Jimmy Carr has broken his silence after he faced a huge backlash over a joke he made about the Traveller community and the Holocaust in his Netflix special, His Dark Material.
In a widely-shared clip from the hour-long show, Carr spoke about the horror of the Holocaust and “six million Jewish lives being lost” before making a disparaging remark about the deaths of thousands of Travellers at the hands of the Nazis as a punchline.
Carr has received widespread criticism over the remarks, with calls for Netflix to remove the joke and sparking petitions calling on him to apologise.
On Saturday night, the comedian took to the stage for his stand-up show at the Whitley Bay Playhouse and told the audience he was “going down swinging” and that “the joke that ends my career is already out there.”
According to the Mirror, a heckler at the gig yelled out: “Are we going to talk about the holocaust?”
Jimmy replied: “We are going to talk about cancel culture, the whole thing.
“We are going to talk about fucking everything people. Relax.”
After joking about offending the LGBT community, Jimmy said: “We are speaking my friends in the last chance saloon.
“What I am saying on stage this evening is barely acceptable now. In ten years fucking forget about it.
“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.”
He continued: “I am going to get cancelled, that’s the bad news. The good news is I am going down swinging.
“The joke that ends my career it’s already out there. It’s on YouTube, Netflix, or whatever, and it’s fine until one day it fucking isn’t.”
Jimmy’s friend and fellow comedian David Baddiel spoke out about the Netflix joke in a series of tweets over the weekend.
The comic pointed out the difference between cruel jokes about the Holocaust and ones that target the oppressors.
“I said this every night during my Trolls: Not The Dolls tour as part of a bit arguing that it’s not the subject matter of a joke that counts, it’s the specifics of the individual joke. Clearly, Jimmy Carr’s was the former,” he said.
On Saturday, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries condemned Carr’s joke during an interview on BBC Breakfast, suggesting that new laws would hold to account streaming sites from airing jokes.
“Jimmy Carr’s comments, no one can call that, you know, snowflake or wokeishness, that’s just… it was just appalling,” Dorries said.
Nadia Whittome, Labour MP for Nottingham East, has also urged Netflix to remove Carr’s “vile anti-GRT and antisemitic material”.
Meanwhile, Judge Rinder star Robert Rinder labelled Carr and the audience at his Netflix special who “clapped, whooped and cheered” over the joke, “complete incorrigible turds”.
Robert, who is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, made his feelings clear during a panel discussion about the hour-long special on Talk Radio.
HuffPost UK has contacted Carr’s reps for comment.