Does Jimmy Carr write his own material?

I’ve just been browsing some Google analytics (relating to this blog and what search terms resolve into a view) and the phrase above is a very specific search term that’s cropping up.

It’s also a topic that people on social platforms tend to wade in on and declare “so and so writes all his shows” (with absolute confidence and zero evidence).

When you think about it – that’s a massive insult. Insinuating that a modern stand-up doesn’t write their own jokes.

Especially when he’s known, within the industry, as a prolific writer. Someone who when he’s hanging with other comedians will happily workshop with them and give them tags.

Going back to the early days of comedy it was apparently commonplace for comedians to actual perform each other’s act. Back then it would be hard to police as who would know that, several hundred miles away, someone else was telling all of your jokes verbatim?

Nowadays jokes are near enough copyright and comedians would be drummed out of town for not writing their own shows.

I’ll lay out some evidence…although I may have to come back to update this later as I “know” a lot more about this topic but, at the moment, I just can’t put my finger on all of the evidence to back up my claim. And I like to keep things factual and provable!

Early Days

His TV career started out as a warm-up comic (here) and jobbing writer, the kind of person you see listed on panel shows as someone contributing “additional material”.

Among others, in the early 2000’s, he supplied material for TV / Radio shows for:

• Ricky Gervais – Meet Ricky Gervais (here)
• Lee Mack – Sketch show (here)
• The Motion Show (R4) (here)
• Leigh Francis – Bo’ Selecta (here)
• Caroline Read & Dominic Frisby – Pam Ann’s Mile High Club (here)
• Lily Savage (Paul O’Grady) – not been able to trace details, other than this BBC story
• Frank Skinner Show – sometime around 2000-1

I’m sure there will be more to add to this list, as I find more old articles.

Frankie Boyle

If I only had a £ for every time I’ve seen someone spout “Frankie Boyle writes all of Jimmy’s jokes”. Nope. Not true. Never has.

The professional links between them are:

• In 2003-4 Frankie contributed some material to Distraction UK as a member of the writing team. Nothing unusual in that. Frankie had started his comedy career a couple of years before Jimmy (winning an open mic in 1996) and took a similar route into TV by supplying comedy shows with gags.
• 8 Out of 10 Cats (here) FB contributed Additional Material on S1 to S5 (2005-07) and appeared, as a panellist, in 8 episodes between 2005-08. Beyond 2008 I can’t see any joint TV Appearances.
• BFQ of the Year (2006) – Frankie supplied Additional Material.
• 2011 Jimmy’s extracurricular writing crossed over with Frankie’s when he wrote the plotline for a CLiNT comic strip (see here). Boyle had started a comic strip in the mag the year before.
• The same year they also did a joint interview in an Apple Store (here).
• Jimmy Carr Live (DVD 2012) and Frankie was listed amongst the Producers. Zero writing credit.

Frankie was initially with Chambers Management (Jimmy has been with them since 1999) but left and joined Off The Kerb in 2018.

Frankie’s credits list on Comedy.co.uk (BCG) is a more reliable source than IMDB and, having compared them both, he has more writing credits listed on BCG (which includes all of the above).

The reason its more reliable is that BCG gets information from Production companies with the complete details of who does what. IMDB is data submitted by the public and, although links to sources have to be supplied, it’s not infallible.

Rosie Jones

Rosie was a “runner” on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and has said, in an interview, that Jimmy read out one of her jokes on the show, a story that gets repeated online on a regular basis.

BCG does not corroborate that story and neither does her own website (here).

Tours / DVDs / Netflix Specials

If you look at the credits of Jimmy’s DVD releases or Netflix specials you will see end credits that say “written and performed by Jimmy Carr”.

As these releases are recordings of the tour that they represent then you can safely assume that means the tour shows as well.

If someone else had supplied any of the material you can be assured that they would have been credited.

So, just to spell it out. Jimmy Carr writes ALL of his own tour shows, which are then recorded as DVDs and Netflix specials.

Full list of them all is being developed here.

TV Shows

Jimmy has been either the sole writer or on the writing team for many of his hit shows. Note that “Programme Associate” is used by some shows to denote writers that also contribute to ideas / skits (think of what happens in 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown).

• 8 Out of 10 Cats – Programme Associate on 205 shows
• 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown – Programme Associate on 177 shows (to date)
• 10 O’Clock Live – writing credits on 33 shows
• Big Fat Quiz franchise – on the writing team of 43 shows (to date)
• Commercial Breakdown – writer/presenter on 8 episodes
• The Fix on Netflix – host/writer on 10 episodes
• Plus, another 40+ shows, writing for things like “100 greatest…” etc.

Trading Tags

In this We Might Be Drunk episode you can see him workshopping with Mark Normand and Sam Morril, picking away at improving each other’s joke ideas.

Although Jimmy didn’t participate in the Roast of Tom Brady (2024) he was in the audience and Nikki Glaser later told Howard Stern that she’d bumped into Jimmy and he’d “given her a great joke”. See here.

There are other examples that I’ve either read in books or heard about in podcasts…will add them in here, as I find them.

Fackham Hall – Film Scripts

Jimmy had the idea for Fackham with his brother, Patrick, and they wrote the screenplay with the Dawson Brothers. See here.

He also contributed some material to the 2003 film Brain Candy (here).

Pro Joke Writers

Panel shows have professional joke writers that usually have no interest in being a stand-up (different skill set). In the UK you will often see the same names popping up repeatedly, across a wide variety of shows.

And both the US and UK have a system where joke writers can provide materials for events like award shows. I saw a We Might Be Drunk episode a while back where they were talking about trying to get jokes that they had submitted on to shows like that.

America also has “The Roast of…“ specials and I’ve seen various comedians talking about who has managed to get jokes on those shows.

With The Roast of Rob Lowe (here) Ann Coulter was offered jokes, written by pros, and turned them down. Jimmy, on the other hand, wrote his own material and brought the house down, mainly at Ann’s expense.

One of the jokes was about Pete Davidson’s father and Jimmy has talked about trialling it in a club, the night before the Roast, and hearing Pete guffawing, at the back of the room.

Inspiration

In his Bio I’ve made reference to how, in the early days, he used to carry a Filofax around, to make notes in (now his phone) and how others have spoken about how he would take a stopwatch on stage, to time his jokes.

If someone else were doing the writing for him – WHY would he do that?

He honed his writing skills slogging up and down the UK and you can see more about this in UK Comedy Circuit here.

He’s said, in various interviews, that he collects notes in his phone that don’t mean very much on their own. They could be words or phrases that he’s heard in an airport or coffee shop (2 places he spends a lot of time in) or silly things that have happened around him.

What he’s been doing this past couple of years is using these fragments of ideas to write new jokes…every single day.

Anyone that has been to see him live will know that, at some point, he gets a piece of paper out of his pocket and reads out about 10-12 new jokes. They’re just read flat – no delivery or proper pauses. But it’s enough for him to gauge whether they get a laugh or not and he makes a note as he goes along as to how big a laugh they got.

If you’re lucky enough to witness this – you may never hear them again. Because, if they don’t get a big enough laugh, they either get re-worked or go in the bin.

I’ve heard pros say that they don’t want people going up to them, offering them a joke. That kind of thing can be a minefield as (1) they are usually not even close to being usable and (2) if the comedian writes a joke remotely similar (even years later) they open themselves up to being accused of plagiarism.

This method of collecting snippets of language is similar to how song writers can be sparked by something that might seem inconsequential to you or I.

Noel Gallagher, for example, rang a friend who answered “what’s the story, morning glory” (a line from a song in the movie Bye Bye Birdie). He liked the sound of it, as a phrase, and wrote a song around it. It doesn’t mean she contributed to the writing of the song (in legal terms) and it’s the same with a comedian picking up on a “sticky phrase” and turning it into a joke.

I’ve seen comments debates that were started by someone claiming that one comedian had “stolen” a joke just because the topic was similar.

Let’s be frank – if something happens that sparks the creativity of a number of writers you are pretty much guaranteed to get a couple of them that see the funny in the event, from a similar perspective.

Joke Obsession / Books

Finally…Jimmy is obsessed with joke writing and comedy.

In 2006 he released a book called The Naked Jape (Only Joking in the US) – see here.

Only a complete comedy nerd could have assembled so much information around how jokes started – going through all the phases of trickster gods and jesters, clowns and what makes children laugh.

Along with his co-writer (Lucy Greeves) he must have read dozens of books and research papers and they also scanned 1000s of jokes so they could have a joke at the bottom of every page – and then a collection between each chapter.

And if that wasn’t a labour of love…he’s been talking for a while about a project code named The Rosetta Stone of Comedy (here).

Working with Amanda Baker and Abi Grant he’s aiming to create something that teaches how to write jokes, structure routines, utilise 92bpm etc.

As you can see in the post above, they’ve been holding workshop type courses and the most resent mentions are around a book being worked on.

Does that sound like someone that would be happy to have someone else write his material???

So, my answer to the question “does Jimmy Carr write his own material?” would be – 100%!