Matt watches JIMMY CARR: TELLING JOKES until he cries with laughter!

The P.R. people behind the annual Jimmy Carr stand-up concert DVD, send me a review copy every single year and if I'm being honest, out of all the great Blu-Ray movies that come through my door, I look forward to receiving this DVD almost more than anything else.

Jimmy Carr: Telling Jokes is out now, priced at £11.94 at Amazon. I always have a good time with Carr. His jokes are quick-fire one-liners mostly, some of them a little too smart for their own good and delivered so precisely, which so much assuredness that you won't hear laughter until a few seconds later. I.E. - when the audience has actually processed what he has said. But he is an old-school comedian, a guy you feel comfortable with giving such a name-tag because this is what he does. He is a full time, real stand-up comic. With a brand new stand-up show once every year with no recycled material, he simply must be the hardest working comedian in the business today. And he knows it too, and makes a point of the fact during this set. His jokes per minute ratio comes up on the screen and it really does put his peers to shame. So yeah, I have now amassed a nice little collection of Carr stand-up DVDs. And I'm sure I'm not the first person to work this out but if you put the five DVDs in chronological order as they lie my shelf, they actually form a full sentence. It goes; Jimmy Carr: Live Jimmy Carr: Stand-Up Jimmy Carr: Comedian Jimmy Carr: In Concert Jimmy Carr: Telling Jokes Very clever forward thinking Mr. Carr. You have left yourself a little problem for the next concert though. I can offer Jimmy Carr: Hilarously. Jimmy Carr: Humorously, Jimmy Carr: For The Good of Mankind. That last one especially would end the sentence and I'm sure it won't be your last show, so that's no good. Recorded during the 90-minute set he performed at the Bloomsbury theatre in London, Carr gives his usual routine of "cutting edge" material which can equally offend as well as make you laugh. Last year his favourite subject was paedophilia but this time what's got his goat seems to be rape and murder. The only problem with that is after a while of those kind of jokes, you seriously begin to start worrying about his mental state but the jokes are told with ironic misogyny and his cheeky grin make him come across like a kid who swore for the first time in front of strangers. You can't really have a go at him because you know it's his nature and he doesn't actually mean to offend. Jimmy Carr: Telling Jokes isn't as fun as his last stand-up DVD which bizarrely I reviewed exactly a year ago today. It doesn't quite flow as well, and I think he lost the balance of telling joke, after joke, after joke with longer monologues... the latter he kind of dropped for this show. It's a shame also that the audience at the Bloomsbury theatre weren't really up for it, they seemed to groan more than laugh at some of Carr's material (already they strangely applause TWICE a joke about Joseph Fritzl). The audience heckler interaction isn't quite as fun as on previous DVDs. Again - the crowd weren't really game for it. One poor woman who had obviously been driven along my her daughter and husband sitting next to her certainly wasn't expecting Carr to interact with her and it came across as uncomfortable rather than funny. The trust test of a stand-up is how quick witted his audience interaction can be, but unfortunately the audience weren't giving him the material to really show his true strengths when he is unscripted.

Still it's a fine set. It may go on slightly too long at 90 minutes (for this kind of set) but you are certainly getting your money's worth with Carr. The extra's are the best yet for one of his sets... There's a half-hour Comedy special that was shown on U.S. t.v. and although it's jokes from a previous tour, it's sure interesting to see Carr interact with a different kind of audience. There's some outtakes from his tour which are a fine highlight and also a look into Jimmy Carr's Twitter feed which is good stuff, if a little tedious.