Jimmy Carr went too far with a recent joke and should be stripped of an honour he currently holds, so says the comedian’s own father.
Carr was awarded the Certificate of Irish Heritage in 2013 after the award was introduced in 2011 to ‘recognise descendants of previous generations of Irish citizens’ and ‘give greater practical expression to the sense of Irish identity’.
But his father, Jim Carr, 77, says that an ‘offensive’ joke about his Irish heritage in his book Before & Laughter should see the comedian stripped of the award.
‘He’s one sick comedian, literally and metaphorically. It looks like it anyway,’ his father said, in response to Jimmy’s words about his parents’ hometown.
‘I’m the son of two immigrants from Limerick who moved to Slough’, writes Jimmy midway through the book. ‘They moved from a s*** town to another s*** town, I guess they knew what they liked.’
Jim responded by saying, ‘Leave [Jimmy’s comedy] aside, I don’t want somebody writing that about Limerick in a book.’
Carr’s father apparently found the comments to be so offensive that he has called upon the Mayor of Limerick, Councillor Daniel Butler, to revoke Jimmy’s certificate.
The Certificate of Irish Heritage was discontinued as an award in 2015, with Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs citing a lack of uptake as the reason for doing so.
But Jim intends to see his son stripped of the honour, and continued to criticise the Channel 4 comedy presenter, dubbing him a ‘shock jock’.
‘[Jimmy’s] defence will be, “They are only words, I’m only having a laugh”’, he added.
Last year, Jimmy revealed that he and his father have not spoken for 21 years, stating that Jim was, in fact, ‘dead to [him]’.
‘There’s no bitterness and there’s no anger there. I want the best; I just can’t have that guy in my life,’ he told the Parenting Hell podcast.
Metro.co.uk contacted Jimmy Carr’s representatives for comment but didn’t receive a response.
