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A recent “discovery” of mine is British comedian Jimmy Carr. I admit, when I thought of British comedy before, well, it seemed a bit weird or tame.

But I saw an article for Jimmy Carr’s In Concert DVD, and decided to check it out, just to see.

And then I checked out his other 3 DVDs right after.

I don’t know if the clips below (look bottom) will really show you enough to feel out his show, but he is amazing. I’m no expert stand-up comedians, but I’d rank him up there with Dave Chappelle as live acts I would definitely pay to see.

For a while I enjoyed Chris Rock (I saw his newest special, Kill the Messenger, a month ago or so), but he’s kind of lost the edge. He’s still as aggressive, but his act is more about him being funny rather than his material.

Dane Cook, I was a fan of his for a while 3-4 years ago, but now with every new special, it’s also much more about him and the Dane Cook brand than his material. He keeps becoming more and more of a glorified storyteller, and he bases so much of his stuff for his older fans, I can’t see anyone being introduced to his newest special and thinking, that guy is super hilarious. His fan base is super loyal and increased over the entire decade, and to his credit, Cook has been fantastic at building it, but his quality has really become irrelevant. His formula now is to tell a 20 minute story, filled with sounds and cute expressions, and ending it in a big loud payoff that is funny because he emphasizes it as funny and because everyone in the crowd likes him.

Back to Jimmy Carr, though, I am actually thinking to myself that if I could go travel to England, I hope Jimmy Carr is performing somewhere so I could go see him.

Carr’s style reminds me a bit of Mitch Hedberg- he plays a lot with language and the meaning of words, most of his jokes are super short, 2-3 lines. He has the ability to make you laugh startlingly every 15 seconds consistently for 1.5 hours. But where he really stands out is how he interacts with the crowds and how he mixes his act up. He has “set pieces” where he’ll sit down and do a little of something different. It’s not just stand-up, it actually feels like a show or a theater performance. On one DVD, he sits down and shows the crowd personal ads he wrote, then on another, he does an advice column.

With the crowds, he’s just incredibly quick and witty- he welcomes all challengers and puts them down easily, but all with a grace you’d (Americans) expect from an “Englishman”. There’s a lot of swearing and raunchiness, but the tone and mood of the show is more good fun rather than more of an American style-aggressiveness.

Here’s the list of his released DVDs and some sample footage:

• Jimmy Carr: Live (2003)
• Jimmy Carr: Stand Up (2005)
• Jimmy Carr: Comedian (2007)
• Jimmy Carr: In Concert (2008)

Tackling Hecklers:

F*ck Buddies:

Random Compilation:

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