Jimmy Carr, the controversial British comedian, has found himself in hot water over a joke about the fate of the Romany (or Gypsy) people during the Holocaust.
In his latest stand-up comedy special, broadcast on Netflix, Carr brought up the topic of the Holocaust. While lamenting the deaths of six million Jewish people Carr noted that a large number of Romany people had also perished and went onto say this was generally ignored because people failed to ‘talk about the positives’.
According to the BBC between 200 000 and 500 000 Roma and Sinti people were murdered by the Nazis.
Carr has been criticised from several quarters for the joke with the British government’s culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, saying his remarks were ‘abhorrent and they just shouldn’t be on television’.
Dorries also said that the British government could bring forward legislation to prevent comedy that people found offensive from being broadcast.
Carr is known for his comedy which often jokes about topics some may find taboo. He had previously been criticised for saying that the large number of British servicemen and women who were injured in various conflicts abroad would be a boon to the British Paralympics team.
Image: Albin Olsson, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons