Hecklers barrack Jimmy Carr at charity gig

Hecklers gave Jimmy Carr a rough ride at a charity gig over his tax avoidance and ‘misogynistic’ jokes.

Carr headlined a fundraiser for Josie Long’s Arts Emergency on Thursday night, but was immediately greeted with a cry of: ‘Pay your taxes!’

Although he made some self-deprecating gags about the adverse headlines he attracted for sheltering his wealth from the taxman, the audience at London’s Hackney Empire were in an unforgiving mood.

Later in the set, some people taunted him with cries of ‘You’re not one of us’, ‘You’re not wanted here’ and ‘You’re not funny’.

Carr replied: ‘Many years ago, since the clip shows, I stopped being funny. I’m more of a host now.’

As the heckles mounted, Carr said: ‘‘I feel it’s more like a town meeting now than a gig.’

He also landed in trouble for joking about his girlfriend, which elicited the heckle: ‘You misogynist cunt’

Carr replied: ‘Yeah, but we can still be friends, right?’

When the woman replied: ‘Never!’ Carr defended himself saying: ‘It’s just jokes. None of this is serious...’

Carr finally turned the gig around by abandoning the one-liners he’d brought on a clipboard to sing Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond, after someone in the crowd demanded a song.

‘I think we should call it a draw,’ Carr said as he left the stage.

Long, who also hosted the show, seemed unsure what to make of the reaction – apparently having some sympathy for the hecklers’ point of view but also feeling her gig had been upended.

She said hesitantly: ‘I appreciate it might have been divisive, but I was also just so excited to have such a cool special guest, but I also appreciate... I get... it’s tricky ... you don’t need to be calling people cunts, not on tonight of all special nights. I appreciate... I understand... look... I’m grateful for Jimmy for coming along.

‘I hope you enjoyed yourself and I enjoyed that we had some full and frank discussion and some frankly a bizarre turns of... there was a song!’

Reviewing the night in the Daily Telegraph, Michael Deacon – who Stewart Lee recently outed for plagiarising his Dan Brown material – said that the hecklers had ruined the gig.

He wrote: ‘I sort of like Jimmy Carr again. Because, whatever I may think of his act, at least he isn’t the type of sanctimonious pillock who bays things like, “You’re not one of us.”’

Long set up Arts Emergency in 2011 to defend arts education and provide help for students who struggle financially and practically with their courses.

Here is Carr’s full set:

Published: 22 Jun 2013