Jimmy Carr

Early life and education

James Anthony Patrick Carr was born on 15 September 1972 in Isleworth, London. He is the second of three sons born to Irish parents, Nora Mary (née Lawlor; 19 September 1943 – 7 September 2001) and Patrick James "Jim" Carr (born 1945). Carr's father was an accountant and later became treasurer for computer company Unisys. Natives of Limerick, his parents were married in 1970 and separated in 1994, never divorcing.

Carr spent most of his early life in the Buckinghamshire village of Farnham Common, where he attended Farnham Common School and Burnham Grammar School. Carr was diagnosed with dyslexia and could not read or write at his expected level until around ten or eleven years old. He completed sixth form at the Royal Grammar School in nearby High Wycombe.

After earning four A grades at A-level, Carr studied social science and political science at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating with first-class honours in 1994. He went on to work in the marketing department at Shell, but took voluntary redundancy in January 2000 as he felt "miserable" there. He performed his first paid stand-up gig later that month. He said a course in neuro-linguistic programming helped him realise his mind was working to hold him back from following his dreams of becoming a comedian.

Career

Television

Carr began his TV hosting career in the early 2000s, hosting Channel 4 game shows like Distraction and Your Face or Mine?. He presented several episodes of 100 Greatest, including "100 Worst Pop Records", "100 Worst Britons", "100 People Who Look Most Like Jimmy Carr" (a spoof) and "100 Scary Moments".

Beginning in 2005, Carr presented the comedy panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats. The show aired on Channel 4 until 2016, when it moved to More4 and later went to E4. Since 2012, Carr has also presented over 150 episodes of 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, a combination of his panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats and daytime quiz show Countdown.

In April 2010, Carr hosted the first British version of a comedy roast show, Channel 4's A Comedy Roast. On 6 May 2010, he was a co-host of Channel 4's Alternative Election Night, with David Mitchell, Lauren Laverne and Charlie Brooker. He joined the three presenters again for 10 O'Clock Live, a Channel 4 comedy current-affairs show, which started airing in January 2011.

In 2014 and 2015, Carr guest-presented two episodes of Sunday Night at the Palladium on ITV. In 2018, he presented American comedy panel show The Fix on Netflix. From 2018 to 2020, Carr hosted the Comedy Central series Roast Battle. Since 2021, he has hosted the Channel 4 quiz show I Literally Just Told You.

In March 2025, he hosted the first series of LOL: Last One Laughing UK with Roisin Conaty. In October 2025, Carr hosted the first series of Am I The A******? with GK Barry and Jamali Maddix on Comedy Central.

Carr contributed sketches to Channel 4 topical comedy TV programme The 11 O'Clock Show and has appeared on panel shows A League of Their Own and QI. During a guest appearance on the BBC motoring show Top Gear, Carr set a new celebrity test track lap record on the 'Star in a Reasonably Priced Car' segment. He was described as "the worst driver we've ever had" and "the luckiest man alive" by Top Gear's test driver the Stig.

Carr has appeared as a contestant on celebrity editions of Deal or No Deal (won £750 for Helen & Douglas House), The Chase (won £1,000 for Variety Club), Benchmark (won £1,000 for Elton John AIDS Foundation), Tipping Point (won £7,000 for Blue Cross), Catchphrase, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, winning £1,000.

Radio

In January 2006, Carr made a joke on Radio 4's Loose Ends, the punchline of which implied that Gypsy women stank. The BBC issued an apology, but Carr refused to apologize and continued to use the joke. He appeared in two episodes of the radio series of Flight of the Conchords in 2005.

Carr has appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity a total of seven times since 2011. He was the Museum Curator (in his five appearances in 2012) and a guest on the 2018 Annual Stock Take Christmas special, alongside Lee Mack, Jo Brand, and Sally Philips.

Podcasts

Carr's podcast appearances go back to at least 2010 with a one-off podcast called Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle: Meet the Comedians. Carr's podcast appearances ramped up significantly during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with recent appearances during this period including The Betoota Advocate Podcast, You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes, The Comedian's Comedian, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, and Dane Baptiste Questions Everything.

Stand-up comedy

Though often recognized for his TV appearances, Carr primarily considers himself a stand-up comedian, saying on a July 2018 episode of Peter McGraw's podcast, "I’ve always thought I’m in stand-up and everything else is a little bit of a side show."

Carr performed his first five minutes of stand-up, unpaid, at an Islington pub called the Tut 'n' Shive in December 1999. From 2000 to 2003, he started appearing regularly around London at clubs like Up The Creek, The Banana Cabaret, and The Bearcat Comedy Club. In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.

He toured the country with his show A Public Display of Affection, starting on 9 April 2005 at the Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury and ending on 14 January 2006 at the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End. He also appeared at the EICC during the Edinburgh Festival in August 2005 with his Off The Telly show.

In August 2006, he commenced the tour Gag Reflex, for which he won the 2006 British Comedy Award for "Best Live Stand-Up". He released his third DVD, Jimmy Carr: Comedian, in November 2007.

In 2007, in a poll on the Channel 4 website for 100 Greatest Stand-Ups, Jimmy Carr was ranked 12th. A national tour, titled Repeat Offender, commenced in autumn 2007, beginning at the Edinburgh Festival. On 3 February 2007, Carr's performance in front of 50 people in London was broadcast simultaneously on the virtual platform Second Life.

His Rapier Wit tour opened on 20 August 2009 with eight shows at the Edinburgh Festival before touring the UK. He released a DVD entitled Jimmy Carr: Telling Jokes on 2 November 2009. Also on 5 and 6 July 2009, Carr was the warm-up act for band The Killers at performances recorded for their DVD album, Live from the Royal Albert Hall.

Carr's sixth live DVD, Jimmy Carr: Making People Laugh, was released on 8 November 2010. Carr's 2010–11 tour, entitled Laughter Therapy, started with a run at the Edinburgh Festival before touring the UK.

Controversy and criticism

In 2004, Carr threatened to sue Jim Davidson for using a joke that Carr considered his own. The matter was dropped when it became apparent that the joke in question was an old one used for decades by many different comedians.

In October 2009, Carr received criticism from Sunday tabloid newspapers for a joke he made about British soldiers who had lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had met staff and patients at the rehabilitation centre Headley Court in March 2009. At the end of a set at the Manchester Apollo, Carr said, "You can say what you like about these servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan," following up with, "but we're going to have a fucking good Paralympics team in 2012."

Members of parliament condemned the joke while media outlets reported on outraged reactions from mothers of injured soldiers. Carr released a statement reading "I’ve got nothing but respect for the young men and women who put their lives on the line for this country", continuing, "I’m sorry if anyone was offended but that’s the kind of comedy I do." He later defended his own joke as "totally acceptable" in an interview with The Guardian.

Carr was also criticised in November 2011 for a joke about the Variety Club's Sunshine Coaches, which provide accessible transportation for disabled children. The charity and Down Syndrome Education International condemned the joke. Carr defended himself by saying nothing should be off limits.

In June 2019 Carr was criticised for the content of his touring show Terribly Funny. Among the controversial jokes were jokes about dwarves, fat women and female genital mutilation. Carr was also criticised by charity Little People UK (co-founded by actor Warwick Davis), accusing him of prejudice for an "offensive" abortion joke he made about people with dwarfism.

In a stand-up comedy performance released as a Christmas 2021 Netflix special titled His Dark Material, Carr joked:

When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of 6 million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives. During the show, Carr said the joke was meant to raise awareness of Romani victims of the Holocaust. The joke later received widespread attention the following February after a clip was posted and shared online. He was condemned by the Auschwitz Memorial, Hope not Hate and The Traveller Movement, who called anti-Romani prejudice the "last acceptable form of racism" in the UK. He also faced criticism from British politicians, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust said they were "absolutely appalled" and "horrified", and they described Carr's joke as "abhorrent". Despite the criticism, Carr stood by the joke.

Charities

Carr is a supporter of the Bob Woodruff Foundation (a non-profit that supports post-9/11-impacted service members, veterans, and their families). On 5 November 2018, he was on the bill of the 12th Annual Stand Up for Heroes event at Madison Square Gardens and again, for the 17th event, on 6 November 2023, at the Lincoln Center.

Carr was one of the British comics supporting Amnesty International at the 2012 Secret Policeman's Ball in New York.

Books

In 2006, the book The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World of Jokes, on the history and theory of joke-telling, by Carr and Lucy Greeves, was published by Penguin.

Before & Laughter, a memoir and self-help book authored by Carr, was published by Quercus in December 2021.

Personal life

In 1998, Carr, aged 26 at the time, recalled having "an early midlife crisis" during which he lost his Catholic faith. He has since made comments critical of organised religion. In 2015, he said about his faith: As for being a Christian, yes, it seems ridiculous now, but I genuinely believed there was a big man in the sky who could grant wishes. Writers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins helped change my view, but I don't go on stage banging on about being an atheist... I'm just a guy who tells jokes. He has stated that he underwent a lot of therapy, specifically neuro-linguistic programming, at the time of his crisis in order to help him cope with his loss of faith, and that he is qualified as a therapist.

In 2001, Carr's mother Nora Mary died of pancreatitis at age 57. Following her death, Carr's relationship with his father became "severely strained". In 2004 his father was arrested and accused of harassing Carr and his brother Colin, but was cleared and won an apology from the Metropolitan Police. In 2021, Carr said he had not spoken to his father since 2000 and had not seen him in person, with the exception of an autograph signing after a gig in 2015, where they saw each other but did not speak.

Carr has dual British and Irish citizenship and travels on an Irish passport. He has spoken of his pride in having Irish ancestry and was presented in 2013 with a certificate of Irish heritage in his parents' home city of Limerick by the city's mayor.

Carr lives in north London with his Canadian partner Karoline Copping, a commissioning editor for Channel 5, with whom he has been in a relationship since 2001. Their son was born in 2019.

Awards

Time Out Award: Best Stand-Up (2002)

Perrier Award Nomination (2002)

Royal Television Society Award: Best On-Screen Newcomer (2003)

Lafta Award: Best Stand-Up (2004)

Rose D'Or Nomination: Best Presenter, Distraction (2004)

Lafta Award: Funniest Man (2005)

British Comedy Award: Best Live Stand-Up (2006)

Lafta Award: Funniest Man (2007)

Lafta Award: Best Stand-Up (2008)

Lafta Award: Loaded Legend (2011)

Stand-up shows

Filmography

Books

2004, Distraction, the Quiz Book: For the Bright, the Bold and the Brave (foreword to the TV tie-in) ISBN 9-781-844425-488

2006, with Lucy Greeves, The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World of Jokes (London: Michael Joseph) ISBN 9-780-718148-713. US title: Only Joking: What's So Funny About Making People Laugh? (New York: Gotham Books) ISBN 9-781-592402-359

2020, contributed to Dear NHS: 100 Stories to Say Thank You, edited by Adam Kay ISBN 9-781-398701-182

2021, Before & Laughter: A Life-Changing Book ISBN 9-798-469515-678. UK title: 2022, Before & Laughter: The Hilarious Guide to Changing your Life (London: Quercus) ISBN 9-781-529413-113

Discography

= (Ed Sheeran, 2021) – backing vocals on "Visiting Hours"