. "It's that thing that Jerry Seinfeld says about comedy being an esoteric jump between cliffs. If the gap is too close between the jumps, then it's not difficult to do; if it's too big a gap, you are going too far. You have to find the right jump. Having said that, sometimes I feel that I should have the words 'This is a comedy show, after all' flashing in big lights behind me on the stage."
• Jimmy Carr is at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, tonight and tomorrow as part of the Bulmers International Comedy Festival; www.bulmerscomedy.ie