“My girlfriend doesn’t like it when I use the C-word,” British comedian Jimmy Carr told the capacity crowd at Burlington’s Flynn on Halloween night. That term makes me cringe, too, even when in the UK, where it’s used widely and liberally. But I got accustomed to hearing it over and over in the course of Carr’s 90-minute, sold-out show. It was one of the less vulgar expletives in his salty standup routine.
I had no idea what was in store when I said yes to a last-minute ticket from a friend, who bought four when they went on sale a year ago. Somehow, I was unfamiliar with the wildly popular master of one-liners and quick, off-color wit. Along with Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K. and Aziz Ansari, he was one of the edgy international comics shipped in to the recent Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia.
Carr has never been “canceled” but came close when he made a joke about the genocide of Roma people during the Holocaust in his 2021 Netflix special “His Dark Material.” He stayed away from that topic — as well as race and the Israel-Gaza conflict — on Friday night, but almost everything else was fair game.
When I found my free seat in the center of Row O, I noticed that some things looked different. For one, I had a great view of the stage. I almost never make plans early enough to score such sight lines. Another rarity: I didn’t recognize anyone in the audience. I spotted way more men than women and very few single gals. When I ran this last observation by my companions, both dudes, they told me I was imagining things.
They had warned me about Carr, but when the lights went down, I was nonetheless startled by his ribald monologue, during which he poked fun at Islam, obesity, domestic violence, and people with mental and physical disabilities. He even made a joke about the KKK — specifically, how it stubbornly misspells the word “clan.”
In Burlington, Vt.? I marveled, scanning the adoring crowd. Who are these people?
Before the show, using a big onstage screen, Carr invited the audience to ask him anything by text message. Later, between sets of rapid-fire prepared material, the lights came up a bit and he encouraged heckling. He skillfully riffed on the unexpected things that people blurted out — one woman said she was dating her ex’s twin brother. There were lots of insults, of course, but his crowd work also revealed the funny guy’s humanity and higher purpose. Noting the problem of loneliness, especially among men, Carr urged two male friends in the audience to turn to each other and say, “I love you.” He had encouraging words — and a joke — for an individual in the crowd who had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
It seemed no less of a high-wire act, in progressive Burlington, to hear so many taboo words spoken aloud.
When someone bellowed out about the “blood money” he earned in Saudi Arabia, Carr defended his Middle Eastern appearance by saying the people who came out to see him “are just like you, looking for a laugh.” He said it was a positive sign for human rights and free speech that he didn’t have to censor his show. (I wonder how his Mecca joke landed?)
It seemed no less of a high-wire act, in progressive Burlington, to hear so many taboo words spoken aloud. In its publicity materials, the Flynn included a trigger warning: “Some people are repelled by Jimmy’s dark brand of comedy. This show is not for them.”
Who was it for? Those who find comfort in hearing someone say what no one else will. Carr’s approach to humor is “benign violation theory,” he explained in a March story in the Independent. “You take a violation, no matter how extreme, but make it benign by joking about it.”
Once I got over my own embarrassment watching the show, I found it weirdly cathartic — not unlike the therapeutic “break room” experience Ken Picard writes about this week in “Going for Broke.” There’s a lot of worry, fear and despair in the world right now. “Jokes,” Carr told the Independent, “can be a way to make sense of stuff.”
This article appears in Nov 5-11 2025.