Jimmy Carr, Regent Theatre, Ipswich:

Jimmy Carr breezed onto the stage of a sold out Regent last night with incredible charisma and too many jokes to possibly count. Some of the jokes were hilarious, some were ok and occasionally I couldn’t help thinking I’d heard some of them before. But it didn’t matter because the sheer volume of jokes was impressive enough and if you didn’t like one another would turn up in a second and you would probably like that.

Some of the material was as risqu� as you would expect from the television stalwart. He has never been afraid of using irony and perhaps he does hide behind it too much. There are some occasional and unfortunate lapses into over-used stereotypes and this year there was a plethora of visual aids which isn’t always a good sign when watching a comedian. Commenting on funny pictures has the ability to bring work back into the territory of a poorly written student show. Not the work of an award winning entertainer.

What was clear, however, is Carr still has a great ability to interact with his audience, either from afar or, in the case of a few audience members, on stage with him. He has great recall and a joke for any occasion allowing him to fearlessly include the audience in his show.

He clearly works incredibly hard and every time he comes to Ipswich, the theatre sells out. Even if you don’t like his jokes you have to admire the sheer number of them and he does appear to be one of the few comedians left who has a talent for writing punch line feed line jokes without them appearing stale.

As far as I could see everyone in the audience enjoyed themselves and the laughs came as fast as the jokes could be told. A good old fashioned comedy night.

BEN AKERS