Protest planned for Jimmy Carr appearance at Cambridge Corn Exchange after Netflix Holocaust joke controversy

The entertainer Jimmy Carr faces a tricky gig on Wednesday (February 16) when he is due to appear at Cambridge Corn Exchange as the furore about his Netflix show ‘joke’ about Roma people continues.

Cambridge Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) has planned a protest outside the venue on Wednesday evening.

The organisation told the Cambridge Independent: “On Wednesday at 7pm Cambridge SUTR intends to leaflet the people going into the Jimmy Carr Show from outside the Cambridge Corn Exchange explaining why we strongly object to his racist remarks towards Roma people.

“Jimmy Carr cracked a ‘joke’ about the Sinti and Roma people in a Netflix show about what happened to them in the Holocaust. This was an appalling racist quip. The truth is that hundreds of thousands of gypsies, Roma, and Traveller people were killed in the Holocaust.

“Historians estimate that as much as 25-50 per cent of the entire Romani and Sinti population of Europe were victims of genocide at the hands of the Nazis, a crime of almost unimaginable proportions. To this day, affected communities in the UK and across Europe still struggle to navigate this immense collective trauma and come to terms with the scale of grief and loss.

“Challenging these remarks is particularly important in Cambridge which hosts a Travellers community which often receives adverse publicity and verbal abuse. Furthermore communities of Travellers are going to come under further pressure from the Police Billwhich, while refusing to ensure that they have adequate space to live on, will use harsh criminal law to reinforce their removal from their existing homes. We urge Jimmy Carr to use his considerable comic talents to ‘cock a snook’ against the rich and corrupt and refrain from cheap insults aimed at the victims of oppression and violence, particularly when connected to the Holocaust. Hardcore racists will gain succour from Carr’s remarks; this is particularly dangerous because many people find anti-Roma racism acceptable.”

Jimmy Carr has so far declined to comment directly on the furore (his agent has been contacted). However, in a report in a national newspaperhe is alleged to have said in at the Whitley Bay Playhouse for his Terribly Funny Show on February 6: “We are speaking, my friends, in the last chance saloon. What I am saying on stage this evening is barely acceptable now. In ten years, ****ing forget about it.”

Discussing so-called cancel culture, he told the audience: “The joke that ends my career is already out there.”

At yesterday’s Kill the Bill protest, Cllr Hannah Copley (Abbey) said the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which is currently being considered in Parliament, is “a deliberate racist attack on the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community” and called for an end to the “chronic shortage of sites for them”.

Downing Street has said Jimmy Carr’s joke about the Holocaust was “deeply disturbing” but it is a matter for Netflix whether the comedian’s show should remain on its streaming service.

Netflix declined to comment.