Jeremy Clarkson has defended his pal Jimmy Carr following the backlash surrounding his Holocaust joke featured in the Netflix special, His Dark Material.
In the stand-up, the 49-year-old comedian said people ‘never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis’ in the Holocaust, because ‘no one ever wants to talk about the positives’.
The writer’s insensitive comments faced major backlash from several MPs including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, anti-fascist organisations and Traveller and Roma charities.
While fellow celebs including David Baddiel and Jay Rayner slammed Jimmy’s remarks, the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire host came to his defence, and insisted that if the ‘audience is laughing’ he should be able to ‘say whatever’ he wants.
‘It’s all just common sense,’ said Jeremy.
‘If you are appearing in a comedy club and you’re billed as a comedian and the audience is laughing, then you should be allowed to say whatever you want.
‘Are we now so stupid we can’t see a difference between someone with a swastika tattooed on their forehead barking far-right propaganda at half a dozen skinheads, and someone on stage in Southend-On-Sea trying to make people laugh,’ he added.
After Jimmy’s comments went viral on social media, it was revealed that a petition urging Netflix to remove the joke from the special had been signed over 14,000 times.
The Traveller Movement, the charity which started that launched the petition, described the quip as ‘nothing short of a celebration of genocide’.
It goes on: ‘Hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, Roma, and Traveller people were killed in the Holocaust. Roma people call it “Porajmos”, meaning “the devouring”.’
A spokesperson added: ‘We appreciate that comedy is subjective but in our view when punchlines are indistinguishable from the genuinely-held views of fascists and Neo-Nazis, a line has very clearly been crossed.’
Jimmy himself reportedly described the joke as a ‘career-ender’ on stage at his recent gig earlier in the month.
According to The Mirror, a woman in the audience heckled Carr on Saturday and asked: ‘Are we going to talk about the Holocaust?’ to which the comic replied: ‘We are going to talk about cancel culture, the whole thing.
‘We are going to talk about f***ing everything people. Relax.’
Jimmy supposedly told the audience: ‘The joke that ends my career is already out there,’ and, ‘I am going to get cancelled, that’s the bad news.’
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