BANDS receive flak if they leave big hits out of a live set in favour of showcasing too many new numbers. Comedians have to operate the reverse principle; punters expect entirely fresh sets each time a stand-up undertakes a new tour.

This makes a Best Of show a rarity: Pocklington-born Richard Herring springs to mind, touring The Best, his pick of his favourite routines from 12 one-man shows, crammed into only 60 minutes, as witnessed at the Great Yorkshire Fringe in York last July. Now, the equally prolific Jimmy Carr has decided to do a Best Of set as his 12th tour show, visiting the Grand Opera House on June 14.

Explaining his reasoning, he says: "Partly it’s because I wanted to see if it was possible, to see if you could do a stand-up show where you just played the hits like a gig from a classic band," he says. "I also remember seeing John Maloney at the Comedy Store 15 or 16 years ago right when I started, and he came on stage and said ‘I’ll start with some jokes’. He did ten one-liners off the bat – boom, boom, boom, boom – and then told a longer story.

"I remember thinking I would like to do a show where it is just that, where you have that first opening salvo of bang, bang, bang and it never lets up. And that’s part of the reason to do this tour, the idea of just dropping bombs for two hours. One liner after one liner; all killer, no filler.

"Also, I really love these jokes and, unlike a musician, I don’t get to perform them once the show’s finished touring. You just sort of put them away forever. That always struck me as kind of a shame."

In simple terms, with most of the jokes already written, all Carr had to do was choose his favourites and then try and remember them, but will the show be the same each night? "Hopefully not. Obviously there will be a lot of written stuff, but I like to find a balance between the guaranteed laughs of jokes I’ve come up with in advance and the off-the-cuff stuff," he says.

"I think on a good night it is 80/90 per cent of jokes that I have written and am performing to the best of my abilities. But the best bits always involve the audience, the bits where I don’t know what’s going to happen or where it will lead. Why go and see a show live? Why not just watch it on Netflix? It’s because the funniest bits are always the things that happened in the room that night. You’ve got to have a show ready though, just in case the crowd is reluctant to get involved."

Consistent to all Carr's live shows has been his willingness to find jokes in supposedly “taboo” topics. "Comedy is all about building up tension and then releasing it," says the 44-year-old Londoner. "Talking about taboo topics is a fast way to build tension and the more tension, the more laughs when you finally release it. I’d also say that one of my favourite sounds in the world is laughter turning into shock.

"I’m obsessed by cognitive dissonance; the idea that you can make people laugh and be disappointed in themselves for laughing at the same time. And as long as the laugh comes first, even if it’s half a second before, it’s fine. I like the idea that you don’t choose what you laugh at, it chooses you."

Carr rules out no subject for a joke. "I feel like it’s all about the intention, the meaning behind it. My jokes are just that, jokes," he says. "There is no grand vision, no political or social message. If the joke is funny enough then the ends justify the means. Look, I say some horrific things in my act and, yes, if you take those things at face value then clearly they are unacceptable.

"But I think it’s pretty obvious that, in context, those subjects or ideas are merely vehicles for comedy, that they are designed to elicit laughter and nothing more. If I was using my shows to put forward a manifesto on how we should live our lives then maybe it would be a different story, but I’m not. I’m just trying to make you laugh."

Does Carr ever worry about offending people? "Not really. If you believe in free speech, you have to be prepared to hear things you don’t like; that’s kind of the deal," he says. "If you say someone is 'offended', what you’re really saying is that their feelings got hurt. That doesn't put you in the right. If you’re not laughing, you’re well within your rights to just not listen. That’s absolutely fine."

Carr took his first steps on the stand-up circuit at the age of 26, later than the norm, when he "just wanted to do something different, really". "I had a very cushy job in marketing, having worked very hard at university to get there, but I wasn’t satisfied. If I’d known that it was possible to work in television earlier, I would have probably wanted to be a producer or something," he says. "I didn’t know anyone in that world though; it wasn’t an option. So instead I decided to join the circus in my mid-twenties and do stand-up comedy instead."

His latest show may be a Best Of, but rest assured, new Jimmy Carr jokes will keep coming. After all, he comes up with 1,000 jokes for each new tour, picking only 250 to perform. "The trick is to be writing constantly," he says. "Chuck Close once said, 'Inspiration is for amateurs, I just get to work'; I could not agree more with that statement."

Jimmy Carr: The Best Of, Ultimate, Gold, Greatest Hits Tour, Grand Opera House, York, June 14, 8pm. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york