Britain’s foremost multi-award-winning joke technician Jimmy Carr returns with his fourth live stand-up DVD, recorded at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre. As ever, Jimmy walks a fine line with outrageous gags that would be thoroughly offensive if they were not so expertly delivered with an ironic glint in his eye. He commands his audience with twisted little aphorisms, with no one escaping his biting wit and “take no prisoners” approach to subject matter. As Jimmy himself explains: “This DVD is exactly the same as last year’s except every single word. It’s rude, crude and offensive, but those aren’t the only reasons you’ll enjoy it...”

If you’ve seen 8 out of 10 Cats host Jimmy Carr doing stand-up before, then you’ll know what to expect from this latest DVD, which was recorded live earlier this year during the comedian’s 2007-8 Repeat Offender tour. Definitely not for the easily offended, his rapid-fire routine tackles such tricky topics as sex (“people say to me, ‘what’s your girlfriend do?’ - anything but anal”), homosexuality (“I keep getting mistaken for Alan Carr, but I’ve put a stop to that - I’ve stopped sucking cocks”), domestic violence (“beating your own wife - isn’t that like keying your own car?”), child abuse (“when I was a kid, I was terrified of my dentist - he was a paedophile”), disability (“no paraplegic ever walked out of one of my gigs”) and religion (“they say Scientology is a made-up religion - yeah, as opposed to...?”)

However, even Carr has his limits. Though he’s quite happy to mock people’s class and dialect, he draws the line at out-and-out racism (as can be seen most clearly during the animated special feature - of which, more later). And you can tell that he doesn’t really hate women when he apologises to a female audience member for insulting her in the process of dissing her boyfriend.

The comic sustains his performance for 90 minutes by interspersing his quick-fire one-liners with longer jokes and, on a broader scale, by punctuating the act as a whole with a couple of quieter moments. In the first of these, he reads some funny poetry; during the second, he shares some philosophical thoughts accompanied by a jazz band.

He also has a go at his reviewers, as he points out the mixed messages given out by apparent compliments such as “Jimmy Carr couldn’t be funnier” and “there’s funny - and then there’s Jimmy Carr”. I’ll try not to fall into the same trap with this write-up!

Of course, each performance the comedian gives is slightly different from the previous one, due to the different heckles he gets from the audience, and so this DVD only presents one night’s version of the show. Fortunately, the disc also includes a 36-minute montage of Carr’s most brutal put-downs. These audio recordings are brought to life by various methods of animation: we get to see the comic (no pun intended) as a line-drawn cartoon, a life-sized Muppet and a still photograph manipulated Fonejacker-style, as he battles and belittles those audience members who dare to have a go.

There are supposedly also alternative subtitles in Scouse, Glaswegian, Polish, Australian and Welsh, but I cannot comment on these, as they were not present on the preview disc I saw.

This DVD is a little overpriced compared to what many TV and movie titles are retailing for nowadays - but even so, I’m not going to give it 8 out of 10, I’m going to give it...

9

Richard McGinlay