Jimmy Carr has revisited the storm that erupted after a controversial joke from his 2022 Netflix stand‑up special went viral, saying the outrage was fuelled by clips stripped of the context he built into the show.
Carr had warned viewers that His Dark Material, released on Christmas Day 2022, was designed to push boundaries. But within days, one Holocaust joke dominated headlines and ignited fierce political and cultural debate across the UK.
The line, which referenced the murder of Roma and Sinti people during the Holocaust, drew laughter from the live audience but widespread condemnation once a short excerpt circulated online. Historians and advocacy groups stressed that between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma and Sinti people were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.
Speaking on the Louis Theroux Podcast, Carr said the viral clip removed the framing he delivered onstage, including warnings immediately before and after the joke.
He argued that the edit stripped away the intent behind the material. “It was clipped in a way that removed a bit before the joke and after the joke where it’s contextualised,” he said. “If you clip it up in the wrong way you can cause controversy.”
Carr said the joke was a deliberate attempt to say “the worst possible thing” while discussing the Holocaust, insisting the audience understood he was not expressing a literal belief.
“No one at the show thinks for a second I think that,” he said, adding that many people are unaware of the scale of Nazi crimes against Roma communities. “The Romani people call the Holocaust ‘The Devouring’.”
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