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Tour junkie
Jimmy Carr, who returns to Blackpool Opera House tonight and Saturday, is one of the hardest working men in comedy.
He tours almost constantly, writing the next show whilst performing the current one, notching up over 160 gigs in front of 250,000 people in 12 months.
He's forever on television and radio and reckons he averages three gags a minute (about half the number of Ken Dodd!).
But why put himself through long tours when he could maybe move into arena gigs?
"There's nothing else I want to do," says Jimmy. "I wake up in the morning, might play a game of tennis or have meetings or TV stuff to sort out but generally if I'm doing a gig, I drive there, which takes a couple of hours.
"I mooch about, look around the town, have a coffee and a bite to eat and wherever I go in the country I meet people. People come up, say hello and have a chat.
"If you're on TV, people think you're very approachable. I'm not a movie star or a singer or someone who's impossibly talented, I'm just a bloke with some jokes. It's nice; it makes the world very friendly.
"The nicest thing is when you meet young guys and girls coming to comedy for the first time. What's slightly strange is that they're clearly expecting me to insult them.
"It must be difficult if you're a beloved comedian like Peter Kay who has to be super nice the whole time. For my audience, it's a pleasant surprise to find I'm polite."
He's even surprisingly modest. "In showbusiness I'm the lowest tier, aren't I?" he says. "Just one step above the clown. If you do well at stand-up, maybe you'll go on to do something else. No famous actors go, "you know, I really fancy doing a bit of stand-up."
"People like coming out, watching a show and not being preached to. The reason comedy attendance is up and church attendance is down is that I'm not telling anybody how to live their life. If you don't think this is funny, don't come again."
So with so many shows, how does he keep the timing tight every night?
"It's tougher with my stuff than observational jokes because if you're just trying to paint a funny picture with words in people's minds, that's fine.
"With mine, it's very often the exact order of the words that make them funny. If you mispronounce a word or get the order wrong, it's not funny. Like, 'I'm not worried about the Third World War - that's the Third World's problem.'"
So what's next? A sitcom? "I feel that's such a different thing. It's a Herculean task. I could try and do a sitcom - I could unpick my jokes and work them into a sitcom, but it would seem a waste."
"I love material you want to use the next day because there's no higher compliment to a comic than people telling their mates your jokes."
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Weather for Blackpool
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 4 C to 7 C
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Wind direction: South west
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