Stuart Waiton: Jimmy Carr, modern puritanism and the death of comedy

Jimmy Carr, who was purged along with other comedians like David Baddiel and Ricky Gervais laughingly explained, “You are going to be able to tell your grandchildren about seeing this show tonight. You will say I saw a man and he stood on a stage and he made light of serious issues. We used to call them jokes and people would laugh”.

Baddiel and many of his friends denounced Carr or refused to defend him. In 2022, Baddiel even cheered as Spurs fans were arrested for singing “Yid Army”, even though this was a Tottenham chant in celebration of their Jewish heritage.

READ MORE: Has controversial comic Jimmy Carr ended his own career?

Comics like Baddiel became known as the Great Pretenders, the “we support free speech but” brigade, who believed in free speech for themselves but not for other people.

Footballers in Scotland had faced their own purge of course, following the then First Minister’s creation of a fit and proper person test for players. Such was the anxiety of the political aristocracy about what the commoners would make of footballers with incorrect attitudes entertaining them each week that a purity test was introduced to “change the culture”.

Carr had made his joke about the Holocaust on Netflix. After the joke he’d even gone on to explain to the audience that it really was the case that the Nazis, in the worst atrocity in human history, killed not only 6 million Jews but also Gypsies and homosexuals.

Carr had called himself a postmodern comic because despite the incorrect nature of his jokes, Carr was not an old bigot, he just liked telling offensive jokes. But this nuance was much too much for the emerging aristocracy of his time.

Outrage ensued, government minister Nadine Dorries said it should be illegal to tell such jokes and that soon, with the Government’s online safety bill, it would be.

In Scotland a little-known SNP councillor, Julie McKenzie, rose to fame following her Tweet: “Jimmy Carr and his Netflix hate speech, and his applauding audience should be prosecuted”.

Soon the white vans were turning up at comedy gigs. In the back were those footballers whose houses had been raided under the guise of the Hate Crime Act, one had even been heard to have fed his cat on non-plant-based cat food – the online storm had been terrifying.

READ MORE: Six of Jimmy Carr's most controversial jokes

Back catalogues of comedy gigs were watched by the censors, known as the Firemen for their burning of books and torching of online incorrectness. Where audience members were identified houses were raided and charges brought under the new Offensive Behaviour at Everything Act.

In no time at all workers were facing unconscious comedy tests set up by employers to identify the “unaware”. In universities, students were given academic credits for spotting incorrect conversations and reporting them to the police. Even those academics who had mocked the very idea of cancel culture found themselves in cells, staring at the walls, wondering how it had come to this.

In schools, pupils who made fun of the “white privilege” and “gender transformation” curriculum were excluded and placed in camps for cultural correction. Their parents faced investigations and fearing the loss of their children voluntarily joined the local awareness raising classes that had sprung up in community centres across the country.

The SNP had changed their name to the Scottish National and Purity Party, later simplifying it to the Purity Party, the PP.

Or perhaps, this is all just a bad joke!

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.