Jérôme Tomasini

2h20m of “Laughs Funny” last night in Paris, at @sallepleyel. @jimmycarr is an absolute machine. His written material is as sharp as you’d expect. Of the hundreds of jokes he delivered throughout the show, many had 3, 4 or even 5 layers (!) That in itself takes a lot of skill. And yet he raised the stakes even higher with the way he worked the room. I’d never seen a comic give the audience that much say in where a show went. He genuinely included us. We were more than props. He used us, for sure, but he never made us feel used. It takes courage, confidence and an insane level of mastery to achieve that without missing a beat. Our questions and heckles sent him in every possible direction. Apart from the very occasional genuine “I don’t know”, he was a mile ahead of us, returning every shot as effortlessly as Federer on court (or at least making it look that way). His comebacks were lightning-fast, and some of his answers went surprisingly deep. And that’s not all. The bloke has so much range. He goes from really filthy one-liners (he doesn’t discriminate when it comes to who he offends) to Heller, Popper and Morrissey, then to thoughtful takes on AI, ambition and what we learn through play. At one point, he got two mates in the audience to look each other in the eye and say “I love you.” Mesmerising performance.