Jimmy Carr, another frequent flyer on QI, is flagrantly NSFW in his stand-up work. Often also NMS. It is quite deliberate, and very staged; he's not anywhere near as bad off-the-cuff on panel shows, even the ones that go out after watershed, and he does make the point explicit in a few routines, like the one where he systematically investigates the Most Offensive Joke In The World.

Carr's a bit much for me all at once like that, but where I find him hilarious is as the host/emcee/babysitter on the Big Fat Quiz of the Year shows. I swear the bookings crew invite some of these people just to see Carr's blood pressure go up. They keep asking Wossy on, who argues semantics like the cheerful nerd that he is, and David Walliams, whose main goal in life is to force things to proceed in a sensible manner. Then they team Noel Fielding with either Russell Brand or Richard Ayoade, which means there's always at least one table that has absolutely no interest in engaging in any kind of linear discourse whatsoever. It's a bit like watching him mind a class full of gifted kids who have gotten into the liquor cabinet.

(Also, I think Sarah Millican has the cutest voice I've ever heard, even though I'm well aware that in the Big British Book of Inaccurate Comic Stereotypes, "Geordie" is the same thing as "country simpleton".)

Some of the material in these will be completely unfamiliar to US viewers, as for obvious reasons the quiz is very UK-centric. (It might help to know that a "page three girl" is a model whose picture, usually topless, is published on page 3 of The Sun, which is in theory a newspaper, and that Jordan/Katie Price is considered approximately equivalent to Pamela Anderson in terms of acres of boobage and general far-more-money-than-class redneckery.) There's a surprising amount of US political idiocy in there, though. One thing the comics are united on is that, by American standards, all of them would be considered extremely liberal -- they can't even manage to have a conversation about cats without getting close to a fist and/or food fight, but they're all absolutely unanimous in considering Dubya a brain-damaged Texas yokel.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The mystery of "Himmmm"

Fun things to feed rats