Jimmy has never produced a merchandise range but earlier tours always had glossy, A4 sized tour programmes produced. Copies can often be found on places like eBay and, if you are lucky, you may find an autographed one.

More info on that topic under Merchandise & Collectibles.

This is about the tour / programme for The Best of, Ultimate Gold, Greatest Hits. A tour which was released on Netflix under the same name (specials listed here). Or kind of “under the same name” as some promos had the commas removed.

The show was “Written and Performed by” – Jimmy Carr

Ultimate Gold tour

May/June 2016 were the last of the gigs advertised as performing the material from Funny Business and the first one that I could find (advertised as Ultimate Gold) was May 17^th 2016 in Peterborough at The Cresset.

Ultimate Gold ran through until March 2019, with four final Gibraltar shows on April 15^th and 16^th. The Netflix special was released on March 12^th 2019 (here).

As an aside, the first WIP gigs for Terribly Funny were on March 22nd 2019 and then the new tour was off to the races (TF tour details here and programme here).

He’d said in interviews that musicians went on tour and just played the hits – so he was experimenting with whether a comedian could do the same. The show was assembled from all of his favourite jokes from the start of his career.

I noticed at the time that a proportion of the audience didn’t notice the tour title and complained that they’d “heard the jokes before”.

As the programme’s introduction said:

I have been on the stand-up scene for a decade and a half. In that time I’ve performed 9 sell-out tours, playing nearly 2,000 shows to over 2 million people across 4 continents. I’ve won the British Comedy Award for “Best Live Stand-Up Tour” and been nominated for the Perrier Award.

Now all that experience is being put to good use for this, The Best Of, Ultimate Gold, Greatest Hits Tour.

The intro goes on to invite the audience to “come say hello afterwards”, so after show meet and greets were still happening on this tour.

Ultimate Gold was over 300 gigs long and took in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Japan, USA, Spain, Isle of Man, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Canada, Sweden, Israel, Singapore, South Africa, Estonia, Austria, Finland, Belgium, Netherlands, Malta, Lithuania, Latvia, Switzerland, Iceland, Germany, Czechia, Portugal, Hong Kong, Thailand and Gibraltar.

To see all posts relating to Ultimate Gold – click here.

Programme

What kind of thing do you find in Jimmy’s tour programmes? I’ll add a couple of the page images here and list the content.

Obviously, there had been a themed promotional photo shoot and artwork and, back in 2016-19, tour flyers and posters for places like bus stops were still being produced.

Promos for the vinyl version (see here) featured the tagline:

Clean suit. Dirty mouth.

The colour scheme for these promos featured Jimmy in a dark blue suit / tie and lighter blue shirt. The background was textured gold and banners were white/gold text on a black background.

One of the pictures below shows an album cover mock-up which pays homage to a 1959 Elvis album, 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong / Elvis Gold Records Volume 2.

This image only ever appeared in the tour programme but the Netflix special had a slightly cartoon like image of Jimmy in the cold lamé suit (without the tie) as a part of the promotion. See image on here.

Where a promo image is listed, below, those pages have a quote on them and each photo is different outfits and poses. I’ll just add the name of the person credited.

• Front cover – see below
• Gold suit album cover mock-up – 2,000,000 Jimmy Fans Can’t Be Wrong. Which would now need another zero adding as he has over 20,000,000 online followers (see on Stats). See below.
• Introduction – image of Jimmy in a black tux, zipping up his flies, alongside his introductory message.
• Promo photo – Mary H. Waldrop quote
• Promo photo – Clive James
• Promo photo – George Orwell
• Promo photo – George Saunders
• Promo photo – this one is Jimmy, lying along a white sofa, with a montage behind him of all of his previous tour flyers in black frames. No quote.
• Promo photo – Voltaire
• B/w Photo – Jimmy on stage
• In Conversation with Jimmy Carr (2 pages)– what follows is Stuart Goldsmith, chatting with Jimmy about being a comedian, writing jokes, stage persona. Interspersed with photos.
• B/w photo
• B/w photo – of Jimmy in front of the cameras for the 8 Out of 10 Cats monologue
• In Conversation with… (2 pages)
• B/w Photo – Jimmy on stage
• B/w photo – Jimmy walking amongst cables, backstage, shot from the wings
• In Conversation with… (final page)
• Big Fat Cats Countdown Quiz Pages – a word search with rude phrases to find
• Promo photo – Bill Hicks
• Promo photo – Sacha Guitry
• Big Fat Cats… – page of 6 rude Conundrums, from Cats Countdown
• Promo photo – Jimmy flicking a V with a message of “Let me take this opportunity to apologize…” credited as Thing X
• Big Fat Cats… a “Say what you see”
• Promo photo b/w – David Foster Wallace
• Promo photo – Wayne Dyer
• Promo photo for Netflix Funny Business special
• Warhol type triptych image – Steve Martin
• Promo photo – Bob Monkhouse
• Promo photo – Anthony Jeselnik
• Promo photo – Francis Bacon
• Colourful page with front covers of all his DVD releases
• Promo photo – Kurt Vonnegut
• Promo photo – Stephen Fry
• Final image of Jimmy, in a tux, with his head through velvet curtains.

This programme also had a poster included. One side is the front image from this programme and the other is the JOKE KING image, see below.