Channel 4 News’s bizarre coverage of the Jimmy Carr K2 affair

I was flicking through the channels last night checking out Sky’s excellent new EPG design (which will stop me impersonating an angry Sumo wrestler as I crane forward from the sofa, eyes narrowed, trying to decipher programme information) when I happened upon Channel 4 News. They were just starting on the Jimmy Carr tax brouhaha.

I decided to stop awhile and find out how this unremittingly left-wing programme would handle an embarrassing tale of left-wing hypocrisy. Their approach was simple: the real issue, obviously, was Tory Party donors who might be avoiding tax.

You see, David Cameron’s branding of such practices as “immoral” mean he could be severely embarrassed should it emerge (there’s no proof that it will, of course) that private individuals who give money to the Conservative Party are benefitting from similarly creative – not to say outrageous – tax avoidance shenanigans.

They also made the perfectly valid and pertinent point that if Cameron was really that upset about these tawdry manoeuvres, why hadn’t his government made them illegal? But, again, that’s not really the issue, is it? This is a simple story of the hypocrisy of a comedian who appears on unremittingly left-slanted comedy programmes and who has attacked banks for avoiding tax and has now been caught doing exactly the same thing. It doesn’t take a journalistic genius to figure out where the real story lies.

But, no, Channel 4’s urban liberal-leftist newshounds decided to focus almost exclusively on dishonest right-wing party donors – even though, as I said, none has been implicated on this issue: in fact, there hasn’t yet been a hint of a scintilla of a suggestion that any will be (though you can bet your boots the liberal media will be busting a gut tryting to uncover one).

Just imagine how Channel 4 would have covered this story if Carr had been a right-wing comedian (a rare breed, I know) instead of one of their own.

Shamefully poor journalism.

Jimmy Carr can be genuinely funny. Okay, his hosting of the Jubilee Concert was rotten, anyone making jokes about Down’s Syndrome sufferers should be ashamed of themselves, and the relentless teenage smuttiness of his live act is lazy and, ultimately, depressing. But his comic timing’s great, he's a master of the one-liner, his refusal to prolify his middle-class accent (unlike, for instance, that son of privilege, Marcus Brigstocke) is refreshing, and, to be fair, he doesn’t generally bother much with politics.

In fact, I doubt Carr has any genuine political views – but in order to be a successful BBC or Channel 4 comedian these days you evidently have to suck up to the comic communistic  Kulturmeisters to be found sneering at the beliefs of at least half the population on TV and radio every night of the week. I’m only aware of two members of the breed who’ve hinted that they’re not in fact card-carrying Labourites – Jack Dee and Alexander Armstrong. Perhaps that they’re now simply too rich to care what the Fry/Brigstocke/O’Briain tendency thinks of them – but Jimmy Carr is quite evidently wealthy enough not to care, and yet hasn’t mustered sufficient courage not to go with the left-liberal flow.

And now, because he took the easy, non-boat-rocking option, he's joined the likes of Ken Livingstone, Diane Abbott and Johann Hari in the ever-expanding pantheon of left-wing hypocrites – and how wonderfully satisfying that is.

Jim Davidson can't hold a candle to Jimmy Carr as a comic, but I prefer his honest approach to politics. When asked about his attitudes to the poor, her replied: "I'm a Tory - fuck 'em!"