Jimmy Carr’s Guide To A More Interesting Life
It’s fair to say that Jimmy Carr has an extraordinarily interesting journey so far. His standup shows sell out globally, he’s presented a string of hit game shows, including one where people pee to trigger a buzzer before answering questions, he’s a regular on television and the big screen, and he used to be drinking buddies with Stephen Hawkings. It is a life shaped by a decision to walk away from comfort, a well paying corporate job, a house and a sports car, and take a leap into the unknown.
What was it that gave you that oomph to burn the boats at the shore, to walk away from a well paying job and follow your dream?
The first great adventure in life is finding what you’re going to do. If you’ve ever seen a superhero movie, they do this really well. The superhero has to know who they are before they go on the quest. I think school career advisors are horrifically bad at putting you on the right track – they play the odds. Go follow your dreams. You don’t need to be the best in the world to carve out a place.
Your book Before & Laughter is almost a digestible self-help book, if that’s not a derogatory term?
No, no, no. I don’t think that. I love self-help books at the bookstore, but I think people have the perception that they are difficult to get through or they are just too earnest, but actually, the stuff in them would appeal to everyone. But some people never get past the earnest point or they are embarrassed to be seen reading them, when in actual fact there are most probably some valuable points that will help get them in the right direction or an interesting direction.
My book is super simple, right? It’s only really got a couple of points in it, but the first one is in all self-help is two words; prioritise later. Prioritise later over now; hard choices now, easy life later. It’s obvious, but that’s all self-help books do. If you want to do something, you gotta put the hours in.
And then the second point I make is, disposition is as important as position. 95% of life is how you react to it, and it doesn’t always feel that way.
Sometimes it feels like you’re being dealt these cards and you are where you are and there’s nothing you can do about that. But all evidence would point to the fact that your disposition is way more important than your position in life. The most important question to ask yourself isn’t have I made a big life-changing decision in my life? What do you want? That is always the fundamental question.
I believe wishing wells work, but not in the way people think they work, they’re not magic. The way wishing wells work is by throwing a coin and thinking about what you want. Knowing what you want is the magic. Knowing what you want is comparatively easy to get what you want when you know what it is. Most people don’t know that they’re flying fine. They wouldn’t know it if it smacked them in their face.
What was the last thing you changed your mind about?
Not having kids was an easy decision. And then you have kids and you realise, ‘Oh, I thought I was all in. I thought I had skin in the game. I didn’t at all’.
Now I’ve got kids. It’s like having a medical procedure where your heart lives outside your body. It’s incredible. I love it.
If you’re walking around with your heart outside your body, you’re pretty exposed and vulnerable. Does that shift things for you and some of your material?
No, I don’t think so. It’s all anything goes. I am not performing for you, I’m performing with you so it’s got to be stuff that I enjoy.
I’m sure my kids will question everything I said at some point, but I find it funny.
You’ve spoken a lot about this quest for fame and you have likened it to going back in time when we lived in small communities and everyone knew each other. You describe fame as this search for belonging.
It is that thing where being famous feels like living in a small village and you’ve got Alzheimer’s but no one else does. Everyone knows you, you’re very friendly and nice, being famous, you travel the world.
I’m in New Zealand in January for six weeks and it’ll be lovely. I’ll have lunch and I’ll never be lonely and if I want to chat to people in bars, I’ll chat to people in bars. <Laughs> New Zealand is a friendly place anyway, but when you’re famous I think there’s something about that that feels normal.
I think that’s a weird thing with fame in our culture at the moment is it’s replaced heaven in a sector of society. The idea that fame is the land of milk and honey; being rich and famous, you’ll have no problems. You will, they’ll just be different problems. But they turn out to be substitutes to heaven. That’s where we want to be seen, to be acknowledged.
Most famous people probably have more of a buffer to them than you do. Their public persona is a separate thing from who they are as a person, but you are really open with everything. Does that change the relationship with the community?
Here’s my theory on comedians: we leak. I’ve never said about what I think politically or what I think about the world on stage. I might tell very engaging off-colour jokes, but if you spend an hour and a half in the theatre with me, you have a sense of who I am afterwards.
My jokes are from the head, not from the heart, so people get a sense of who I am. Whatever you think that is, you’re probably right, it’s difficult to hide up there. People have a sense of you.
When I wrote the book and I opened up, people like the fact that I opened up, but no one was that surprised. It’s like they all thought, ‘No, I kinda knew who that guy was. I’ve seen him host enough shows. I know what he’s about’. Ultimately, it’s about knowing what kind of a person you are.
I talk a lot in the book about charm versus charisma. I think it’s very interesting. I think there are very different things being conflated in our society.
The best analogy I can draw upon is US politicians. Look at Donald Trump, look at Obama. Obama is charmed personified. He’s like “I come to you”.
Look at Donald Trump, a poster boy for charisma, he’s like “you come to me”. Whatever you think of their politics, knowing what you are, charming or charismatic, is a huge advantage in life. That’s the first bit of the quest: finding out who you are, knowing what you are, playing your strengths. It’s the secret to life.
You talk about a comedian’s superpowers being like a sponge for the world and observant to what’s going on. What’s your sense of it at the moment?
I’m a big fan of this guy called Steven Pinker who wrote Enlightenment Now. Steven Pinker is a polymath and a linguist and he’s much brighter than I am. He wrote this brilliant book basically saying by every metric, the world is getting better, if you take it on a slightly broader scale, say a 50-year time scale.
Everything’s better than it was 50 years, right? There was less violence against women in the world than 50 years ago. There’s less racism and less violence in society. There’s better medical care and better child mortality globally than there were 50 years ago.
Things are getting better. And then something like COVID comes along and it feels like we’ve had a rough couple years and we talk more about racism now than we used to. It used to be swept under the carpet, but everyone’s talking about the important things, like the Black Lives Matter movement. It becomes something that we all focus on, which is great. It’s moving in the right direction.
I try and be a glass half full person and see things positively; we’re moving in the right direction. The trajectory of society is there will be gay marriage in Saudi Arabia. That’s the trajectory of the world that we’re in. Now, am I going to live to see that? Probably not, but it’s coming.
But then with Roe vs Wade in America recently, we go back and it feels like the next thing might be gay marriage roll back. We’re going to have to fight for those rights we maybe took for granted again, but we’ll fight for them again and we’ll win.
Things are moving in this direction. There’s more respect for individual rights and freedoms than there’s ever been. We’re hopefully moving in that direction. It might get stopped for a while, but not for long, especially with the advent of social media and the internet. You can’t hide it from people.
The world is a lot better than it was half a century ago, but at the same time, the worst of humanity seems to be at our fingertips with things like social media.
In terms of social media, a lot of people seem to have this problem, people want you to get cancelled. But those people didn’t like you before social media, <laughs> just now you can hear their voices. Isn’t it great that everyone’s got a voice? Isn’t that what we wanted, that everyone’s got a voice?
If people want to protest me or be outside the show chanting whatever, great, they’ve got the right to do that. I strangely defend their right to freedom of speech. I would say anyone going to ban this filth, they can p**s off. If they want to be the arbiter of what it is and isn’t, that’s ludicrous. But I like the idea that everyone can have a say.
Have you had to develop a thick skin? It’s human nature to have a bias towards negative feedback.
You can Google yourself if you want and focus on those things, but that way madness lies. If you want to get into that, you can, but that’s just the rabbit hole. It doesn’t help.
I need to spend less time messing around on the internet and more so writing jokes. That’s my job. That’s the thing you focus on.
Did the process of writing your book influence the approach to your tour? Even just sitting back and reflecting?
I did this thing because a couple of books came out; Yuval Noah Harari wrote a book called 21 Lessons For The 21st Century and Jordan Peterson did 12 More Rules for Life, so I came up with some pithy rules for life. I remember writing that and I’m thinking, I should be trying new jokes at every single show. I should be writing new stuff all the time and I kind of let go. Sometimes when you write a tour, you could just put your feet up for a few months and go, I don’t have to write for a year.
Now I’m constantly pushing myself and trying to come up with new stuff so that you never get bored. The things I talk about in the book, I do about half of them about half the time and I’m doing great. If you did a hundred percent of them all the time, wow. You would absolutely rule.
Just on Jordan Peterson, I think you mentioned that his material would be so much better with the odd dick joke sprinkled through it.
He’s pretty honest. I was on his podcast and he’s a pretty earnest guy. It’s quite an intimidating, proper academic. He’s very talented at debates.
The idea of writing the book was partly for my son. I had a child and I wanted something to leave behind. That’s why I think about the world. But also, I had people help me when I was in my mid-twenties and changing careers and I was exposed to a lot of very interesting things. I’d like to be that thing for someone else. I can never pay it back, but I can pay it forward.
When you say that Jordan Peterson is a proper academic, so are you though. Not many people dine with Stephen Hawking.
I happened to be at the same college as Stephen at Cambridge, but he’s an astrophysicist and I was studying sociology. It’s not really an equivalence and we ended up just being drinking buddies at the end. We had fun.
I’m educated way beyond my intellect and I’m aware of my limitations. I’ve got nothing but respect for academics. It is that thing where you go, I really admire experts. I love the fact everyone’s got an opinion now and social media allows everyone to comment, but not all opinions are equal. Some people are doctors, some people are experts in vaccines and they studied for 30 years. His opinion is worth ten thousand of yours.
With someone like Jordan Peterson, the fact that he sells thousands of tickets for people to come along and listen to an academic debate with Sam Harris. That does show some hope for the future of valuing intellectual opinion, right?
I think it’s interesting. There are all these different voices. I’m not a fan of how he’s treated by some people in our community. I don’t like the idea of de-platforming people because you don’t agree with everything they say. Just go and face them, go and talk to them.
I don’t agree with anyone on everything, but I love getting out of my comfort zone and listening and reading stuff. Maybe I don’t agree with that, but it’s interesting and that’s a different perspective. I think that’s healthy. I think comedy lends itself to that, engaging with different opinions, different voices.
When we’re coming up in the comedy clubs, we’re constantly exposed to people with very different viewpoints and views from our own, and it’s wonderful. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you want from the university, to be exposed to a different way of being?
When you’re touring through New Zealand, do you notice any funny nuances between the towns?
The special thing about laughter is how universal it is. I’ve been very lucky. I’ve done 40 countries on the tour. I’ve done Iceland, Denmark, as north as north goes, the land, the midnight sun, I’ve done South Africa, I play basically everywhere in Europe, everywhere in America, everywhere in Canada, the far East, Australia, New Zealand, and the jokes work the same everywhere. It’s extraordinary. I couldn’t believe it. It’s weird. It’s an amazing thing.
There’s not a lot of difference in town in terms of what people offer, but in terms of the local references, it’s nice to have a sense of where you are when you’re doing a show. ‘He knows where he is and he knows where we are and what we’re about’. You’re a visitor in someone’s town and they have paid hard money to see you. You better be delivering on that.
Do you have a sliding doors moment, where you wonder what your life would’ve been like had you climbed up the corporate ladder?
I do get that moment a lot. Here’s a dark view into my psyche: I sometimes think I’m in a hospital bed and there’s a TV on in the corner and I think I’m friends with all the people. I had a crazy aunt that used to do that. You go, maybe that’s me?
I’ve got this incredible position. Writing a book was about the attitude of gratitude. That idea of going, you got this amazing life, what are you giving back really?
I understand there’s the heat while I do this. I bring joy to the world by telling jokes, but really what are you giving back? The book was about going well, there is stuff that you can add.
What is the meaning of life for you?
Enjoying the passage of time. It is that simple thing of happiness. I think happiness is the aim. I think Ayn Rand has a hard time. That whole objectivism thing is misinterpreted as a pleasure principle. Whereas actually, I think happiness is about making yourself better so that you can better serve the world. Being the best version of yourself.
What’s human happiness? It’s expectations exceeded a lot of the time. Why are birthdays or New Years so tough for so many people? Because the expectation is it’s going to be the best night ever. And then the reality is just fine.
Sometimes you go out on a Tuesday and you bump into a friend and you end up having a crazy night staying up until five in the morning. It’s the best night ever because the expectation was pretty low.
You’ve spoken about the difference between envy and jealousy. In the world of Instagram with all of these beautifully curated shots, do you think it’s really easy to get a false expectation of what your life should be like?
Absolutely. I think there’s a weird thing going on there where people are sometimes almost jealous of themselves. All they see on Instagram is them smiling and happy and they don’t even recognise themselves.
Comparison is the defeat of joy. Compare and despair. You could spend your whole life looking at someone else’s life and thinking they’re having a better time than you. Gratitude is a huge part of enjoying life and just going, how grateful should we be that we even exist?
When you look at the odds and numbers of the things that have had to come together for each of us to exist, it’s just so unlikely for us to be here having this conversation today; it’s mind-blowing to me. We should be grateful.
Jimmy Carr is returning to New Zealand for a national tour in January 2023.