Tommy Tiernan has shown his support for Jimmy Carr – saying comedians shouldn’t be “hounded out of their job” for a “mistake” they made on stage.
Carr is facing huge backlash after making a joke about the murder of gypsies during the Holocaust.
But Tommy said Carr shouldn’t be “hung drawn and quartered” for the joke.
The chat show host and actor said: "If somebody gets up onstage and tells a joke and on further reflection that joke's actually coming from not such a good place, then just stop telling it and move on, than be hung drawn and quartered in the virtual town square."
In a viral clip from the Netflix special, entitled His Dark Material, Carr made a jibe about the Holocaust and “six million Jewish lives being lost”.
As a punchline, the 49-year-old then made a disparaging remark about the deaths of thousands of Gypsies under Nazi rule.
He said: "When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of six million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever talks about that because no one wants to talk about the positives."
Carr has appeared on TV shows with Tommy Tiernan in the UK, including on As Yet Untitled, hosted by stand-up Alan Davies.
Tiernan told Free Speech Nation: The Podcast "...something is either funny or it's not."
He went on: "It can be about race, it can be about gender, it can be about the Olympics or Putin or doughnuts or lesbians or mermaids. If it's funny, it's funny.
"And if people don't find it funny, then that's all it is, it's just an unfunny moment.
"I walk on a stand-up stage to free myself from autocracy. I trust laughter and I also trust the humanity of the people involved that if somebody makes a mistake it's okay.
The host of The Tommy Tiernan show continued: "You follow the laughter and that can take you to odd strange places.
"I think laughter is an outlaw. Laughter isn't the Mayor. Laughter is the weird, wild woman who lives in a tree four miles outside the town.
"So I really would be very very slow to adopt a manifesto for stand-up.
Tiernan, who starts the UK leg of his Tomfoolery tour on March 17th, also told Andrew Doyle, stand-up "is a thing of on the one hand being free, free to do whatever comes into your mind on the stage whatever you and the audience find funny, with also kind of an examination of your own generosity maybe.
"It's that thing of being irresponsible, so people who are touting responsibility will find that upsetting."
Carr responded to the controversy at a gig in Whitely Bay in Tyne and Wear when a fan heckled: "Are we going to talk about the Holocaust?"
According to the Mirror, he said: "We are going to talk about cancel culture, the whole thing.
"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, f****** forget about it."
"I am going to get cancelled, that's the bad news. The good news is I am going down swinging.
"The joke that ends my career is already out there. It's on YouTube, Netflix or whatever, and it's fine until one day it f****** isn't."
The 8 Out Of 10 Cats host is said to have added: "You are going to be able to tell your grandchildren about seeing this show tonight. You will say I saw a man and he stood on a stage and he made light of serious issues.
"We used to call them jokes and people would laugh."
Downing Street has described the joke about the Holocaust as "deeply disturbing" but said it is a matter for Netflix if the comedian's show should remain on the streaming service.
In response, an official spokesman for Boris Johnson said: "Those comments are deeply disturbing and it’s unacceptable to make light of genocide."
He added: "The government is toughening measures for social media and streaming platforms who don’t tackle harmful content".
Asked whether Netflix should pull the show, the spokesman said: "That will be a matter for them. We are clear that mocking the atrocities of the Holocaust is unacceptable."
Anti-hate groups such as the not-for-profit organisation Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and The Auschwitz Memorial have condemned the comedian for the joke.
The Traveller Movement, a charity supporting the traveller community in the UK, has also launched a petition calling for Netflix to remove the segment of the programme "which celebrates the Romani genocide".
It said the joke in question was "truly disturbing and goes way beyond humour".
Netflix has declined to comment.
