Jimmy Carr: The Best of Ultimate Gold Greatest Hits

A long stream of dull one liners. some are cute. what's remarkable is the ability to remember them all.

His one liners are funny but it's nothing but one liners. There is no story, no theme, no drama, nothing tying any of it together. It's just a non-stop fully automatic barrage of one liners. So it's funny at any one moment in time, but ultimately empty and hollow.

Classic Jimmy Carr jokes so no problem with the material, it's him giving some of his best material from the past.

The thing I can't get over is the canned laughter track they've put after every joke and the endless camera cuts to different angles.

Every now and then it cuts to one of a few stock wide or rear angles showing the audience (not laughing, incidentally, while the laughter track is at full pelt).

Just really bizarre for a comedy special, I think he must have delivered this act to an empty theatre to get the close ups and rotating camera angles they used, then cut in some from the same named tour and smashed it together with a laugh track as fake as his.

Normally a fan but had to turn this off.

This one was quite flat. Jimmy did his little repressed "I can't help but laugh at my own jokes" thing a few time and it seemed really calculated and scripted. It was more a run through of material than a great performance, and it felt pedestrian, and that could well be the audiences fault, or the watchers fault, but it's most likely Jimmy's fault mostly. Just not as good as previous outings.

I remember watching a documentary about the Smiths featuring a suitably chain smoking and etiolated rock journalist explaining how the band had sidestepped any censorship of the single 'Handsome Devil'. His theory was that owing to their apparent appearance of being bookish nerds, no one in the media (or otherwise) thought to check the lyrical content of said single. Had this track been written by any other band, this would have undoubtedly landed them in hot water! This is precisely the analogy I wish to draw in Jimmy Carr's set and that of other comedians.

Jimmy looks, sounds and undoubtedly is a very middle class, well dressed and educated man. However, his comedy is driven by ignoring social convention and political correctness in favour of jokes that shock you and make you laugh (in equal measure), but also have you questioning whether you are a 'good person' I can think of other comedians that have been hauled over the coals for lesser misdemeanours...

That said and having seen Jimmy live (c.2007), I can say this set is as good as you can get watching him from home. To truly experience the raw, uncensored eloquence of the lead lined velvet packaged glove that is Jimmy's comedy you have to go to see a show. Laughs abound however, just be prepared for the self-recrimination!