Pod Insights The Louis Theroux Podcast S6 EP8: Jimmy Carr discusses the secret to his comedy, being a late bloomer, and controversial stand-up gigs About this episode For this Christmas bonus episode, Louis sits down with writer, comedian, and panel-show super-host, Jimmy Carr. Jimmy discusses what lies behind his unique brand of ‘edgy' comedy, why he remained a virgin until the age of 26 and performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival despite public criticism.
Jimmy’s film, ‘Fackham Hall’, is out in cinemas now.
Warnings: Strong language and adult themes.
Links/Attachments:
Book: Before & Laughter, Jimmy Carr (2021)
https://www.jimmycarr.com/product/book-laughter/
Fackham Hall (2025)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29008225/
Jimmy Carr Tour
https://www.jimmycarr.com/tour/uk-ireland/
Alex Hormozi quote:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DIzTPjPTZB0/
Book: Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/203913/homo-ludens-by-johan-huizinga/
Peter McGraw’s Benign Violations
https://petermcgraw.org/a-brief-introduction-to-the-benign-violation-theory-of-humor/
Book: Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault (1975)
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/13651/discipline-and-punish-by-michel-foucault-trans-alan-sheridan/9780241386019
Bob Monkhouse joke about cancer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTUvRW7gtGU
Jimmy Carr: His Dark Material (2021)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16259786/
Nadine Dorries’ comment about Jimmy Carr joke:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/nadine-dorries-jimmy-carr-netflix-jewish-roma-b2008317.html
Jimmy Carr’s joke about injured soldiers:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6486964/Jimmy-Carr-feels-terrible-about-injured-soldiers-joke.html#:~:text=Jimmy%20Carr%20'feels%20terrible'%20about%20injured%20soldiers%20joke
Saint Lawrence, the patron Saint of comedy:
https://www.catholicmom.com/articles/2015/08/10/st-lawrence-patron-saint-of-comedians
TV Show: ‘Game of Thrones’ (2011-2019)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/
Dave Chappelle quote:
https://btr.michaelkwan.com/2017/03/26/sunday-snippet-dave-chappelle/#:~:text=Posted%20by%20Michael%20Kwan%20%7C%20Mar,Maybe%20it%20was%20something%20else.
TV Show: ‘The Black and White Minstrel Show’ (1958-1978)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0198065/
TV Show: ‘The Young Ones’ (1982-1984)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083505/
Titania McGrath quote:
https://x.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1453065592651517964
Musical: We Will Rock You, Ben Elton (2002)
https://wewillrockyoulondon.co.uk/
John Betjeman’s Slough poem:
https://allpoetry.com/poem/8493391-Slough-by-Sir-John-Betjeman
TV Show: ‘The Office’ (2001-2003)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290978/
Naval Ravikant
https://nav.al/rich
TV Show: 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (2012 – 2025)
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/8-out-of-10-cats-does-countdown
The Fog of War (2004)
https://tv.apple.com/gb/movie/the-fog-of-war/umc.cmc.3j815y9s5id2nvfztrlfh75il?action=play
Eric Weinstein’s Intellectual Dark Web
https://www.whatisemerging.com/videos/inside-the-intellectual-dark-web-eric-weinstein
Hillary Clinton’s ‘deplorable’ speech:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-37330420
Jordan Peterson on compelled speech
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37875695
Credits:
Producer: Millie Chu
Assistant Producer: Emilia Gill
Production Manager: Francesca Bassett
Music: Miguel D’Oliveira
Audio Mixer: Tom Guest
Video Mixer: Scott Edwards
Shownotes compiled by Elly Young
Executive Producer: Arron Fellows
A Mindhouse Production for Spotify
www.mindhouse.co.uk
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 14,633 words · 2 speakers
0:06 Speaker 00 Hello there and welcome back to the Louis Theroux podcast, or if you're watching it on Spotify, the Louis Theroux Slightly Shit TV Show. I just came up with that. Do you like that? That's quite funny.
0:28 Speaker 00 Well, the last series may be over, but guess what? I'm back, surprise, with some festive cheer and a bonus Christmas episode. I'm joined by none other than writer, comedian and panel show host with the most, Jimmy Carr. Jimmy has been a mainstay of the UK comedy scene for nearly 20 years. He is one of the busiest jobbing comedians in the world. His last tour sold over 1.2 million tickets globally. That's a big number. Making it the biggest ever international stand-up tour. I mean, he's British, but he has a following in America, definitely Australia, so yeah, those numbers might even be true.
1:09 Speaker 00 He's probably best known for his rapid-fire, often darkly humorous, one-liners. He spits them out like a comedic Spitfire. He does amazing crowd work as well, and in fact, at the moment, there are many compilations of his audience interactions online that you can find in your favourite social media feed. He's got his wits about him. He's got that thing where someone in the crowd can give him some attitude and he gives it right back to them. I have a lot of respect for people who can zing on the fly, ad hoc, improvisationally. You may also be familiar with him as the host of many, many panel shows here in the UK. Shows like Eight Out of Ten Cats, I think that one's not on the air anymore, The Big
1:51 Speaker 00 Fat Quiz of the Year, and most recently, Amazon smash hit Last One Laughing, that's been smashing it in the ratings, where he's assembled with, he's the host, but there are a rogues' gallery of beloved British comedians and they all try not to laugh, right? And then the others try and make them laugh.
2:14 Speaker 00 I think you're getting the idea he's a colossus of the present day comedy scene. And it's great to have him on the show because it's a chance to examine someone. Examine sounds operational. Have a conversation with someone who's at the top of their profession. And who will be a name that's known to many of you. And also to talk a little bit about comedy. But we're coming up to that. However, over the years, he has come under five for various reasons. In 2012, there was his involvement in a wholly legal, but nevertheless controversial tax avoidance scheme. More recently, there were jokes that some people didn't like. We speak in particular about one he made in 2021 on his Netflix special, His Dark Material.
2:57 Speaker 00 I was keen to talk to Jimmy because he's a big name, a talented comedian. I know him a little bit, but also because I was hoping to speak about comedy. And, you know, it's a common topic in this, in the sort of, is it the culture wars? Or these conversations about free speech, what we can and can't say. You know, there's a narrative that says wokeness is killing comedy. And then there's another that says bullies online are trolling people and it's not funny. And they're pretending to be funny and it's, and you shouldn't be allowed to do that. Right. There's these, there's this binary narrative. And of course, it's all more complicated than that. And I don't even know if we answered any of those questions, but we gave it a good fist.
3:41 Speaker 00 That could be a little bit like a rude joke right there. Expect more of that kind of humor. We recorded this conversation in November this year at Spotify HQ. It was a Monday morning and Jimmy turned up in a three piece suit. I was dressed characteristically, I think in a blue sweatshirt. Maybe it was gray. He looked very sharp. You don't see people in, I mean, two piece suits, let alone three. There was a little, what we call a waistcoat. And in America, I believe they call a vest. He was mid-promotion for his new film, Fackham Hall, which is out now. A spoof on Downton Abbey style programs in which aristocrats in a stately home cavort
4:24 Speaker 00 and try and get married. I haven't seen it. I don't know what to say about that. I haven't seen it, but the trailer looks funny. There's a bit where. There's a young man and he's attempting to woo the beautiful woman and he opens the door and she's standing there and then his trousers go bing. Have you seen that bit? I make it sound kind of basic and maybe it is, but that made me laugh. What would you call that kind of humour? Ribald? It's sort of viz style. It's literally like, I think there's even a sound effect and his trousers tent out at the front. A quick warning, this conversation contains some strong language and adult themes as
5:08 Speaker 00 well as some risque jokes from the off and throughout, we've already started those. All that and much else besides, coming up.
5:33 Speaker 00 One two, one two. Tell now, young man.
5:35 Speaker 01 Hey man, how are you?
5:36 Speaker 00 Look at you, come on. You don't dress like that, like on a Monday.
5:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:42 Speaker 00 Twelve o'clock.
5:43 Speaker 01 Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't I?
5:45 Speaker 00 But save it for the part, save it. We're not recording it, what's the point?
5:48 Speaker 01 This is called a soft opening.
5:49 Speaker 00 Is it a soft opening? First time you've seen one of those in a while. That was me doing my Jimmy Carr bit.
5:56 Speaker 00 Do some dirty jokes as we go along.
5:58 Speaker 01 How are you?
5:58 Speaker 00 This is nice.
5:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, not too bad.
6:00 Speaker 00 Yeah, like a fancy setup.
6:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:03 Speaker 00 It's great.
6:04 Speaker 01 Off the strand. This is, and it's kind of, it's, I quite like doing things here, in this building.
6:09 Speaker 00 Go on.
6:10 Speaker 01 Because it's next to the Shell building and I used to work for Shell.
6:13 Speaker 00 Yes, you did.
6:14 Speaker 01 Back in the day. And it's that lovely thing of the, being reminded of that and the commute and the job you used to have.
6:20 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:21 Speaker 01 It's a nice experience.
6:22 Speaker 00 And the road not taken.
6:23 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, it's that thing if you go, the luck, I could have gone.
6:26 Speaker 00 Yeah, you talk a lot about this in your book, which I've read.
6:29 Speaker 01 Oh, did you?
6:30 Speaker 00 You're not here to plug that.
6:31 Speaker 01 Well, it doesn't matter though, talk about anything.
6:34 Speaker 00 Um, do you like plugging yourself? That's another, that's another joke. I'm working on that one.
6:39 Speaker 01 Nice. I mean, it might, it might work. It's not quite, it's not the best butt plug joke. Which the best butt plug joke in the world is Dave Attell's.
6:46 Speaker 00 Go on.
6:47 Speaker 01 You know Dave Attell, like American New York legendary comic?
6:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, he's sort of schlubby, self-deprecating.
6:53 Speaker 01 Incredible comic.
6:53 Speaker 00 Yeah. You haven't heard, I've heard him in a while.
6:55 Speaker 01 He's in New York, he's at the Comedy Cellar every night at 1am. Uh, he had a great joke about, I found a butt plug on a city bus. How did I know it was a butt plug? Because it fit perfectly.
7:07 Speaker 01 He's just such a funny boy. Such a funny boy.
7:09 Speaker 00 I read the book, I've been looking, I know you're here to, you've got a movie out?
7:13 Speaker 01 Hmm. If we're plugging stuff, I've got a movie out and I'm playing a bunch of arenas, but yeah, it's very fun thing. It's very much kind of, um, if this is a simulation, I feel like I've got some sort of cheat code.
7:29 Speaker 00 Nice.
7:29 Speaker 01 I feel like, if life is a big simulation, if it's a big game, somehow we're playing this off-world in a pod somewhere next to, next to the Matrix, then like the luck, to have an idea for a film is one thing, but to get one made and released in the UK and America, it's like, it's quite a lot of things have to fall the right way for that to happen.
7:49 Speaker 00 Tell the people what it's called.
7:51 Speaker 01 It's called Fackham Hall. I literally, I literally, the one show won't let me go on because it's called Fackham Hall and they went, it's too rude a title.
7:59 Speaker 00 And you're enunciating it as well, so it's fine.
8:02 Speaker 01 It's okay. If you say Fackham Hall, it's fine. If you say it too quickly, you could be in trouble.
8:06 Speaker 00 It's so weird that stuff like, you know, like, I've got a big cock, right? And you've got a rooster with you. You know what I mean? It's like, that's not rude, is it?
8:15 Speaker 01 Well, you, I think if you say, I've got a big cock there without the rooster bit, you really have to set up the rooster bit first.
8:20 Speaker 00 Yeah.
8:21 Speaker 01 It has to be a double entendre, not a single entendre.
8:23 Speaker 00 Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So that was where I went wrong.
8:26 Speaker 01 Yes.
8:27 Speaker 00 But my point is, is like.
8:28 Speaker 01 Someone is gonna clip it up and just go, that Louis Theroux is very full of himself, isn't he?
8:31 Speaker 00 People say things that are rude.
8:33 Speaker 01 Anyway, let's not get off on a tangent. Um, but it's fun having a.
8:37 Speaker 00 Is it for Netflix?
8:39 Speaker 01 No, no, no, it's it's a cinema release. It's like a proper, actual, go to the movies, be social, get out of your houses. Um, which is a good message anyway, I think.
8:46 Speaker 00 Yeah.
8:47 Speaker 01 And it's it's.
8:47 Speaker 00 You wrote it with your brother?
8:48 Speaker 01 I wrote it with my my younger brother, Patrick, and the Dawson Brothers. And it was, I don't, quite different to normally when you write films. It's about, you kind of write it and then you have to take jokes away.
8:57 Speaker 00 Yeah.
8:58 Speaker 01 And this was just, we just put more jokes in. Cause it's it's the pitch for the movie, the elevator pitch is it's Downton Abbey meets Airplane. So it's like a period drama, but we're doing, we're giving it kind of the Mel Brooks treatment.
9:11 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:11 Speaker 01 And trying to make it as funny as possible. It's classic, boy meets girl, boy marries cousin.
9:17 Speaker 00 Nice.
9:18 Speaker 01 It's a bit of a spoiler.
9:19 Speaker 00 The trailer looked funny and they didn't let me see the movie for some reason. I don't know.
9:23 Speaker 01 I don't know.
9:23 Speaker 00 What they're worried about.
9:24 Speaker 01 But yeah.
9:25 Speaker 00 And, um, but posh people in frocks, uh, in stately homes, doing extremely crass, uh, vulgar comedy, like can't miss really.
9:35 Speaker 01 Like, I mean, it can, it can definitely miss, but it's a, it's a, it feels like if you're doing movie maths.
9:41 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:41 Speaker 01 You go, what do the British do well? What do the Americans like that we do? Well, they like the period drama. We do that very nicely. And I think we do comedy very well. I think we do comedy kind of uniquely well. Uh, we, you know, punch above our weight.
9:53 Speaker 00 Big time.
9:54 Speaker 01 I would say globally.
9:54 Speaker 00 Tell me about it. So there's that. Um, you're touring arenas. Also, this is a chance just to chat, like, we know each other a little bit.
10:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:02 Speaker 00 Um, but I've never interviewed you before. Thank you for coming on.
10:05 Speaker 01 Can't believe your luck.
10:07 Speaker 00 You're welcome. I'm sure most people know who you are. Nevertheless, I always think it's helpful to hear from the horse's mouth. Like, how how do you think of yourself, what you do, the kind of comedy you practice?
10:20 Speaker 01 Um, I don't know. I suppose it's that thing where I've been doing it quite a while now and that thing of like, what's that great Alex Hormozi? Do you know that guy? I love him. He said he has this great line about how real self-confidence is not shouting affirmations in the mirror. Real self-confidence comes from giving the world irrefutable proof you are who you say you are.
10:38 Speaker 00 Yeah.
10:39 Speaker 01 So that thing of like going, I am fundamentally a stand-up comic.
10:41 Speaker 00 Yeah.
10:41 Speaker 01 Everything else is kind of a side hustle, but I'm a stand-up comic. That's what I do for a living, sort of eight times a week. Get up there and put on a show. It's not just comedy that well, it is comedy and it's just comedy, whatever that means, but it's edgy comedy, isn't it?
10:54 Speaker 00 I think we could say that.
10:55 Speaker 01 I think you could, yeah, you could say that, but I think it's just, it's authentic comedy. I think I'm not a grifter, so I don't sell something that I wouldn't buy.
11:03 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:04 Speaker 01 It's got to be my sense of humour, and that's what makes me laugh. For for better, for worse, my crazy, ha ha, innie laugh comes on that when it's.
11:12 Speaker 00 Like a haunted seagull, someone said in a review.
11:14 Speaker 01 Nice, good review. Um, it's it's um, it's my sense of humour, that's what I like. I like stuff that's a bit transgressive. And I suppose it goes to, um, I mean, I think at this point, if someone comes to one of my shows and gets offended, I'm like, wow. You know, buyer beware, if you bought, buy tickets to a horror movie and then you complain you're scared.
11:32 Speaker 00 I was too scared.
11:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:34 Speaker 00 Yeah, good problem to have.
11:35 Speaker 01 Who faults that, though? And you you kind of go, well, I I tell quite edgy, transgressive jokes, they make me laugh and they make the audience laugh. And I think that thing about going, uh, in the world that we live in, the reason comedy is having a moment. Uh, which I think it is culturally, in the same way that music had a moment in the seventies and film had a moment in the seventies. Was because it was people being authentic.
11:54 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:54 Speaker 01 Uh, and that reflects society, so people go, well, that's my sense of humour. Your sense of humour is very, it's a very personal thing. It's very much like your taste in food or your sexuality. Some people like the spicy stuff and the BDSM, and some people like it to be very mild and bland. Great, but it reflects something about you that's that's more you than how you present.
12:16 Speaker 00 Yes.
12:17 Speaker 01 Like, I love that thing when you get, um, cognitive dissonance in a show. Where people laugh at something and then there's kind of an intake of breath afterwards. As long as it comes in the right order, as long as you get the big laugh first, that's the reflex. And then you get people going, oh, should I have laughed, oh, I guess I did now. Too late now.
12:35 Speaker 00 Do we, shall we do just, like, I know, I hate to put you on the spot.
12:38 Speaker 01 No, no, no, put me on the spot, mate.
12:39 Speaker 00 Okay, so like.
12:41 Speaker 01 Spot away.
12:42 Speaker 00 Well, let's let's do a joke. Can we do a joke, like, I say we, I'm really talking about you.
12:46 Speaker 01 Well, I don't know about doing it, you know, jokes on podcasts tend not to.
12:49 Speaker 00 You think, yeah, well, this is it, right?
12:51 Speaker 01 Well, because it's that thing, like, there's no great publication of jokes. There's no like, they don't work in in kind of book form. The thing about comedy, the thing about being in an audience, really, why I think comedy is going through a moment is because it's a shared experience.
13:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:05 Speaker 01 It's play. So I think that's what's kind of missing from our society. There's a great book, I think it's Homo Lundus?
13:13 Speaker 00 Ludens.
13:14 Speaker 01 Homo Ludens.
13:15 Speaker 00 By Johan Hoitsinger.
13:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, great reference. But that thing of like, play being the very important thing in our lives and the idea of going.
13:24 Speaker 00 Means playing man in Latin.
13:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, but when I'm on stage, there's an illusion, I'm the one that's playing. I'm playing a show and the audience are just sitting there passively. But actually, there's a very performative element to being in an audience. Maybe it's more obvious when you go and see a rock and roll show and everyone's singing along and hands in the air and Bruce Springsteen says, how are you doing? And everyone goes, yeah. Everyone is playing and everything people seem to care about in life involves play. So you go from music to film to comedy to sports. It's play. We like watching people play and we like to play along with them.
14:04 Speaker 01 And I think it's incredibly important in life. I think we need more of that because I think actually the great advantage of humanity is that we are, our great skill is cooperation. And the idea that cooperation is actually downstream from play, that's how we learn to cooperate. We learn to get on. And in a world where we're ever more isolated, you know, then it seems that that's the thing that's missing. That's the thing people, you know, why are people so excited about going to festivals and going to comedy shows and going out to see sports matches?
14:33 Speaker 00 I agree with that. I think there's some, you know, in prepping for this interview, I was thinking a lot about comedy. And to the point where I started thinking, I need to stop thinking about it because it's driving me slightly loony. Why some jokes feel funny, even though they hinge on the idea that, for example, I, the joke teller, am a sex predator, right? And then other jokes where it feel, I mean, there was one.
14:55 Speaker 01 Well, you often you laugh at the wrong thing because you know what the right thing is. It's, it's, I suppose, first and second order thinking is how it works a lot of the time.
15:04 Speaker 00 I'll give you one. This is one that you told. This is funny. To me, this was funny. Okay? Bear me out.
15:08 Speaker 01 Go ahead.
15:08 Speaker 00 I'm gonna murder the joke. A young man came up to me outside a theatre, clearly emotionally distressed because he was upset about a joke that you'd told. This is the back, you know, that was.
15:17 Speaker 01 Okay.
15:18 Speaker 00 He said, hey, I was abused by a priest. I said, no, no, you weren't. I was just dressed as a priest.
15:26 Speaker 01 Perfectly serviceable joke.
15:27 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:28 Speaker 01 I think slightly it's about context, right?
15:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:30 Speaker 01 So I think super edgy jokes probably don't work on your podcast. But it is about, there's a big difference between being in a refugee camp and going camping.
15:38 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:39 Speaker 01 Right, those are very different experiences. And I think sometimes it's fine that it's, people are bought into the show. They wanna come and they wanna listen to super edgy stuff. And it's ironically, to use the term, but it's a very safe space, being at a comedy gig.
15:52 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:53 Speaker 01 You feel like, well, we're all here. We know that this guy on stage is gonna say transgressive things. And they're benign violations to give Peter McGraw his dues. He came up with that kind of theory. So benign violations, the idea that violations-
16:06 Speaker 00 Who is he, a philosopher?
16:07 Speaker 01 He's an academic.
16:07 Speaker 00 Oh, really?
16:08 Speaker 01 And he came up with the theory benign violation in comedy, which I think works fairly well for analyzing. Okay, so what are jokes? Well, they're violations. Something has gone away from how it ought to be. Could be minor, could be someone tripping over, could be a war, could be famine, could be something terrible. And by making a joke about it, you're making it benign. You're taking its power away.
16:30 Speaker 00 There's a part of, you know, we're used to seeing comedy as uncomplicatedly benign. Whereas I sort of see it as something different, like electricity. Or a weapon that can be used for good or ill. Does that make sense? And that you can shoot a dictator or you can shoot a homeless person. It just depends on who you choose to direct it at.
16:51 Speaker 01 Well, I don't buy into the punching up punching down dynamic at all.
16:55 Speaker 00 Go on, go on.
16:56 Speaker 01 I think that's Marxist, neo-Marxist sort of Frankfurt School thinking. I don't buy into sort of Foucault, the idea that the world is on power dynamics and you're punching up or punching down.
17:06 Speaker 00 You referenced Michel Foucault, we're going very deep.
17:10 Speaker 01 We could talk.
17:11 Speaker 00 We're going, you studied sociology at Cambridge. Did you read any Foucault?
17:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:15 Speaker 00 Which one?
17:16 Speaker 01 I don't know, I mean, that was a long time ago. Yeah, I mean, I don't buy into that whole thing. I think that thing of going-
17:23 Speaker 00 There is power, but society's full of power relationships.
17:26 Speaker 01 Yes, but it's not the only thing going on.
17:27 Speaker 00 No.
17:28 Speaker 01 It doesn't explain everything. But that idea of going, the power dynamics of that is not something that I, you have to buy into that. You have to go- Punching up, you punching down, you're in the service industry. You're trying to make two thousand people laugh for two hours straight is what you're trying to do. And what's your sense of humour? What's the thing that's gonna make you laugh? And I I kinda, I like the idea of being an equal opportunities offender and going, you're not going after anyone. You're just joking about all of these things and anything that's a sacred cow, there's gonna be tension around that and you wanna release that tension. Also, the audience is a genius, you know, the old Lenny Bruce line.
18:02 Speaker 00 That's true.
18:03 Speaker 01 I think it is because you get to get in front of any audience and try a joke and they will tell you whether it's funny or not. And they'll tell you whether it's acceptable or not, any audience in the world, they they dictate that. So you you do that thing of like going, I don't think comedy is about repetition, you don't get better through repetition, it's iteration. I got an awful lot from British Cycling, weirdly, weird place to find inspiration. But the idea of like incremental improvements.
18:26 Speaker 00 Right.
18:26 Speaker 01 Tiny little improvements every night. And the idea of going, well, you could just change that little thing, you could split test it. I mean, I do two shows a night, so it's very easy to split test jokes.
18:35 Speaker 00 Do you?
18:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, so you sort of split test the gag and go, well, is it funny like that or funny like that? Does it work like that? Does it work like that?
18:41 Speaker 00 Really, what AB testing they call that.
18:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, so you kind of, you just go, you're constantly sort of trying new stuff and going, okay, does that, is that, okay, what's better?
18:49 Speaker 00 You're like a comedy boffin.
18:51 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, I mean, everyone's kind of a nerd about something.
18:53 Speaker 00 You've got like, there's this like Monkhouse energy with you.
18:56 Speaker 01 I'd like that.
18:57 Speaker 00 Would you take that?
18:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'll take that.
18:59 Speaker 00 How many people listening know who Bob Monkhouse is, do you think?
19:02 Speaker 01 I don't know, probably quite a few.
19:04 Speaker 00 No one in America.
19:05 Speaker 01 No one in the States, but you know, people in, uh, people in the UK and.
19:09 Speaker 00 Do you know his cancer joke? He's probably had a few. Doctor says, you got cancer. I said, how long have I got, doc? He says, ten. Ten what? Months?
19:17 Speaker 01 Nine.
19:18 Speaker 00 Weeks? Nine.
19:18 Speaker 01 Eight. So, yeah, okay, that's good.
19:21 Speaker 00 That's good, right?
19:22 Speaker 01 It's good and he he told them when he had it, which is kind of nice.
19:24 Speaker 00 That's right. Can we talk about, uh, twenty twenty two, his dark materials?
19:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, sure.
19:30 Speaker 00 Because you've been like, I like to talk about some, you know, controversy or or at least deal with various issues that have come up over the years, you've you've had quite a few.
19:41 Speaker 01 Thanks.
19:41 Speaker 00 We're gonna leave the taxes out of it, I don't even wanna go there.
19:44 Speaker 01 That's why I do two shows a night, one for me, one for HMRC.
19:47 Speaker 00 Um, well, let's like, so there was a joke in His Dark Materials. It must have been on like you basically, it had been up on Netflix for at least a couple of months because it dropped on December twenty fifth, right?
19:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I mean, I think the way that these things happen is sometimes people that aren't in your audience get hold of a joke and then it becomes something else. It becomes a statement that you made.
20:06 Speaker 00 Yes.
20:07 Speaker 01 Not a joke. So it's that.
20:09 Speaker 00 It gets decontextualized.
20:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, so it's that idea of the.
20:11 Speaker 00 Risk of doing here, but because one of the things I think that got lost, and I'm not trying to carry water for you, because I think the joke was complicated. And in fact, even before you made the joke, there's a whole run up in which you're saying, I'm about to tell a whole bunch of incredibly risque jokes. You call them career enders, strap in everyone, you ready? There's a sequence and there's another one and then so you give it.
20:34 Speaker 01 And there's a, there's a bit before I tell the joke and a bit after the joke where it's contextualized, but you go, but when, if you clip it up in the right way, you can, you know, you can cause a controversy.
20:44 Speaker 00 Yes.
20:44 Speaker 01 I often think about.
20:45 Speaker 00 Do justice to it, I gotta, go on.
20:47 Speaker 01 Well, you, well, you're not going to tell the joke properly.
20:49 Speaker 00 Would you, no.
20:50 Speaker 01 I mean, you're gonna get, it's just gonna get nothing on a, on a podcast, right?
20:53 Speaker 00 It's just, what are we gonna do then? Well, basically we'll say that the, the hook for the joke was that it seemed, you were talking about the Holocaust, it seemed quite pious, like you were doing a quite serious, like, you know, we've got to do justice to this horrific thing that happened to six million Jewish people. And then you mentioned that gypsies died and then the hinge was you spun that like it was a positive, which was obviously no one's mind was going there.
21:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, so it's the, it's the, it's the worst thing you could possibly say in that moment. No one ever talks about the, the gypsies and Romani people that died because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.
21:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:24 Speaker 01 But no one at the show thinks for a second, I think that. But that thing as well of going, it's, it is kind of an interesting thing because people don't know that bit of history. The, the Romani people called the Holocaust the devouring. I just thought that was a very.
21:39 Speaker 00 Phrase, very resonant.
21:40 Speaker 01 Well, very poetic, beautiful people. But you know, it's like, it's a, it's really interesting to talk about those very dark bits of history. But you're, you're, if you're gonna go down that road, if you're gonna do a bit of the show called Career Enders, you have to expect there's gonna be some people that are gonna be upset. Yeah, it's, it's all right. It's okay for people to be upset as well. There's a big difference between being cancelled, which is, and there is a thing of like people going, not only do I not like him, I don't think other people should be allowed to see him, you know, ban this filth. And people criticizing you and going, I just don't like it. I don't think he's funny. That's absolutely valid.
22:17 Speaker 00 Culture Secretary Nadine Doris said the comments were abhorrent and they just shouldn't be on television.
22:22 Speaker 01 How's she doing?
22:24 Speaker 00 Someone pointed out that Nadine Doris had previously sent a tweet where she said, "Left-wing snowflakes are killing comedy."
22:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, but then, but that week.
22:32 Speaker 00 Which was asked about it, she said Jimmy Carr's joke was not comedy.
22:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
22:37 Speaker 00 Did you know about all of that? Did you, how closely did you follow the fallout?
22:40 Speaker 01 Not much. Not much. I mean, it's like.
22:43 Speaker 00 It was a big, it was a big deal.
22:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was a.
22:45 Speaker 00 It was massive. You were like top of the news. Like, they were talking about you in Parliament. They brought.
22:49 Speaker 01 I've had that a few times.
22:50 Speaker 00 Have you?
22:51 Speaker 01 Yeah. Other people's opinion about me is none of my business. That's the line. That's what you've got to remember. It's also, you've got to contextualise this, right? There's a phrase in therapy, which is you've got to right-size things. And I think right-sizing this is, "I told a joke and some people didn't like it." That's what happened there. I mean, we can dress it up and call it cancel culture and get all, get all upset, but you go, "I told a joke, some people didn't like it." And then we moved, everyone moved on. People that still like me come and see me. Anyone that takes that seriously, anyone that sees that bit of comedy and goes, "Oh, he must be, he must think that." It's like, okay, I mean, I can't, I can't engage with that. I think as soon as you get into the discussion, it's over.
23:30 Speaker 01 The only defence of super edgy jokes is getting massive fucking laughs with them. That's the defence.
23:37 Speaker 00 Did they call you into Netflix to meet people from the Romani community? Did they do anything like that? Like, come and sit down?
23:43 Speaker 01 Netflix are like, "Yeah, do your thing. We signed you up. We, okay, this would be great. Do your thing."
23:49 Speaker 00 And it's still on there. Because they said, "Take it down, cut that bit out," but it is still up there.
23:53 Speaker 01 Who said that? Take it down? Nadine Doris?
23:56 Speaker 00 Yeah.
23:57 Speaker 01 You seriously think the guys at Netflix give a fuck about Nadine Doris? Clearly not.
24:01 Speaker 00 Not for me to say.
24:03 Speaker 01 But they, they're doing their thing. That thing of like going, Netflix is kind of serving the artist. So they've, they've come for Netflix a couple of times where they've tried to take stuff down and they've gone, "No, no, that's not where, that's not what we're about."
24:13 Speaker 00 They tried to change the law for a while. Did anything happen? They said, "We should make this illegal."
24:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:18 Speaker 00 The Prime Minister's official spokesman said the government was toughening measures for social media and streaming platforms who don't tackle harmful content. Did they actually change the law?
24:28 Speaker 01 No, they've, they've got to be really careful on that. They've got to be very careful on the on the free speech thing.
24:33 Speaker 00 What was it like to be in the middle of it?
24:35 Speaker 01 I've I've been in it before. I think you have to.
24:37 Speaker 00 You've never.
24:38 Speaker 01 The first time it happens, I think it's very, you think, oh, well, that's that then. I guess. I guess we need another career change. I guess we need to think about something else. It's all over.
24:45 Speaker 00 The first time it happened?
24:46 Speaker 01 The first time was probably a joke about the soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. That was the first time that was like front of the papers.
24:53 Speaker 00 I thought the joke was quite funny.
24:55 Speaker 01 It doesn't stand on whether you think it was funny or not. That can't be the.
24:59 Speaker 00 No, you're right.
24:59 Speaker 01 That's where you always get to with the whoever the minister was at the time, making a comment of, well, I like jokes as much as the next man, but that's not funny.
25:07 Speaker 00 Right.
25:08 Speaker 01 Okay, let's agree to disagree about that. Free speech is you you have to defend what you don't like as well as what you like. You can't just defend the stuff you like. Often think about with comedy, the patron saint of comedy is Saint Lawrence. You know this guy?
25:23 Speaker 00 No.
25:23 Speaker 01 He was killed by like, um, oh, God, I can't remember the emperor's name, but some Roman emperor had him burnt alive over hot coals. And as he was burning alive, the last thing he said was, turn me over, this side's done.
25:40 Speaker 00 That's not true, is it?
25:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's true.
25:42 Speaker 00 Really?
25:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:43 Speaker 00 They had barbecues in those days.
25:44 Speaker 01 Valerian. It's like.
25:46 Speaker 00 Right.
25:46 Speaker 01 Emperor Valerian or something. It couldn't be more Game of Thrones. Turn me over, this side's done. He said, in the face of this. It's so cool, so funny. And that goes to the the Chappelle had a great take on this, which was as comedians, the the joke that makes you roll around laughing and you tell your friends, you can't wait to tell your friends, is the best joke in the world. And the joke that offends you and you think is disgusting comes from the same place. We're trying to make you laugh. Trying to lighten the load of life a little bit. And we're paid for the attempt, like Evel Knievel. We're paid for the attempt. We are not paid for the jump.
26:26 Speaker 01 Sometimes swing and a miss. Sometimes something offends. There's there's thirty other jokes in that show that could be the thing that we're talking about.
26:33 Speaker 00 What about, because we're similar ages. You're like, you were born, what, seventy two?
26:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:38 Speaker 00 Yeah, I was born nineteen seventy. So we grew up sort of the the tail end of, well, black and white minstrels was a thing, right? Uh, on TV. And um, there were comedians like Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson and others whose comedy was, uh. I would guess would now be considered offensive and would make liberal use of stereotypes.
27:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:04 Speaker 00 And then alternative comedy came along, people like Ben Elton and The Young Ones and Rick Mail. And they said, actually, you know what? Comedy should think more carefully about social justice. So in a way, I guess that always became part of my thinking was like, oh, there are, you can make someone laugh and it can still be a bad thing. Because it's bullying, let's say. But it sounds like you're disagreeing with that.
27:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, I think it's all, it's, it's, the comedy world is very broad. I mean, I think it's like you can't really cheat what you find funny. There's that great Titania McGrath line that Andrew Doyle wrote.
27:38 Speaker 00 Titania McGrath is a fictional social justice warrior written by Andrew Doyle.
27:43 Speaker 01 And she had, she had a great line, which was, if you find yourself laughing at a joke, maybe it isn't progressive enough.
27:49 Speaker 00 Yeah.
27:49 Speaker 01 Which is such a great line.
27:51 Speaker 00 Yeah.
27:51 Speaker 01 Such a great line. I don't know, like, you know, I'm not for everyone. I'm pretty, pretty edgy, pretty out there in terms of the stuff I talk about on stage. Saying something's too terrible to joke about is a bit like saying this disease is too terrible to treat. Or you never, you never say that with a, with a journalist. God, I can't believe you covered that story. It's gross. You, you want them to cover those stories.
28:13 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:14 Speaker 01 If anything, you drag them over the coals if they don't cover the terrible stories. You want them to go there.
28:19 Speaker 00 I'm aware that there's things that I might joke about among friends or privately.
28:25 Speaker 01 That you wouldn't say.
28:26 Speaker 00 That I wouldn't say, yeah.
28:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I would say.
28:28 Speaker 00 But that's normal, right?
28:29 Speaker 01 But I would say that what is a comedian, right? What is, and what is friendship? Your best friend is the person you have the lowest filter with.
28:36 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:37 Speaker 01 Virtually no filter is like, that's your best friend in the world. I could tell him anything. Like, that's a, that's a wonderful thing. You want to be a proxy for that for your audience. You want to be that close to them. You want to treat them as friends and you'll be rewarded. They get it. They get when you're serious. They get when you're not serious. I mean, sometimes I say very serious things on stage and people, there's never any confusion. I've never had anyone be confused as, oh, no, that's a serious bit of advice. Or he's chatting to someone there that's going through something. Or, you know, we post these things. People know when it's serious and they know when it's a joke. They can, they can talk freely.
29:08 Speaker 00 Would there ever be a joke you'd think that will get a laugh, but I'm not going to do it?
29:15 Speaker 01 I tend to let the audience decide.
29:16 Speaker 00 Really?
29:18 Speaker 01 In terms of like balance in the show, sometimes there's something where you go, well, there's been too much, there's too much of that in the show already. Okay, so I'll leave that for another time.
29:26 Speaker 00 What are you, are you conscious of trying to balance it out a bit?
29:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think like.
29:30 Speaker 00 So everyone's getting a pop?
29:32 Speaker 01 A kind of subject matter wise, or you know, if you, if you do, you don't want to feel like you're piling on. You kind of want to feel like, well, you've done that and then we do something else and then you kind of want to mix it up a little bit. I think in terms of, also, I'm kind of a one liner guy. One liners are kind of my love language, so, but you don't want to have like two hours of one liners. You want to mix it up and do some crowd work and mess around and tell some stories and you want to have enough kind of different, different kind of rhythms in the show.
30:00 Speaker 00 Who did you watch growing up or who did you enjoy?
30:04 Speaker 01 I mean, Ben Elton would have been a huge influence, like in terms of like going as a stand up comic that came along. And Vic and Bob, I think for my generation were the, they were kind of the punk rock of, of comedy. They were very avant garde.
30:17 Speaker 00 Surrealist, yeah.
30:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, surreal and different and I don't know, it feels like we're kind of, they're extraordinarily influential, I think. Then it would have been like, you know, the Young Ones and the Two Ronnies and things.
30:29 Speaker 00 Because Ben Elton.
30:30 Speaker 01 Ben's still touring.
30:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, Ben's, no, he sort of came back, we live in Australia, we've had Ben on the pod. Ben, I think, would be conscious of power dynamics, he'd be thinking about, actually, is this okay? Has he ever reached out to you? Do you know Ben? Are you friendly with him?
30:42 Speaker 01 I know him pretty well, yeah, but he's great. I saw his last tour. His last tour was like pretty edgy. I mean, he's like, he deals with some difficult stuff and he does it in such a fun way. He's a brilliant comic.
30:53 Speaker 00 He's a brilliant writer and comic. Who else?
30:56 Speaker 01 He doesn't seem to get the props he deserves. I mean, really, he's had his hand in a lot of great stuff.
30:59 Speaker 00 Ask him, he'll tell you that himself. Well, I shouldn't say that, but he's conscious of, I think he does feel a little bit bruised.
31:06 Speaker 01 He hasn't had his flowers.
31:07 Speaker 00 Why not?
31:08 Speaker 01 I don't know.
31:09 Speaker 00 I do.
31:09 Speaker 01 I don't know what it is. I think he's, he should get his flowers.
31:12 Speaker 00 I'll tell you, do you want to know why?
31:13 Speaker 01 He's great.
31:14 Speaker 00 I think you know why.
31:15 Speaker 01 Why? He's too, too left wing, too?
31:17 Speaker 00 No, because, well. Well, because he came up as an alternative comic and then he became enormously successful and, and wrote the Queen musical. And there was some sense of cultural consent or whatever, it was seen as being too close. And, and people felt maybe Stuart Lee was chief among them, that he'd sold out.
31:38 Speaker 00 There was people saw him as a hypocrite.
31:41 Speaker 01 Good luck, everyone. Good luck with that.
31:43 Speaker 00 You've got no time for that.
31:45 Speaker 01 I've got no time. I just think that thing of like the comics criticizing other comics, it strikes me as the narcissism of small differences.
31:51 Speaker 00 Yeah.
31:52 Speaker 01 Like, we're all doing the same job. We're all, you know, we all sort of started off together. Everyone should, you know, get along. If you don't like something, don't watch it, I guess. That would be as far as I would take it in terms of critiquing other performers. If it's not for you, it's not for you. Let people get on with it.
32:07 Speaker 00 What's your writing process?
32:09 Speaker 01 I mean, I think it's like you can have, I think systems better than goals. I think write every day and then try stuff every night. That seems like a pretty good system. So it's just constant, constantly writing new stuff, trying new stuff.
32:24 Speaker 00 Every night you'd write something? Not every night, but most like most working days you'd be there, like.
32:29 Speaker 01 So I get like, at the end of the show, I'll get a piece of paper out at the very end and I'll try like ten new jokes.
32:36 Speaker 00 Really?
32:37 Speaker 01 And some of them will work and some of them won't. And then you're constantly kind of building the next show. So you've got these kind of little building blocks of Lego of like, oh, that's a joke that works and that's a joke that works and what would go well together and what's a good sequence. And so you're constantly, you're never looking at a blank page. You're constantly looking at stuff and writing and trying to, um, trying to improve. And I guess your hit rate gets a little bit better over the years, but not much. I'll write so many jokes that don't work. It's amazing. And you can kind of never really second guess what the audience is going to do. Sometimes you kind of, I think, that should, that should work. But then sometimes it doesn't, you know, you're trying to stick the landing.
33:16 Speaker 00 You have amazing poise on stage and in fact, maybe above the writing is kind of competence that you project. An ability to own the room.
33:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I think that that comes with. I think it's like being an airline pilot. It's like time in the air. I probably have more time, more stage time than anyone else.
33:38 Speaker 00 Do you think?
33:38 Speaker 01 Maybe.
33:39 Speaker 00 You put more hours in than most comics?
33:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, I do maybe a two hour show twice a night, four nights a week. That's a lot of time on stage, uh, holding that. And I also do a lot of audience work. And that's, I think that's like.
33:51 Speaker 00 Crowd work during the, you mean during the show?
33:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, so that thing of like going, the load doesn't get lighter, your back gets stronger. So that thing of like years and years of doing that, you'd get kind of, you get used to being on stage. I mean, I like, in some ways, you're kind of conducting the audience. You're sort of, you do, I do quite a lot of stuff with, I mean, I seem to be standing stock still the whole time. I think that's the impression that I give, but there's quite a lot of stuff going on. It's quite sort of, yeah, it's quite, it's very performative.
34:18 Speaker 00 It's striking, you know, reading about you, reading your book, that's almost Damascene moment that took place when you were twenty six, would you say?
34:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, about that, yeah.
34:27 Speaker 00 When you're working as a marketing guy for Shell and you'd gone to Cambridge, you'd grown up in Slough, west of, notoriously, I shouldn't say this to all my fans in Slough, but it's my word for being kind of a dreadful place, only because of the Bachman poem. It probably is lovely, is it?
34:45 Speaker 01 The Bachman poem and lovely Ricky.
34:47 Speaker 00 Ricky Gervais in the office.
34:49 Speaker 01 And Steve Merchant.
34:49 Speaker 00 Set in Slough.
34:50 Speaker 01 Set in Slough. He could have set it in Reading, Reading where he's from, but he went a little bit closer in, it's better.
34:54 Speaker 00 Come friendly bombs and rain on Slough.
34:56 Speaker 01 And fall on Slough. It isn't fit for humans now. Yeah.
34:59 Speaker 00 There isn't grass to graze a cow. Rain over death or something.
35:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:05 Speaker 00 Lovely.
35:05 Speaker 01 It's not a great review. It's not, it's not on the, we haven't got it on the sign.
35:09 Speaker 00 They don't put that on.
35:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't know, but it's, um, I don't know. I, uh, I mean, I quite like growing up there. Um, but that thing of like, the twenty six is an interesting age because.
35:20 Speaker 00 Quarter life crisis, you called it.
35:21 Speaker 01 Well, but there'll be people listening to this.
35:23 Speaker 00 More of a third life crisis.
35:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, maybe a third life crisis.
35:26 Speaker 00 Last twenty five years of your, if like seventy five to a hundred, not much is happening.
35:29 Speaker 01 Who knows? If Peter Attie is right, maybe we'll be running marathons. Um, I think there's something that we don't talk about, which is the teenage years get a lot of attention, like that, that transition from boy to man.
35:41 Speaker 00 Yeah.
35:41 Speaker 01 But I think there's another transition that happens, I think for women it's twenty four, for men twenty five, when the frontal lobe completes. Where you, there's another kind of waking up that happens mid twenties, that I don't think people talk about very much. I think that's a, it's a really interesting phase where you kind of become yourself a bit more.
35:58 Speaker 00 Yeah.
35:59 Speaker 01 And you stop, you kind of wake up and look around, right, what are we doing?
36:02 Speaker 00 And if you're working as a marketing guy for Shell.
36:05 Speaker 01 Well, I had, I had very little agency though. I hadn't really made a decision until, until I decided to be a comedian. That's really the first decision I made in life.
36:12 Speaker 00 I've heard you say that.
36:13 Speaker 01 Everything else was like the line of least resistance.
36:15 Speaker 00 Four A's at A level, right?
36:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:18 Speaker 00 That's, you must be smart.
36:20 Speaker 01 What, to get A levels?
36:22 Speaker 00 You've got four A's though, at your A levels, no?
36:26 Speaker 01 I think I might have got five, but I don't count general studies.
36:29 Speaker 00 Stop it.
36:29 Speaker 01 General studies is, I mean, that's a grift. It's nothing.
36:32 Speaker 00 No one gets five A levels.
36:34 Speaker 01 It's, but it's.
36:35 Speaker 00 Have you had your IQ, your IQ tested?
36:38 Speaker 01 I'm sure it's.
36:39 Speaker 00 Very high.
36:40 Speaker 01 I'm sure it ain't nothing special. But IQ and education, it's not a good, I don't know if it's.
36:45 Speaker 00 No, it's bullshit.
36:46 Speaker 01 It is.
36:47 Speaker 00 IQ's a dodgy metric.
36:48 Speaker 01 Really?
36:49 Speaker 00 Um, so you went up to Cambridge, did it, was there no one trying to recruit you for footlights?
36:55 Speaker 01 No, but I was there around the same times like Dan Mazer and Sacha Baron Cohen and that, that crew, yeah.
36:59 Speaker 00 Dan Mazer, who was Sacha's writer and partner in crime, right?
37:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, um, so I knew a few of those guys, they were fun.
37:05 Speaker 00 But then, were you not thinking, oh, I'd love to be, you know, I'm creative, I wanna, you know, I'm a bit funny with my friends. Maybe I'll get a job that will.
37:14 Speaker 01 I don't think I was.
37:15 Speaker 00 What were you thinking?
37:16 Speaker 01 I, I, I really hadn't given it enough thought. And I think we, we don't spend enough time on, like, careers advisors are the worst people in the world, right? Because it's a guy that ended up being a careers advisor. So by dint of that, you go, well, this, this guy shouldn't be giving anyone advice. This guy's a fucking idiot. I think careers advisor should be a bit like jury service.
37:38 Speaker 00 Yeah.
37:39 Speaker 01 I think, you know, you should get a letter in the post, ah, I've got to go and speak to eighteen year olds for three hours. Fuck. And then you have to go and talk to them and go, okay, well, here's the risk I took. What do you want to do in life and what are you willing to sacrifice to be a person that you admire? What are you willing to give up?
37:59 Speaker 00 That's why we go and talk in schools, isn't it? And.
38:03 Speaker 01 You're not allowed in schools, are you? After the incident?
38:06 Speaker 00 That's putting that behind me.
38:08 Speaker 01 Okay.
38:09 Speaker 00 So you you went into it, you you basically attacked it.
38:12 Speaker 01 Did you sort of? I took it very seriously because from the off.
38:15 Speaker 00 You had a bit of money, like you got your redundancy or whatever.
38:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, I had like I had like a year's like float. I was able to kind of sustain myself and I I viewed it like. I think if I'd done it straight from college, I might have thought this is a this is a childish thing and I need to grow up and get a proper job. And I was suddenly introduced to the Edinburgh Festival at like twenty six, twenty five, maybe. Went up there and went, sorry, went. I didn't know any of this was going on. I didn't know.
38:41 Speaker 00 Was this after you quit or before?
38:42 Speaker 01 This was after I'd.
38:44 Speaker 00 Quit Shell.
38:45 Speaker 01 Quit Shell, went up to the Edinburgh Festival. Um, the first year I went up there, I went up there with um, Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant and Robin Ince. And we went up and did a show together.
38:54 Speaker 00 Did you?
38:55 Speaker 01 And we all did sort of twenty minutes in the show and then the office hit that summer.
38:59 Speaker 00 What was the first joke you wrote? Can you remember that you performed like or the first one you delivered or?
39:04 Speaker 01 I do remember it was about being working class kids talking about, you know, getting being boxers. And they always talk about there's only one way out. I was growing up, I was very middle class. We lived in a cul-de-sac. There was only one way out. It's a perfectly serviceable joke shaped thing. It's sort of they're like crossword puzzles and I sort of view jokes as being they're little. It almost feels like they're there and you're trying to chisel away everything that isn't the joke. You're trying to get it down to as few words as possible to get the meaning across, to get someone to have this reaction to laugh. And I just found that it was that, you know, Naval Ravikant thing of like going. It's about what could you stand to do for ten thousand hours? What is?
39:47 Speaker 00 Who was Naval? Come on, now you're just making them up.
39:50 Speaker 01 Naval Ravikant is brilliant, one of the most brilliant people in the world.
39:53 Speaker 00 Well, is he a sociologist?
39:55 Speaker 01 I know he's a he's like a business investor.
39:57 Speaker 00 Really?
39:58 Speaker 01 And he's just a very wise man and he shares it. He's very open.
40:02 Speaker 00 Nice.
40:02 Speaker 01 But his thing is like you find something that is um, work for them and play for you.
40:09 Speaker 01 That's like, don't, don't follow your dreams, follow your talents.
40:12 Speaker 00 Yeah.
40:12 Speaker 01 What do you find easy that everyone else seems to find difficult? Follow that. That's good. And I could do this thing. I could kind of, I could write jokes and I could do that thing.
40:22 Speaker 00 You know, I'm still thinking about what we were talking about earlier and that idea of comedy. And comedy is a sort of special realm. It's like, you know, comedy takes place with its own logic in some ways. At the same time, comedy is part of life. Someone once said to me, there's no such thing as a joke, which is an intriguing, challenging, you could say.
40:39 Speaker 01 They sound fun.
40:40 Speaker 00 Paradoxical observation, but I think what it meant was every, you can't just remove jokes from the realm of the rest of reality. And like, some things take place on the edge of being jokes. But certainly, especially once you're offstage, you might just be communicating in ways that slip in and out of a kind of comic register, right? These aren't tightly defined areas of discourse. Does that make sense? And, and I'm struck sometimes, well, when you do your crowd work, you're walking this line between making funny observations of people, sometimes humorously insulting them, but you deliver in a way that is funny most of the time, right?
41:22 Speaker 01 I mean, I hope so, but sometimes, and sometimes it's serious. Sometimes there's like a serious interaction. Sometimes it's like, it's combative. Sometimes it's like, there's a. There's a big difference between someone heckling, joining in at the show. Heckling means we need kind of separate terms because heckling feels like, especially in America, people don't want to join in because they think, they've been told in clubs, don't talk, don't join in, he's doing his act and you're watching the act. And I'm very much sing along. Play with me, but fine. It's very, very clear when I'm doing, you know, performing jokes in the show. And when it's like, yeah, join in, have fun.
41:58 Speaker 00 And you do crowd work and there's, there's compilations of your working, your, your crowd work or dealing with heckles. And they're not heckles. In fact, you've invited the interaction. And because it's quite clear that you're in a real setting where you might have some prepped stuff, but. You're deploying it in a way that's organic and spontaneous? Or you're just coming up with stuff on the spot with whoever you're talking to? Like, what's your job?
42:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that's the fun of it, is the improv stuff. It's like asking a magician to do real magic. Everyone's suspending disbelief. So for the first 20 minutes, when I go out for the big shows, I'll do 20 minutes of just probably four jokes a minute, four big laughs a minute, what you're solving for, and you're absolutely beating people over the head.
42:41 Speaker 00 And they're memorized.
42:42 Speaker 01 You're trying to get them to a step. And everyone knows this is pre-prepared material. He isn't just thinking of this off the top of his head. So you're trying to get people to release dopamine and serotonin, right? Essentially, I'm a drug dealer.
42:53 Speaker 00 Yes.
42:54 Speaker 01 And those are the drugs that I'm dealing in, serotonin and dopamine. And it's a variable reward system. So that idea of it's varied rewards. You don't quite know when the punch is coming. You kind of know, you know, something's coming. But somehow, it's the sudden revelation of a previously concealed fact.
43:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
43:10 Speaker 01 Is how they kind of work. And you're doing this, and then you get to this space where, okay, right, we've all established this is going to be a fun night. Let's join in. And then people mess around and challenge you to stuff. And sometimes someone asks something poignant and interesting and beautiful. And sometimes it can be funny, and it's great. You're light in shade, and all life can be there.
43:54 Speaker 00 Eight out of 10 cats do countdown. I've never re-watched it on TV, and then I watched a compilation. I know, like, it's so fucking embarrassing.
44:01 Speaker 01 No, why? Why is that embarrassing?
44:02 Speaker 00 I don't know.
44:03 Speaker 01 We're friends, you don't have to watch my stuff.
44:04 Speaker 00 It makes me sound like, well, I'm too busy reading Proust and studying up on my Latin.
44:08 Speaker 01 You can't read.
44:10 Speaker 00 Now it's out there.
44:11 Speaker 01 I take that countdown. I watched it.
44:13 Speaker 00 I watched a compilation of it this morning is where I'm going and it was so funny.
44:16 Speaker 01 When, when.
44:17 Speaker 00 That show is gonna be a hit.
44:19 Speaker 01 Thanks, man.
44:20 Speaker 00 I'm, I'm, seriously, mark my words.
44:22 Speaker 01 We're 180 episodes in.
44:24 Speaker 00 You're really good on it and fingers crossed it gets renewed.
44:27 Speaker 01 Thanks, man. It's good. It's really good fun. Really good fun.
44:30 Speaker 00 Elon Musk. How well do you know him?
44:33 Speaker 01 Uh, I've met him a couple of times. I don't know him well.
44:36 Speaker 00 No one knows him well.
44:38 Speaker 01 I mean, I think he's really, he's a really interesting character because he is, he's McNamara, isn't he? If you think about McNamara and the fog of war. So McNamara.
44:45 Speaker 00 Robert McNamara, the secretary of defence during the Vietnam War.
44:49 Speaker 01 Yes, he ran the Ford Motor Company.
44:51 Speaker 00 He's always coming up in this podcast.
44:52 Speaker 01 He ran the Ford Motor Company.
44:54 Speaker 00 That's right.
44:54 Speaker 01 And then he got a call from JFK saying, will you come in and help me run the government? And that's, it's kind of exactly the same thing.
45:02 Speaker 00 Engineering principles.
45:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, Elon Musk got, got brought in by Trump to, you know, engineering principle the, the, uh, the government. I mean, these are very strange times. This is.
45:13 Speaker 00 Have you met Trump?
45:14 Speaker 01 No.
45:15 Speaker 00 Have you met Peter Thiel?
45:16 Speaker 01 No, I never met Peter Thiel. I know.
45:18 Speaker 00 You know who I mean, though.
45:19 Speaker 01 I know Eric Weinstein very well. He used to work with Peter. Um.
45:22 Speaker 00 Eric Weinstein is an academic? What was his?
45:24 Speaker 01 Physicist.
45:25 Speaker 00 Physicist?
45:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, very good physicist.
45:27 Speaker 00 Who became a figure of sort of intellectual and cultural pundit, sort of on the right, I would say.
45:34 Speaker 01 Uh, I wouldn't say that. I'd say he's, um, he was kind of the intellectual dark web. That's what they call it. He was, he coined, he coined the phrase, I believe.
45:41 Speaker 00 Did he?
45:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:42 Speaker 00 Sometimes called heterodox thinkers. People who are outside the constraints of what would be perceived as sort of conventional liberal orthodoxy.
45:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, but that's kind of, that's the interesting place at the moment of going, well, what's, what's going on in the world? Like the, the, the Trump phenomenon, I find. Fascinating, but very, you know, it's very troubling because it's a huge change, a huge shift. And really, the tectonic plates of politics have shifted. The Hillary's deplorable speech is kind of the crux, right? So the idea that somewhere the parties on the left, which were the parties of the working classes, became, people talk about gentrification of neighborhoods. I think those political parties became gentrified and stopped talking to the working classes. And now the working classes look to the right wing parties.
46:33 Speaker 01 That's a big shift in politics. We've, you know, been around fifty years and we haven't seen anything like that happen before. That's a huge shift politically. And I'm not sure what happens now. I think you, I don't think it's a question of like, we can live without institutions. I think we need to rebuild our institutions. But you look at something like the UN and you go, well, Russia and China have got seats at the table. We're in a war with them. And India doesn't have a seat at the table. Nigeria doesn't have a seat at the table. Japan, Germany, no seats at the table. It's crazy. So those institutions will be rebuilt and, you know, the world will turn and, you know, things will be all right. It's also like, I'm quite optimistic about the world.
47:17 Speaker 01 I do think it's like, it's better than it was, but it's still very troubling and very, so many things are in flux at the moment.
47:24 Speaker 00 That all may be the case. I definitely see social media as being, and the internet as being a huge part of what's happening. And when you mention mainstream media being disrupted, obviously, and I don't see like the BBC or legacy media as being replaced. I think they now have to exist in a jungle alongside all the other beasts, if you like, big beasts of Spotify, Netflix, TikTok and so on. So, you know, the mainstream or legacy outlets still have enormous influence, but, and as does academia, but they don't monopolize the conversation the way they did. And I also think like the idea of like fifty years ago or thirty-five, forty years ago.
48:06 Speaker 00 Many of the same ideas existed, you know, Trumpism, it wasn't called that, but there was a sort of nativist outlook that was embodied by certain politicians, but it tended to be gate-kept out of the conversation to an extent.
48:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, it's also that thing of like, when you talk about the foundation myth, you go, well, why, why was America so productive, the post-war, why was it so productive? Everything's about geography in the world, right? Everything's about geography until it isn't, and then everything's about Shakespeare and personalities. But America is uniquely blessed in terms of its geographical, so it can afford to have a kind of crazy political system. But that, that politics in the 50s and 60s and 70s, well, those guys had all served together. That all the politicians had been in the same uniform, in the same war, and so they worked together. So the guys across the aisle were not enemies. There's, I mean, I think the issue really is there's too much debate going on in the
49:00 Speaker 01 world, and debate is about winning, and there's not enough deliberation. They're kind of conflated words, but too much debate, winning, owning the other guy, and lots of stuff on the internet about, oh, that guy owned that guy in that debate, or that comedian owned that heckler. Fine with a heckler, but like, if it's something serious, you want deliberation. The world that I see is 80% of people agree about 80% of everything, maybe 90% of people agree, and then you've got the extremes on the left and the right, and they think the other one's the problem. But there's, there's real problems in the world, and how do you address them? How do you get to that? Okay, let's talk about the solutions now, rather than blaming the other side.
49:37 Speaker 00 True, politics is a nice segue. We can touch this or not, I'll be guided by you. The Riyadh Comedy Festival was in the news.
49:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, I, I played it, I loved it.
49:48 Speaker 00 So I hear.
49:49 Speaker 01 I loved it. I, I thought, I think we need to-
49:51 Speaker 00 Some comedians, oh, I'll say, like, but it was controversial.
49:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
49:55 Speaker 00 Because of the human rights record of Saudi Arabia, there's been a lot about so-called sports washing, I guess this would have been perceived as laughter washing, or I don't know what. Some comedians elected to stay away and spoke out about it. Shane Gillis, very funny man.
50:08 Speaker 01 Oh, love him.
50:09 Speaker 00 Theo Von, I think, did he, but he didn't speak out. Marc Maron spoke out. Did anyone else? A couple of others, maybe.
50:16 Speaker 01 I like Marc a lot. I mean, I like all those guys a lot. Yeah. Some people didn't want to go, fine.
50:20 Speaker 00 It was rumored that they were being spent between 250,000 to more than a million, I think.
50:27 Speaker 01 On what, on what people got paid?
50:28 Speaker 00 Yes. Yeah. How much were you, how much were you paid, Jimmy?
50:32 Speaker 01 Okay, I was, I was paid, I would say a commensurate amount with selling out an eight thousand seater room. So.
50:38 Speaker 00 It's a big room.
50:39 Speaker 01 I didn't got paid, I, I earned it, is, is what happened. But here's the thing, I think we need to give up on the idea that the Middle East becomes Western Europe. The Middle East is a very different place. And the same people that will tell you diversity is our strength will tell you, don't go there, they're not like us. And the thing that I like about Saudi Arabia is the direction of travel. Look at where it was 10 years ago, look at where it is now. The, the direction of travel is, is pretty good, like where they go. They clearly, they kind of want to be Dubai, which you could have said this about Dubai 25 years ago, don't go there, they're not like us. You go, it's a different culture, a different way of, you know,
51:17 Speaker 01 of, of conducting a society. So the idea of going, don't go there because they're not like us, well, I play 50 countries around the world, I don't, I, I'll go, I'll go where the audience.
51:27 Speaker 00 Louis CK went?
51:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, we played, we played the same, we played the same night, we did a double header.
51:31 Speaker 00 Did you?
51:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:32 Speaker 00 Are you friends with Louis?
51:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:35 Speaker 00 He, he got into some hot water, he's, by the way, I'd love to have him on the podcast. Would you say he got cancelled?
51:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, I'd say that, I don't think that's fair to say. He's not on legacy media anymore. So I think that's a form of cancellation. I, I think some people would argue that you're not cancelled unless you lose everything. But I think it's, he's still got his audience, he's still got the people that love him and want to go and see him.
52:01 Speaker 00 Well, I think part of the issue we're up against is the word cancelled. And I'm not going to be that guy who says it's not cancelled culture, it's consequence culture. I just mean that it's so binary.
52:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, but there, there is that thing with like, you go, it's freedom of speech. Yeah, but you have to deal with the consequences. You know, if you're going to say that, you've got to be, you know, you've got to be willing to say it and go, yeah, I don't, I don't regret telling that joke, that's fine. Some people really were upset by it, that's okay. That's, look, I've got the people that come and see me and they really like that stuff. And I've got to serve them, not someone else. Not Nadeed Dorries or whatever she was called.
52:38 Speaker 01 I don't give a fuck what she thinks.
52:40 Speaker 00 Do you, have you ever lost work over a joke?
52:44 Speaker 01 Who knows? I suppose it's that thing of going, how much more successful could I be were I to cut out the 10% most offensive stuff? Could have been a bigger mainstream hit. Yeah, probably, but I don't want to be a grifter. I don't want to sell you something that I wouldn't buy myself. If I'm not for me, who is?
53:10 Speaker 00 Your book is a self-help book. Nevertheless, there's
53:14 Speaker 01 That's not what they wanted.
53:15 Speaker 00 Well,
53:16 Speaker 01 They wanted a celeb biography and I kind of went, I really don't care about that.
53:19 Speaker 00 You didn't. And I think, nevertheless, there is self-revelation in there.
53:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's a few kind of bits in there, but I mean, it's really, I kind of, I thought it was, the idea of doing a sort of self-help book for people that wouldn't necessarily read a self-help book.
53:35 Speaker 00 I got that.
53:35 Speaker 01 I sort of think I'm quite aware of like
53:37 Speaker 00 There's some great quotes in there that you found from people.
53:41 Speaker 01 I love a good quote.
53:42 Speaker 00 Things that have helped you through life. You talk about your relationship with your mum. You lost her to cancer when you were a
53:47 Speaker 01 No, pancreatitis.
53:48 Speaker 00 Pancreatitis. What is that?
53:51 Speaker 01 It's when your pancreas stops working.
53:52 Speaker 00 I thought that was a kind of cancer.
53:55 Speaker 01 A slightly different thing, but yeah, it's pretty, that was pretty, it's a lot.
53:59 Speaker 00 Here, I'm going to throw a few things out there and you can pick up from this whatever you like.
54:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, sure.
54:02 Speaker 00 You said when mum died, you were very close to her. Your parents had separated. I don't know if they were divorced. I don't think they were divorced. They were separated. You talk about almost being overly close. You said, when mum died, I was lost. We were close. I suppose the therapist would tell you I was enmeshed. A surrogate partner for my mother. Maybe, maybe we were too close, but I don't see it negatively.
54:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, so we were in a very close relationship and you don't know what normal is.
54:25 Speaker 00 Partly because your dad was gone, do you think?
54:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, emotionally absent, certainly. You don't know what normal is, right? As a kid, it's your house is your house. How you live is how you live. How you play, what you eat, whatever, it's just normal to you. And I think sort of stepping back at that and looking as an adult, you go, well, that's probably a lot of oversharing there going on. And actually, I just needed to be a kid, but whatever.
54:47 Speaker 00 Oversharing about what?
54:49 Speaker 01 Everything, life.
54:50 Speaker 00 Really?
54:51 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I was very aware that my mother was
54:54 Speaker 00 You said she was depressive.
54:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, so she was, I mean, very severely depressed and getting no help at all. So I thought it was very normal for your mum to be in her dressing gown when you got home from school and hadn't been able to get herself out of bed. I thought that was just absolutely, yeah, yeah, mums are tired. And you kind of look back and go, oh, just like a therapist would have been something. But there was no access to that and no real, I don't know. I feel in a sense like I let her down because because I didn't help in any practical way. I didn't I didn't have what I have now, didn't have access to, I didn't know what was going on.
55:33 Speaker 00 What kind of help could you have given though?
55:34 Speaker 01 I think just to point in a direction, I think sometimes it's just the idea of going, you need to go and see a doctor, you need to go and see, you need a medication, you need something here. Like any kind of intervention. She didn't take care of herself.
55:50 Speaker 00 Were you having to be a relationship counselor as well?
55:54 Speaker 01 In a sense, but I mean, not, listen, this was, I did not have a tough childhood or a tough break. I had a lucky break. My mother was incredibly funny. She had a thing called narcolepsy, which is a sleep disorder, but it also affects.
56:08 Speaker 00 Cataclyptic nar- narcolepsy.
56:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, so she had like a laugh where she would make no noise at all, but she would kind of melt. If you made her laugh, she would like literally lose muscular control and just melt. So my whole child, I mean, the whole reason I'm a comedian, I think, is clearly linked to making my mum laugh was the funniest thing in the world. It was just joyful.
56:29 Speaker 00 They were both Irish born?
56:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, and you could bring, you could bring her, yeah, from Limerick, another, and then they moved to Slough.
56:36 Speaker 00 Well, look, you said my mum's dead, my dad's dead to me. I thought that was a big thing to put in the book, geez.
56:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, it sounds harsh.
56:45 Speaker 01 Yeah. I think it's okay though, I think it's, I get a lot from Al-Anon. They've got some great lines, they've got great lines in, I really like AA as well, I really like AA language. I drink a little bit myself, but I like the language of that. And they talk about detach with love.
56:59 Speaker 00 One of the most spiritual places you'll go is an AA meeting.
57:01 Speaker 01 Amazing, but detaching with love. You don't, you don't need to hate someone, you don't need to wish them ill, but I have that, he's not in my life, he hasn't been in my life for twenty five years.
57:12 Speaker 00 That much?
57:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, I haven't seen him since I was twenty six, something like that. But it's okay. It's all right. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. I think it's, I think there's a statute of limitations on your parents being the problem. I think an eighteen year old telling me, uh, listen, I'm sorry, I was, uh, I'm sorry about that, but my parents were terrible. Seems fair.
57:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
57:34 Speaker 01 I think a forty year old saying that is fucking tragic. And I don't know where we draw the line, but the answer is somewhere.
57:41 Speaker 00 Do you ever?
57:42 Speaker 01 Somewhere it's no longer acceptable to.
57:43 Speaker 00 Of course.
57:44 Speaker 01 Like, I mean, you bring it up, but I mean, really, who, who fucking cares? I'm a grown man.
57:49 Speaker 00 You've got two kids now, though, and there's a part of me thinking, well, that, that's gonna be so meaningful for your father. Like, the idea of having a relationship with his grandkids and that might be meaningful for those kids when they're, they're a little older as well.
58:04 Speaker 00 I mean, is there, I sense there's not a road back, maybe.
58:08 Speaker 01 I don't think so. I don't think so. But that's okay. I'm all right with that. Accept the apology that you're never gonna get. And move on.
58:20 Speaker 00 You talked about father figures. Um, this is an awkward segue, but I know that Jordan Peterson's been somewhat meaningful for you. Is that fair to say?
58:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, I like Jordan a lot. I think Jordan is trying to help, uh, a lot of people. And he's very, uh, authentic. He's very, he's very, he just says what he thinks. I think he's, he's, he's a good guy. I mean, a lot of people think he's the worst, but, you know, but okay.
58:44 Speaker 00 Yeah, he, for, for many, he's viewed as a sort of manosphere figure, which I think is overstated. You know, the idea that, oh, he's like Andrew Tate, you know, people see him on an axis with that.
58:55 Speaker 01 That's fucking lunacy.
58:56 Speaker 00 Which seems extreme. Nevertheless, he's clearly, he's, he's said a few things, partly, I think it's a symptom of. Being overactive on Twitter or X maybe.
59:05 Speaker 01 But is that not a, I mean, to conflate those two just seems, that seems quite mad to me. It feels like that's kind of a concept creep. If you put everyone in the same brackets, like it loses, it loses meaning, right?
59:18 Speaker 00 He came to, he's a Canadian psychology professor specializing in a lot of Jungian type, type disciplines.
59:27 Speaker 00 Nevertheless, he came to fame relatively late in life through YouTube lectures, having gone semi-viral or achieved some notoriety because he resisted compelled pronouns. He said like, I'm not taking a view on whether it's right or wrong to call yourself by a certain pronoun of your choosing. He just said, I don't want to be compelled to use your pronouns.
59:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, I believe his stance was, I will do that with an individual because that's the polite thing to do. But I'm not in favor of compelled speech.
59:52 Speaker 00 What do you think he's, you're getting from him in general? Like, what do you think is like his key, the key takeaway?
59:58 Speaker 01 I think, I mean, it's, it's, it's an awful lot. It's like, I'm not signing off on, on everything he's ever said. But I think if you're a young man in search of something, I'd say he's quite a positive force. The 12 rules thing is, you know, that's quite positive.
1:00:11 Speaker 00 You've become quite friendly with, with Jordan?
1:00:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, I know, yeah. I see him when we're in the same city, we'll have dinner, well, he'll come, come to a show.
1:00:19 Speaker 00 I wonder how he identifies politically. Is he swimming quite close to Trump at this point?
1:00:25 Speaker 01 I don't know. I, I mean, I don't, I think he's, he'd be.
1:00:29 Speaker 00 He took work with Ben Shapiro, didn't he, on The Daily Wire?
1:00:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I think that's, you know, that's all right.
1:00:35 Speaker 00 I feel like you're on the edge of coming out politically, but maybe not, maybe I'm.
1:00:41 Speaker 01 Well, I'm like, I'm, I'm a creature of the left, but I don't like where the left has gone in terms of going that, that idea of the, leaving the working classes behind, leaving the original kind of Marxist ideas behind of the redistribution of wealth. Like, I think there needs to be a redistribution. But for me, it isn't from rich to poor, it's from old to young. I think we need to deal young people in to society. Like, if I was going to run for office, my thing would be, okay, no one under 30 pays any tax. We have to give them a little head start. They have to be allowed to buy a house and start a family. Just that, that's what society is for. And the whole of our political system is sort of solving for the old, which is, I don't know.
1:01:25 Speaker 01 I don't think it's going to work long term. It's it's striking, you know, reading about you, reading your book.
1:01:33 Speaker 00 The kind of the most mind blowing thing in your book is learning that you were a virgin till you were twenty six.
1:01:39 Speaker 01 That's the most mind blowing thing?
1:01:40 Speaker 00 I would say.
1:01:41 Speaker 01 No, I think you take away, take away fame and fortune.
1:01:44 Speaker 00 You're a good looking guy.
1:01:45 Speaker 01 Stop at you, stop flirting.
1:01:47 Speaker 00 Intelligent, you went to university, right? You have a lot to offer.
1:01:52 Speaker 01 Thank you.
1:01:53 Speaker 00 This sounds like the wind up to a joke and it isn't.
1:01:55 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, but I think it's very good to talk about this because I think there's, there is a lot of pressure on young men to lose their virginity and feel like they're, it's that weird thing at the moment where the world is um harems and peepholes.
1:02:11 Speaker 01 It's a very small percentage of men getting all the girls and everyone else is hopelessly addicted to porn. And I think it's very good to be open about it and say, not everyone develops at the same time. I had a, you know, I was enmeshed with my mother and maybe that was, you know, a part of it. I'm sure that's what a psychotherapist would say and you go, you don't find the person till you find the person. You don't feel, you don't love yourself, you don't like who you are particularly.
1:02:35 Speaker 00 What does that mean enmeshed?
1:02:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think you're emotionally kind of unavailable.
1:02:38 Speaker 00 Really?
1:02:39 Speaker 01 I don't think you're very attractive when you're in your early twenties to women because really, if you, if you had to sort of summarize what women find attractive, it's competence, being good at something. Guys get attractive around thirty because they start to get good at something. It seems like it's shallow, but I don't think it is. I think it's.
1:02:57 Speaker 00 But I feel that when we were growing up, it seemed, I mean, I, this is TMI, I'm sure. I'd lost my virginity when I was seventeen, which felt quite late, you know, in my peer group. You, there was, that guy was like, oh, I lost mine at fourteen, I'm really sixteen. And then I was like seventeen, got it in finally.
1:03:14 Speaker 01 Who was the lucky guy?
1:03:16 Speaker 00 Thank you.
1:03:16 Speaker 01 There you go, there's a joke. Yeah, but that thing of going, okay, it's, it's, but it is what it is.
1:03:22 Speaker 00 Were you, were you trying?
1:03:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, I had some intimate relationships, but I just didn't have.
1:03:26 Speaker 00 Was Christian, you were a committed Christian, was that part of it?
1:03:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that was part of it, yeah.
1:03:31 Speaker 00 Want to make it forever? Were you like one of the?
1:03:33 Speaker 01 I think that kind of, that was a part of it certainly. It's almost like. Unrecognisable now to look back because that thing that I was saying earlier about when you're kind of twenty five and you feel like you're suddenly yourself, there's kind of a waking up mid twenties. And I feel like I was quite a religious guy growing up. I was Christian and then I had a close relationship with my mother. This is not, you're not a qualified therapist. Why am I telling you this?
1:03:54 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
1:03:55 Speaker 01 Um, but that thing of like going, it's okay. It's like happens at different times. It's not a race.
1:04:01 Speaker 00 No.
1:04:02 Speaker 01 But I think a good thing to talk about.
1:04:03 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:04:04 Speaker 01 Because it feels like people don't talk about that. And it feels like there's a perception that everyone else is having more fun than you. I think now more than ever with social media, the comparison is the thief of joy. Everyone is having a fucking amazing time online.
1:04:18 Speaker 00 Would you look back and say like, what was holding you back? Like, what would you say to your younger self? Like, get a grip, man. Get out there.
1:04:25 Speaker 01 No. No, I'd say, I'd say, this is great. Just do this. You'll like who you are. Don't worry.
1:04:33 Speaker 01 You know, because there's also that thing of like, you go, losing your virginity at twenty six makes me more OG incel. But you go, there's another side of that where you go, I've had an amazing life. So you can't pick and choose the bits of like, that thing, if you're gonna be, if you're gonna go, well, what if I was different there? Well, maybe I wouldn't have, maybe I wouldn't have had the ambition to get on stage and to, to try and be something and to try and get really good at something because I felt like I needed to impress. I thought that would be the impressive thing. You go, okay, well, that's, that's valid. It's like, I, I don't quite know what the impetus was to make me wanna do this thing. That's clearly terrifying. Stand up in front of people and tell jokes for two hours. But something did. And maybe that was a bit of it. That's okay. Use it.
1:05:18 Speaker 01 It's all good. It's all in the mix. So I think going back and changing stuff is like, hmm.
1:05:23 Speaker 00 Sounds like you weren't trying that hard to lose your virginity.
1:05:28 Speaker 01 No, I don't think I was, but it's also in a Bill Clinton terms. Yeah, there was some stuff going on. Don't panic.
1:05:35 Speaker 00 Right.
1:05:36 Speaker 01 But then, there was a, there was a block there.
1:05:39 Speaker 00 I think a lot of kids are not having sex now.
1:05:42 Speaker 01 Yes. Well, I think it's, it's again, it's, it's the harems and peeples. It's five percent of the people online are having a great time. And ninety five percent of people are having a terrible time.
1:05:55 Speaker 01 I'd love it if there was some kind of dating thing associated with shows.
1:06:00 Speaker 01 I'd love it if you could get people to date at your, at my show. Because I do think, well, I would say, I would say sense of humour is the thing.
1:06:08 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:06:09 Speaker 01 That thing of like, if you can laugh together. If you, if you laugh at the same things, if you find the same stuff funny, if you have a little sense of humour, like in jokes that just organically come between. That's the long term. That's how you build a reservoir of goodwill. That's going to be a relationship that's going to last for years. Because you can get through anything if you can laugh together.
1:06:30 Speaker 00 I agree. That's what's keeping, well, among other, many other things, uh, keeping me and my wife together. For sure. That's a big part of it. I can still make her laugh and.
1:06:43 Speaker 01 Not, not with reading my jokes, you can't.
1:06:47 Speaker 00 I wouldn't try that. I think we might be good, man.
1:06:51 Speaker 01 So really, it's so lovely to sit down with you.
1:06:54 Speaker 00 Likewise.
1:06:54 Speaker 01 It's just such a nice, I don't know. It's cool.
1:06:57 Speaker 00 You're welcome back anytime.
1:07:00 Speaker 01 I think it'd be weird if I like did like three in a row. How far could I take that?
1:07:03 Speaker 00 There'd be questions about that.
1:07:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:18 Speaker 00 Welcome back. Shall I stop doing that?
1:07:23 Speaker 00 What did you think? I liked it. I'm answering my own question. Thanks to Jimmy for coming on the podcast. A few notes. These are my footnotes. Punching up, punching down. Look, respect to Jimmy for making no bones of the fact that he thinks it's a, a fallacious or kind of flawed or bogus analytical term. And I do agree that where is up and down, right? You're saying like upstairs and downs there. Well, I know that, but in, in power relations, it's not always that clear. You know, it's like the term elite. Who's in the elite other than me? You know, we're told that the elite is this sort of, uh, woke liberal consensus sometimes by populists, but.
1:08:08 Speaker 00 But they would say that they're not the elite and the elite is the oligarchs who are funding the populist movements. You know what I mean? Am I getting too political? I'm moving on. I said, "There's no such thing as a joke," and I couldn't remember who said it. I Googled it. It said Freud might have said it, and then I re-Googled it, and I don't know if Freud did say it. I don't know if anyone has really actually said it, like, in writing. Nevertheless, it gets repeated quite a bit and is sometimes attributed to Sigmund Freud. And it does bear on, I suppose, an idea of Freud's, which is that all jokes carry some sort of emotional charge, and that they are giving vent to something forbidden,
1:08:51 Speaker 00 that there's a tension release. So they're not benign or pallid expressions of some sort of neutral language game, that they are actually a truthful expression of some deeper sense of conflict, or turmoil, or anxiety. So there you are. I said I made that up, and there's more stuff on the teleprompter, whatever we're calling that thing. I think I said it better than Freud. Jimmy said, "The world is harems and peepholes." Harems are obviously gatherings of women, stables of women, often at the courts of Ottoman sultans that were
1:09:32 Speaker 00 at their disposal. Peepholes are small holes through which you peep. And that's a metaphor, I think, for social media. So many peepholes singing. And that will be featured on the album. We've done that joke. It was blur. You got that part live. All the peepholes, harems and peepholes. I just freestyled that. We don't even write this shit down. Except for this bit. And with that, all there is to say, thank you for listening this year.
1:10:14 Speaker 00 Brackets. Millie's written some LT sincerity, question mark, question mark, question mark. Can you perform some sincerity? No, but seriously, folks.
1:10:25 Speaker 00 It's been a big year for the pod. I'm reading this. I can't pretend that I care what you think. Too much honesty. Has the masks slipped? But seriously, folks, thank you for listening and watching. What a year it's been. I'll let you cast your minds back. It seems a long time ago when we had Armie Hammer. We spent a long time trying to think of how we would describe him for our intro and we settled on actor and figure of some controversy. It took about an hour to think of that. Florence Pugh, Brian Johnson's nighttime erections is the name of my jazz combo.
1:11:07 Speaker 00 Other highlights, I went to LA for Sean Penn, interviewed him in Malibu. We became friends. Well, I won't say we didn't become friends, but I haven't seen him since, Sean, if you're out there. You know, we could hang. Other favourite moments?
1:11:29 Speaker 00 You can't really have favourites. It's like favourite children. It's not that you don't have them, you just don't like to say which ones it is. It's like they used to say, there was a certain airline, I can't even remember which one it was, and they'd say, we understand here at United, I guess it was United, that you have a choice. So thank you for choosing us. We understand that the Louis Thru podcast, that you have a choice. It's a crowded landscape. There's a lot of podcasts out there. Some of them are actually pretty good. So thank you for choosing us.
1:12:03 Speaker 00 Me. Thank you to Spotify. Right? Why not? It's Christmas. Thank you to Millie. She's down there. Thank you to everyone, the production elves who slave behind the scenes. Can I say slave? That feels potentially insensitive and unguarded. That's it for this year. All that's left to do is to wish you a very merry Christmas, or whatever your festival of choice is. And leave you with the credits. The producer was Millie Chu, the assistant producer was Amelia Gill, the production manager was Francesca Bassett, the music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira, the executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mind House production for Spotify.
Previous S6 EP7: Marina Abramovic on the relationship between performance and pain, never feeling loved in her childhood, and harmful conspiracies Next Louis returns for Season 7! Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated