August 2001 saw Jimmy head to the Edinburgh Fringe (see longer post here) to put on a revue show, at the Café Royal, with 3 mates: Rubbernecker.

Jimmy Carr
Ricky Gervais
Stephen Merchant
Robin Ince

To set the scene – the year before Jimmy had contributed material to a TV show called Meet Ricky Gervais (here), appeared in the 11 O’Clock show (here), was a warm-up comic for several shows (here) and was gigging up and down the country (here).

Heading into 2001 he had a show on XFM Radio (with Iain Morris, here) where they were mingling with Ricky, Stephen and Karl Pilkington. He’d also done some TV work for E4 (see Drunk Review here) and was still gigging relentlessly (here).

Plus, July 2001 had seen the release of The Office, which would be a massive success for Gervais and Merchant.

While Rubbernecker has kind of gained a mythological status (because of the later massive success of 3 of the men involved) I would suggest that, one way or another, they were already well on their way.

And that preamble is just to introduce a couple of reviews:

The Guardian, 2009

December 2009 The Guardian published a Review of the Decade: Comedy (see here). The opening paragraph said:

We didn’t know it at the time, but in a tiny Edinburgh fringe venue in August 2001, the forthcoming decade was given a sneak preview. The sketch show Rubbernecker featured four little-known talents: Robin Ince, Stephen Merchant, Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais – familiar, if at all, from Channel 4’s 11 O’Clock Show, which also let Sacha Baron Cohen off his leash. Merchant and Gervais’s sitcom The Office had recently screened on BBC2, but it was a sleeper hit and had yet to wake. Carr’s smooth ascent to game-show ubiquity had barely begun.

Edinburgh Evening News, 2001 08 24

While trawling the British Newspaper Archives this Edinburgh Evening News review popped up.

Headlined Quartet excels with a show of truly bad jokes Sharon Cribbin gave it 4 stars. This one gives us an idea of exactly what the show was like:

This show is shoddy and cynically thrown together, with a total lack of skill or charisma. That’s the warning Ricky Gervais gave at the beginning.

The title for the show comes from the fact that, the writers claim, there will be bits you shouldn’t watch but will be compelled to, in the same way as a car crash. Robin Ince has subtitled it “the breakdown show”, as his material veers wildly to some of the strangest stand-up you are ever likely to hear.

Steve Merchant brought a whole new dimension to the night. He seemed quite put out there was a severe lack of “Steve fans” in and soon became overly aggressive with the audience. Merchant’s performance degenerated into a kind of agonising horror, and had the audience in hysterics from the moment he stepped on stage.

And then it’s time for Derek, a misunderstood young man who has a bad habit of “sending creatures to Jesus”. A new character from Ricky Gervais, Derek is another horror that left many people in hysterics – you know you’re not supposed to laugh, but you can’t help yourself.

Jimmy Carr ended the evening with his crafted one-liners and deadpan delivery. Many of his lines were greeted with equal measures of groans and laughs, and quite often the build-up got as many laughs as the punchlines.

Overall, the comedians are a brilliant mix, as their styles complement each other incredibly well. Which must be worrying them to hear individually.

Ends tomorrow.