Talk:Jimmy Carr

1 child or 2?

Hello

Anonymous accounts keep changing the panel on here to say "1 child" and then it goes back to 2...and now it's back to 1 again. It's DEF 2. See the first minute of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdswrDtMISc&t=11s and if you Google, around April time, there was a flurry of stories around the press "contacting his reps for comment" etc.

He's been talking about having had a 2nd child, in his gigs and podcasts, for ages and also in his Natural Born Killer special there was a routine around him talking to his son and daughter.

So 2 is the answer. :o)) Comedy Nerd77 (talk) 09:58, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

WP:RELIABLESOURCES. Seasider53 (talk) 10:01, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The YT video - where he says "kids". Are his own words not reliable enough? Or Natural Born Killer? I can't link to the latter as it's on Netflix.

He didn't talk about his 1st child for 18 months so has a history of keeping his private life private and only really confirmed it when he published his book.

Personally - I give up. But this panel keeps getting changed back and forth repeatedly, mainly by anon accounts, because everyone that goes to his gigs (or watches him in Videos) know he's got "kids". Give it a week or two and someone will try and put it back to 2 again. Comedy Nerd77 (talk) 10:34, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

A comedy show is not a reliable source. Surely you can understand why? Seasider53 (talk) 10:59, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

He has 2 kids he stated so himself on the tommy tiernan show. 2A06:5900:804B:B800:38B8:1DE7:145B:E401 (talk) 00:45, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Oh, okay, I'll stick that in the article. Seasider53 (talk) 01:00, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Canada

Background, explanations – and some questions…

I collected the bulk of this information about a year ago and realised recently, as a result of reading about another story, that some of the websites have since vanished. I’ve had to spend a considerable amount of time re-checking the sources and then re-doing many of the searches and downloading the text for future reference. So, please go gentle on me, when critiquing my text!

I’m slotting it in between Edinburgh and America. Carr went to Edinburgh first – then JFL / Canada and then, a few months later, was on Conan. So that order makes more sense – even if they then all criss-cross each other.

Some shows / appearances I managed to find multiple references for but, as its Canada, someone Canadian may have to let me know if I’ve chosen a lower-grade website option (drop me a chat and we can discuss what other links I may have).

Sometimes my choice has been driven by the quality of the text. 2018 for example – I chose a Montreal Gazette link because the Chortle article said this was his 13^th JFL – when it was in fact his 14^th. In this instance I think the Montreal Gazette is generally a good option – but many of its more recent pages are now behind a paywall. BTW - Carr himself loses track of how many he’s attended as he said 2022 was his 15^th – when it was actually his 17^th.

The Gazette is also a problem for 2002-3 as its pre 2004 online archive has been dumped – (although the Shecky magazine references its earlier content).

Could someone please advise me on whether a published book is counted as a “self published source”? I wasn’t clear after reading the Wiki help text. Reason being that, in Carr’s Before and Laughter, he talks about how “the comedy myth is that you go to JFL and become a hit in the States” – but that had actually happened to him, in 2002, when he was subsequently invited to go to New York to do Conan. Can I use that? It’s an important leap in his career trajectory.

I’ve done my best to cut the word count down so where, for example, I say that Montreal WAS the world’s largest comedy festival – I didn’t want to repeat all of the details around its financial demise in the 2020s (which I have expanded on further down the text). Does this make sense? ComediHa! Are trying to rebuild the brand but that info belongs on the official JFL page.

I have briefly mentioned Just pour rire and JFL, to drive search engines. I’ve Capitalised the 3 words Just For Laughs, even though Word etc. want the FOR to be lower case. NO ONE can make their mind up, from what I can see, as to which is right, and HaHaHa.com (the original, official website) frequently used JUST FOR LAUGHS. Just to confuse things the new owners (Comediha!) have used Just for laughs. I give up.

2003 I mentioned that he was (again) erroneously listed as being in the Irish shows as I can find zero evidence that he was in them. Many times the listings of who would do what shows (which came out around April-July each year) did not evolve into actual appearances. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to prove/disprove each one.

2003 I deliberately left the Leno show in the Stand Up section as the “TV” section relates to shows that came out of Canadian JFL TV productions.

2006 (and others) – I’ve named other comics involved in shows (mainly where they are bigger names) otherwise it’s a bit boring if it’s solely details of each year Carr attended. It also shows how many of the current most successful comedians have know each other for 20+ years.

2014 this counts as a JFL appearance because there are photos, on various social accounts, of him at numerous different shows. Unfortunately, they are not great sources for citations as some are just posts from audience members or mentions on Reddit that he “was great last night at xxx”.

2017 is sparse on links because it was a 375^th Montreal anniversary, which drew all the press. 2022 was another year with poor quality news coverage.

2018 Kill Tony is a big name in the Americas (see under Tony Hinchcliffe).

2021 I held back on something I was going to type about how pandemic restrictions (which went through to 2022) meant that 2021 was a festival bill consisting of all US / Canadian comics as the comics either couldn’t travel or didn’t want to risk it, due to rules changing at the last moment. It’s one of those things that we all “know” – but I couldn’t find an article as a citation.

2024 I’ve repositioned some text about the Jim Jefferies double-headliner tour. I’ve used an Instagram post as, although there are plenty of mentions of the JJ tour around the web, I’ve found that tour related info often gets deleted fairly quickly.

Canadian TV

2010 All Star Gala was listed on Apple TV (depending on which route you enter the website – it sometimes says “not available”) so I have avoided using that (but I also chose the Tubi Tv link for the poster).

2015 The Nasty Show and Roast Invitational text could just have easily have been up in the Stand Up listings, above. I didn’t want to repeat the info in both places – is this best practice?

Canadian Charities

Re Hope & Cope – I had downloaded the PDF documenting his 2012 appearance – but this has now been deleted (from the Hope & Cope website). However, the Gazette story mentions that 2019 is his 4^th appearance – which aligns with 2012, 2015 and 2017 being the first three. Comedy Nerd77 (talk) 10:47, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

It seems overtly detailed, and the lack of references is going to be its downfall. We also don't need to link Just for Laughs in each paragraph. Seasider53 (talk) 11:04, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

There are even more JFL links now? Holy smokes, it’s a tough read. Seasider53 (talk) 12:15, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Sorry - I had my email off - took me 3 hours to do that upload.... A lot of the Citations failed (numbers in URL etc.) so I had to do them manually. Not sure what you mean by "overly detailed"? Examples?

I thought, in other pages that I read, things, that had Wiki pages, were always linked in each para...

Need to go and get some food - have a look now it's all up and I'll be back later. Comedy Nerd77 (talk) 13:49, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Podcasts

I feel bad about re-writing someone else’s work but the Podcasts section had an error in that the Frankie Boyle chat was 2010, when it was 2011 – see Jimmy tweet and also FB’s Wikipedia page. And the link to Ivy.fm is dead so, as I’m in there, I’ll change it to Podchaser.

Mention of the pandemic (being a reason for the ramping up) doesn’t make sense to me as, so far as I can see, he did (roughly) 1 podcast in 2019, 5 in 2020 and 27 in 2021. 2020 was a little higher rate than previous years and the first 4-5 pods of 2021 were recorded over Zoom – but then the rest of 2021’s “ramping up” was because 2021 was when he released his book (Before & Laughter) and he was all over radio and podcasts, sometimes multiple times a day – and often in person.

I would suggest that would have happened, regardless of the pandemic. It was just a business decision to move an international artist away from UK TV chat show circuit to a format that gave a much bigger audience.

But also, of the podcasts listed (in the original text) only Dane’s was recorded “during the pandemic”. The Comedian’s Comedian, for example, was recorded 11 Oct 2021 at one of JC’s gigs and the others were all 2022. You Made It Weird was on a stage, in Montreal, at Just For Laughs July 2022. So, describing them as “during the height of the pandemic” doesn’t really align, IMHO. Sorry to nitpick!

The final part of my text about “everyone is jealous….” – that quote, if you Google, it, can be found on every social platform and also the LinkedIn profiles of some impressive people. I didn’t want to wax too lyrical about it – but it makes a change from seeing him being repeatedly quoted for a dodgy joke. Comedy Nerd77 (talk) 13:43, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I would ask you to hold off on adding anything else to the article. It isn't in fantastic shape currently thanks to recent edits, and adding anything else would create unnecessary extra work. Seasider53 (talk) 13:46, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Wasn't planning on anything else - but what do you think is wrong to make it "not in fantastic shape"? Genuinely asking...not trying to argue with you. :o) Comedy Nerd77 (talk) 14:01, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Too much to list here. Formatting errors, unreliable sources, duplicated wikilinks for starters. At this point you might as well continue, but expect a lot of your work to possibly be for nothing. Seasider53 (talk) 14:52, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for delay – business has been hectic. Re the duplicated wikilinks…I thought I’d be told off if I didn’t put them all in…lesson learned.

Proposition for you – how about, as some training for me, you tell me what wants fixing and I do it? Doesn’t have to be all at once. If we start with the Wikilinks – if you can confirm how many times each one needs adding then I could potentially tidy them up over this weekend.   Comedy Nerd77 (talk) 09:53, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

I rolled the article back to before your contributions, because there were too many problems with WP:SYNTH and WP:PEACOCK. The WP:TONE is too promotional. You cannot use Wikipedia's voice to praise Carr in such flattering terms as "introduced a new audience to the intelligence of the man behind the stage persona". This smacks of a public relations campaign. Binksternet (talk) 16:38, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Understood / links noted. The problem I had was the Podcasts section, as it is now, makes no sense. The bit about ramping up during COVID is (IMHO) not supported by evidence – mostly because not all of those shows were during that time.

I was trying to keep as much of the original submitters text as possible (because I know what it’s like to have your words chopped about) but, in the end, gave myself a headache trying to make it make sense and went a bit OTT. Honestly, I rewrote that last part about 15 times and, clearly, lost my way. Comedy Nerd77 (talk) 09:53, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Controversy section

I've not edited in a while but have just noted the April heading relating to "criticism or controversy section". I have tried editing this section in the past and my text was removed. I gave up.

Re the Paralympics joke - there is an excellent overview of what actually happened on https://thecarrtell.blog/2025/04/17/paralympics-joke-2009/

Re the Holocaust joke - Regardless of what you think about the joke / dark humour as a comedy mechanism, Carr ended up as a football between the various traveller groups and the then Con UK Govt. The Govt were about to bring in a Bill to punish travellers by confiscating caravans etc. and one side used the joke to demonstrate the discrimination that they suffer (trying to stifle the bill) - and the other actually used it as a weapon to bring in more restrictions on FOS / Expression (Nadine Dorries was very vocal at the time).

We had the ridiculous situation where half the Govt (inc. the PM) gave soundbites about how vile the joke was.

I'm saying "ridiculous" because what no one actually bothered to do was listen to the full joke, within context. Even Carr's Wikipedia page crops it at the MOST damning point, ending on the word "positives". See video below.

The summary would be - man's joke was cropped (within 24 hours of the special's release) and circulated to be a vehicle for a campaign, social media was set on fire and he had 22 weeks of horrific abuse (I tracked it at the time), Politicians gave soundbites, the MSM reported it all with no further investigation into the actual joke, people protested outside his gigs. Hysteria and hate all round.

We even had people screaming about the audience "whooping and cheering" being a hate crime. The Netflix Special was a cut down version of a 2 hour show and that joke was towards the end. The "whooping and cheering" started as soon as he'd said the first few words - because everyone knew he was going to rachet things up a little. They were NOT cheering because they hated one particular group.

And one final point (before i get shouted at for waffling on). Comedians that have a dark sense of humour don't like their jokes being written down and circulated, for this very reason. The people in the gigs (it had been told for 18 months previously, to 1000s of people) knew it was just wordplay, with no malice behind it. But when you print HALF of it in the Daily Mail you are shoving it under the noses of people who probably would hate ANY humour relating to darker topics.

Which is a similar playbook to the practice of phoning the parents of servicemen/women and asking what they thought of the Paralympics joke. It's all clickbait.

So, yes, I would like to see this section edited as I've never thought it was neutral. I don't have the time to do it but will happily supply information if someone else wants to tackle it.

Full joke -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJurYs12ay4

Comedy Nerd77 (talk) 10:25, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Remove copy edit template?

I see the article's been checked as the "latest accepted version" but there is still a copy edit template on the article that was placed prior. Should the template be removed or are we agreeing there is still copy edit work that needs to be done? TXstockman5 (talk) 22:24, 26 May 2025 (UTC)