Rob Rinder has called out the audience who “whooped and laughed” at Jimmy Carr’s “breathtakingly racist” joke about travellers.
Carr has been widely criticised for a joke he made in Netflix comedy special His Dark Material. which was released on Christmas Day 2021.
“When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of six million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine,” he says in the stand-up show, adding: “But they never mention the thousands of gypsies that were killed by the Nazis.”
Carr then says: “No one ever talks about that because no one wants to talk about the positives.”
At this, the crowd can be heard laughing and cheering – something temporary Good Morning Britain co-host Rinder said is “truly disturbing”.
“Jimmy Carr’s ‘joke’ suggesting the systematic genocide of gypsies during the Holocaust was a ‘good thing’ is breathtakingly racist,” he wrote on Twitter.
“The truly disturbing thing isn’t just the gag, it’s that on hearing it, instead of leaving, the audience clapped, whooped and cheered in approval.”
In the wake of an online backlash after the clip circulated on social media, MPs and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust have criticised Carr and called upon Netflix to remove the special.
On Monday (7 February), a spokesperson for Boris Johnson condemned the joke and said that legislation was being pushed through to make streaming services more accountable for potentially dangerous content on their platforms.
Meanwhile, the comedian’s “close friend” David Baddiel called the joke “indefensible” and “mean-spirited”.
The Independent has contacted Carr and Netflix for comment.
