- Jimmy, thank you so much for joining me
to chat about your brand new book, Before & Laughter.
- Hi, I'm trying to find my author pose. Hi.
Hi, I've written a book.
- It's a self-help kind of meets memoir
kind of mushed together.
- It's a book no one wanted. It's the book no one wanted.
I was, I would try to write a memoir,
and I just found it a bit, like, I get this whenever I read
an autobiography, like, "Oh, this guy talks
about himself a lot."
Even people I love, I sort of get 200 pages in
and go, "Really?
More about you? Ugh.
You've done so many great things. Well done."
Like even if it's a friend, so I kind of thought,
well, I'll split the difference and make it half about me
and half about you because there's certain stuff
that I've done that only I'll do.
And there's certain stuff that I've done where you go,
it's based on what I believe,
and I sorta think anyone can do that.
I mean, I say it in the intro to the book.
I've kind of written it for the younger me,
for me when I was going through this,
kind of the most interesting phase of, like,
sort of making a transition in life
and trying to find a life less ordinary.
And I've also written it for my son,
because I'm a daddy now, so I have, like a,
that makes it sound like porn,
but it's that thing where you go,
I think Papa's maybe a better term
because I've never seen a film
where someone's referred to as Papa.
Yeah, better. Papa.
So I wanted to write something for him
so that when I'm, you know, old and gray.
I won't be gray. This is all fake anyway.
But there'll be something for him that'll be,
like, not just Dick jokes.
- And so what was your gateway into self-help books?
What was the first one you picked up?
- Let me think.
Probably something like Christopher Hitchens,
God is Not Great, and Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.
That was couple of books that really helped me come
to terms with atheism.
You know, I sort of became an atheist in my mid 20s.
And when you lose your faith relatively late,
it's like you're kind of searching for something else
to kind of go, well, I've got like a God-shaped hole in me
and I want something else.
I want a belief system, so it forces you to think about life
and what you want and where you wanna go.
I don't view atheism as like a cold, intellectual,
waggy finger kind of thing.
I view it as like a rush of blood to the head.
I think it's incredible,
the idea that you've got one life and this is it
and you've gotta do something with it, I find very exciting
and everything kind of changed based on that.
I kind of lost my religion, and then I found comedy.
I found, you know, joy and happiness.
And I suppose the central premise of the book is
that disposition is as important as position,
that 95% of life is how you react to it, not what happens.
And it never seems that way.
It always seems like oh, no things
just sort of happen to you.
And when you see anyone that's a success,
for want of a better term, you know,
or perceived to be a success, you always think,
well, that always gonna happen for them.
They are, of course.
But it's always like a weird mix.
It's always like we have these myths in our society about,
either talent, genius, or hard work.
This incredible hard work and rise and grind,
and they're both lies.
It's always a mix of the two.
It's always finding what you're best at,
that edge that you have, and not necessarily what you're,
you know, not best in the world.
I'm not the best comic in the world,
but it's what I do best,
and so I focused everything on that.
- And you have various analogies in the book,
like we are verbs, not nouns.
You've got a car analogy. Explain the verbs, not nouns.
- Well, nature, nurture is,
I mean, people buy into that, right?
They go, right, it's either nature or nurture.
Different people have different opinions.
It doesn't fucking matter
because nurture is the only bit you can play with.
The nature bit is the cards you've been dealt, right?
So you've been dealt these cards.
How are you gonna play them? That's the nurture bit.
And people imagine, I think, that nurture ends
when you're 14, 18 21.
What age does it stop? What age does it stop?
Well, it never stops. Nurture is your environment.
It's who's around you, what is around you,
and where you choose to put your attention.
And that for me is like, oh, that's, like,
an interesting thing at 25 to sort of turn around
and go, well, I can do what I want.
There's nothing anyone else can do that I can't do,
you know, within reason.
And you can go, well, I wanna be a comic.
I'd never written a joke until I was 25.
And then suddenly, you know, I'm now regarded
as someone that's good at jokes,
so I really strongly believe people can do
what they wanna do in life.
- And your life, you said, you mentioned it,
changed around your mid 20s,
which is also a similar time to when your mum died.
And how did that, then, affect you in terms of finding
who you are and what you want?
Did that have an impact on that
and working through that grief?
- I think my mother had a huge impact on my life.
I think the sorrow and the grief is a,
it kind of hits you physically.
And I think she led her life magnificently by,
I don't think she had a terribly interesting
and fulfilled life.
I think it was, like, there was a sadness to that,
that she didn't get to do more and see more things
and have more experiences.
And I think I was very conscious of mortality.
I'd sort of lost my faith before she died.
And then just went well, that's it. She's gone now.
And what's the lesson here?
What's the thing that we're gonna do differently?
And she was also instrumental in me getting into comedy
or having a value to the value of humor
because within my household, I was kind of there for vibes.
My mother was a very complicated woman.
I mean, everyone's complicated. Everyone's nuanced.
So she wasn't just hilarious and fun and light.
She was also depressed and sad and,
you know, didn't get out of a dressing gown all day.
You know, it was like she was down a lot of the time,
and you never realize that when you're a kid,
'cause you just go, well, that's what mums are like.
- And so really, really deep question. You're a dad now.
Does that make all your jokes now dad jokes?
- Technically, yeah.
I went out and did, I'm refreshing the tour,
because I've been, 'cause of COVID and the break,
I've been doing this tour for two years,
so I'm gonna record a new special
and I wanted to write some new stuff,
and I just like writing jokes.
I really enjoyed it, so I hired a small theater
and just tried out some new stuff and it was brutal.
Brutal. It's not, like, softened me in the least.
If anything, it becomes more because you're thinking about,
you know, what terrible things could happen
to this creature?
Like, having a kid is, it's like having a medical procedure
where your heart now lives outside your body.
Which is wonderful and terrifying in equal measure.
And I love it, but you kind of go,
well, I think about these terrible, you know,
if I'm being anxious, if I'm worrying about stuff,
I'll worry about that, you know?
And it leads you to darker places.
Luckily, I'll write jokes about.
- I was gonna say, have the jokes got darker,
do you think, as a result?
- I don't know whether we could go darker.
I don't know, I mean, I think there's kind of,
it's a weird thing with darker jokes as well,
where it has to, everything I say on stage has
to be something that I find funny.
And, but also, it's gotta be the audience
find it funny as well.
I always think the audiences are genius.
They're the ones that really, they're the barometer.
So they tell you what is and what isn't funny,
and what is and what isn't acceptable.
So you end up finding, you know,
if something goes too far, they just get.
- And you do actually make an argument in the book
for basically defending the right
to make jokes about anything, but you say
that as long as it has to be funny enough,
the joke has to be funny enough
to be worth that potential risk.
As long as it's funny enough then, everything has to be-
- Yeah, but I mean, funny is very much a matter
of taste, isn't it?
I mean, I'm telling jokes on stage to an audience
that have paid to see an edgy comedian.
I'm not shouting through someone's letterbox
at 8:30 in the morning.
So sometimes when they get reported in the paper,
you go, well, I can see why people took offense to that
because you read it back in the harsh light of day
and go, "Well, yeah, but I mean, it's not-"
It's like giving you the lyrics to, I dunno,
Sympathy for the Devil and you haven't heard the song.
You just saw the lyrics written down.
I think jokes exist in that space,
so it's odd when they get kind of reprinted,
but yeah, I think there's, I would say that joking
about, having a dark sense of humor is the only sense
of humor to have because when are you gonna need your sense
of humor in life?
You won't need it in the good times.
You know, you don't need it,
if you're on an island somewhere with a beautiful lover
and sipping a pina colada and swimming in
the ocean, and gorgeous, right?
You don't need, nothing's funny.
Nothing needs to be funny, and that's just,
you're in paradise.
If you're in a hospice and people are dying,
you will find humor there.
You'll find humor in the trenches.
You'll find humor in the gallows.
That's where it kind of lives.
It lives in the tough times, and it makes it okay.
It helps you get through.
There is, you know, when you look
at what happens physiologically when you joke,
it releases endorphins, it releases,
the vagus nerve is, you know, it helps you digest your food.
It basically makes everything okay for a moment.
You can't be frightened and laugh at the same time,
and that's very important in the tough times.
- And so, with this book, whose hands or ears
do you hope it most falls into?
Who, like, is there a type of person that you think
will most benefit given it has those self-help elements?
- I mean, you kind of don't wanna give it an age restriction
because I sort of think it's never too late.
I do, there's a whole list in the book
of people that made it late.
People that didn't get there till they were
in their 40s or 50s, which I love,
I love the idea that it's never too late to change careers,
to do something incredible with your life.
And we've had a couple of years,
which have been very odd for everyone,
and everyone's kind of recalibrated and sort of thought,
am I doing the right thing?
Am I gonna change?
If it inspires a tiny bit of that, that would be fantastic.
- Well, it was such an interesting read,
and I've really enjoyed talking to you about it,
so thank you so much.
- Yeah, I think we nailed it. Did we nail it?
I don't know, or was this the shittiest one she's ever done?
We don't know. I don't know.
I've not seen a lot of these interviews,
but if you watch a lot of these,
if you've looked back at them and sometimes she goes,
"Oh, I hated your book and thank God that's over,"
then that's valid,
but she probably says it's good to everyone, so.
(gentle upbeat music)