Jimmy Carr, comedian and Cambridge alumnus, has been slammed over a joke he made about Gypsies and the Holocaust, leading Sajid Javid to suggest that people should boycott the show.

Carr joked that the death of Gypsies had been one of “the positives” of the Holocaust as part of his Netflix Christmas special, His Dark Material.

Carr said: “When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of 6 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 wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.”

Carr, who got a first in social and political science (an earlier version of HSPS) from Gonville and Caius, said he made the joke because it was “fucking funny” and had educational value.

The joke has been met with backlash from politicians and celebrities alike.

Nadia Whittome MP urged Netflix to remove the content and called for the government to bring streaming platforms under Ofcom regulation. She was joined by culture minister Nadine Dorries who said that the comments were “abhorrent and just should not be on television” and called for tighter regulations for streaming sites.

Boris Johnson’s spokesperson condemned the comments as “deeply disturbing” stating that it was “unacceptable to make light of genocide.”

Comedian David Baddiel joined the critics, labelling Carr’s joke “indefensible”, saying it was not necessarily the subject matter that matters, but the “specifics” of the joke.

The comedian defended his comments over the weekend after being heckled at a gig in Tyne and Wear, saying “I am going to get cancelled, that’s the bad news. The good news is that I’m going down swinging.”

The comments come following unrelated criticism of the government’s new policing bill, which would make living on land without the owner’s permission a criminal offence – a move which some Travellers said threatens to “wipe out” their culture.