Jimmy Carr has been branded ‘painfully unfunny’ by viewers after he shared a selection of his controversial jokes from his Netflix show to plug his US tour.
The comedian, 51, took to X – formerly known as Twitter – over the weekend to share a reel of ‘the time I tried to tell a 9/11 joke to a room full of Americans’ ahead of his tour in the states, Terribly Funny.
In the clip, Jimmy compared the 2001 New York terror attacks which saw nearly 3,000 people lose their lives to the moment Zayn Malik left One Direction in 2015.
He said in the show, A Netflix Is A Joke Festival: ‘What I’m saying onstage tonight is barely acceptable now. In ten years’ time, f**king forget about it.
‘Now you might think this is silly, but it’s absolutely true. When Zayn left One Direction, for me, it was like 9/11 — I didn’t care about that either.
Backlash: Jimmy Carr has been branded ‘painfully unfunny’ by viewers after he shared a selection of his controversial jokes from his Netflix show to plug his US tour
‘I was actually supposed to be on one of the planes on 9/11, but the more interesting story is how I met Osama.
‘I can see there’s a real generational divide. Some people are looking at me like, “9/11 steady on” and other people are looking at me like “don’t take their name in vain”.’
Other jokes in the three minute clip included asking if anyone was in a controlling relationship and one-liners about paying for sex.
But the jokes fell flat for those watching the clip too with viewers branding the segment ‘cringe’ and trying ‘too hard to be edgy’.
One wrote: ‘God that was so bad,’ and ‘He fell off so bad, what is this’.
‘The joke were so bad’, said another. ‘These were so cringe’.
‘This is like if an edgy 14 year old reditter tried standup’ and ‘a lot of these jokes are him trying so hard to be edgy that it becomes unfunny.’
The joked sparked controversy when the Netflix show aired back in 2021.
Plugging US tour: The comedian, 51, took to X – formerly known as Twitter – over the weekend to share a reel of ‘the time I tried to tell a 9/11 joke to a room full of Americans’
Controversy :The comedian, 51, took to X – formerly known as Twitter – over the weekend to share a reel of ‘the time I tried to tell a 9/11 joke to a room full of Americans’ ahead of his tour
Unimpressed: The jokes fell flat for those watching the clip too with viewers branding the segment ‘cringe’ and trying ‘too hard to be edgy’
At the time, it came months after Jimmy stunned subscribers of the streaming giant when he made a shocking wisecrack about Roma gypsies and the Holocaust in special Jimmy Carr: His Dark Material last year.
Jimmy joked the ‘thousands of gypsies killed by the Nazis’ was a ‘positive’ effect of the Holocaust on his Netflix special last year.
Channel 4 backed him after the joke as they announced he’ll front another series of his game show I Literally Just Told You.
The broadcaster confirmed the star will host another eight episodes of the series, which first aired last year, despite calls for him to be ‘cancelled’ in the wake of his controversial gaffe.
In an interview with Broadcast magazine, Channel 4 chief Ian Katz backed Jimmy’s controversial humour, saying: ‘I defend the rights of comedians to make offensive jokes and if they can’t, then comedy is dead.’
‘Jimmy hasn’t espoused any views at odds with C4 values and just as we as a broadcaster exist to serve and represent a wide range of communities, we should always be home to the widest range of voices.’
In a widely-shared clip from his Netflix show, Jimmy joked about the horror of the Holocaust and ‘six million Jewish lives being lost’.
As a punchline, he then made a disparaging remark about the deaths of thousands of gypsies at the hands of the Nazis.
‘But they never mention the thousands of gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives,’ Carr quipped to a laughing audience.
The joke caused widespread backlash and prompted a debate about racism and free speech.
