Jimmy has always been interested in adopting new technology and was an early adopter of MySpace (which launched in 2003).

By 2006 he was on to virtual reality and articles by Chortle and the BBC talk about how his avatar would be performing a comedy gig in Second Life – the first virtual community (which had also launched in 2003 and had over 2.3m people using it, at that point).

His now defunct MySpace account (which still has traces of the stand-up videos that had been uploaded) was used to set up the audience, for both the physical gig in London and the online viewers.

The Telegraph said that

The Second Lifers will be able to heckle him, their text comments relayed on a screen, enabling Carr to deliver barbed put-downs in response

The venue for the record (on 3^rd Feb 2007 at 7pm) was Adam Steet Bar and Members Club and Jimmy’s YouTube channel has a 16-minute video of the event, performed in front of around 50 people.

Underneath the video (below) there is the caption:

That time I attempted a world record at being the only comedian to perform a virtual gig on Second Life.

Having browsed The Guinness World Records website there is no trace of this being ratified. Which is surprising considering some of the rubbish that DOES get certified as a World Record.

I was also surprised to discover (Feb 2026) that Second Life still exists – see here.

There is a community board (here) that suggests concurrent users are around 40k, even though registered accounts (since 2003) are said to be around 65 million.

Back in 2007 there was lots of excitement about the platform – with predications of how many millions in revenue could be made from a place that would generate “jobs and income for millions”. Hmmmmm.

C4 Radio (never heard of it) launched a presence and it was planned to also make available 8 Out of 10 Cats and Hollyoaks.