A former marketing executive for Shell, Jimmy Carr is one of the hardest-working comedians in the UK, and DVDs of his live shows now sell more than 150,000 copies each.
His first full-length show, Bare-Faced Ambition, was nominated for the Perrier in 2002; and he was named best stand-up at the Time Out Awards in 2003, and at the Laftas in 2004. At the same awards he was named ‘funniest man’ in 2005.
He won the Royal Television Society Award for best on-screen newcomer in 2003, and soon established himself one of the main faces of Channel 4, hosting game show Distraction, the first series of The Friday Night Project, three series of panel show 8 Out Of 10 Cats, and several specials such as The Big Fat End of Year Quiz and The Comedians’ Comedian.
Carr has also made headway in the US, performing four times on NBC’s Tonight With Jay Leno and three times on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien. He made a half-hour stand-up special for Comedy Central, and hosted two series of Distraction USA for the same network.
He has also appeared in the films Confetti, Alien Autopsy and Stormbreaker, all released in 2006; and has hosted a weekly radio show for London’s XFM.
Review of the British version of the hit international format
Britain is the 29th country to make its own version of Last One Laughing, the Amazon Prime Video format in which comedians are sequestered in a reality TV-style house and told not to crack up, despite the best efforts of their colleagues.
It’s a surprise it’s taken so long to get to these shores, given our vibrant comedy scene and panel-show culture. It’s the latter, especially, which gives this a different feel to some of the other international editions, as it means the comedians are tapping into the longstanding working relationships they maintain through such shows even after they’ve left the circuit for solo touring. Meanwhile, TV viewers get to know the cohort of telly regulars like friends, with all their exaggerated personality quirks.
Essentially, then, Last One Laughing is an extension of the Cats Does Countdown Cinematic Universe. Not only is it hosted by Jimmy Carr – as is the law – but each of the ten contestants have appeared on the Channel 4 show, so are instantly known to each other and the audience.
And they naturally play to type: Joe Wilkinson as the sullen, slovenly oddball, Rob Beckett as the ever-grinning South London everyman, Lou Sanders as the playful over-sharing agent of chaos – and, it transpires, a rather aggressive player of the game of in trying to get the others to giggle. Her eyeball-to-eyeball showdown with Joe Lycett is quite something.
Richard Ayoade is, however, the biggest scene stealer with his aloof stance, apparently thinking the whole venture beneath him and even making several tongue-in-cheek breaks for freedom. Will anyone crack his inscrutable demeanour? ‘I haven’t laughed since the 1990s,’ he tells us. Seems credible.
Bob Mortimer is a dream booking on any show like this, and comes into his own in episode two when as his ‘joker’ challenge – in which comics perform a set-piece to fellow inmates – he deadpans a typically eccentric magic act, with carrots at their core. Wilkinson’s earlier joker round is another that tests the steel of his fellow comics, and their stifling of laughs is palpable.
Producers – and Jeff Bezos’s deep pockets – have attracted an A-list line-up that also includes Daisy May Cooper (normally an inveterate laugher), Sara Pascoe and Harriet Kemsley with Roisin Conaty as Carr’s sidekick, forever scanning the comics’ faces looking for transgressions.
Her inclusion is a smart move as it ensures laughter even when the contestants aren’t allowed to. In contrast, in the more disappointing Irish version, host Graham Norton was alone in the viewing room until a third of the way through the third episode, when a comic was ejected and finally allowed to join him.
Not many of the international versions of this show – which originated as a Japan format called Documental with comedians putting up their own money as the prize – make it to a second series. But if Britain was to break that pattern, it would be interesting to see how lesser-known comedians compared against their more familiar names, in the same way Taskmaster introduces up-and-comers to a wider audience.
However, that might be at the risk of the mates-sharing-downtime vibe exuded by this impressive group, which provides a shorthand and naturalness to their interactions that overrides the need to suppress laughs for the sake of the game.
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