Jimmy Carr: How To Fix Your Mind, Stop Overthinking & Take Control (E445)

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0:13There's a lot going on in the world. Choose what you're going to give a f*** about. Why teach stand-up comedy? Why would that be a valuable thing in schools? You will write down and order your thoughts, you'll learn to communicate them, and you will speak in your own authentic voice. is that not more valuable than grade three on the piano? I think it is. There's a bit of a crisis going on with young men. You want to hear the solution? Go on. Okay. It's spicy, but stay with me. It's lovely to have you with us. Have you ever seen any of our high-performance podcasts? I've seen a lot of your podcasts, yeah.

0:47I like it a lot. It's good. Great. It's the kind of content I would consume. Is that right? Why is that? Well, I like that. I mean, I do like that idea of going, you sort of... There's no copying the content of someone else's life, but I think that great thing about like, sort of like reading biographies, like why are biographies so entertaining? Well, because you sort of can see, okay, so they got to there, but they're just a guy. They're just a guy that did something. How did they do that? They're just flesh and bone and they managed to do this incredible thing. How did they get that done? Well, I'm glad we have you as a listener and that's helpful for us.

1:24Yeah, that's one. Thank you. We finally found the one, guys. We find our one listener. Well, Jimmy, look, welcome to High Performance. Thanks very much. Yeah, I feel like a proper player. I'm on High Performance. I must be doing good. You must have done something right. Well, you've done lots of things right, but the interesting thing for us is how you've done them. It's not what you've done, it's how you've done it. So from the overthinking to the challenges you've had in your life, the discipline you've had to find, the moments of reinvention, the moments where you, I guess, had to choose whether life was happening to you or whether you were controlling it.

1:56Because we think that your story actually is about something so much bigger than comedy. We want to start by asking you about how you can master your own mind, which in turn helps you to master your own life. Well, I think it's little things, right? Mastering your own mind. I mean, if you're listening to this, you go, oh, that sounds like a lot. But actually, just it's, okay, what's the smallest chunk we could take? Right, so 24 hours strikes me as very sensible. Like I don't like New Year's resolutions. I don't like five-year plans particularly. I really like thinking about what could I do today that I'll be happy I did tomorrow.

2:36We will look back on our lives and whether it is with nostalgia or regret depends on what we do now. So everything in life, what could you do that would be better in 24 hours? What would you eat today? What would you drink today? like booze is a great example, right? It's great to have a couple of drinks. But if you get drunk, you're borrowing happiness from tomorrow. So, you know, be kind to your future self. It's almost like a kind of bigger version of that. There's the golden rule, which is treat others as you want to be treated. And then there's the platinum rule, which is treat yourself as well as you treat other people.

3:12I think a lot of people are horrible to themselves. Their internal dialogue is mean and they don't treat themselves well. You know, how much of a mental health crisis is actually, how much of a hardware problem is a software problem, right? So if you take someone that is anxious and depressed, I'm not saying those aren't real things. Those are real things that you need to address. But first, before you go and see anyone, are you getting eight hours sleep a night? Are you walking in nature? Are you eating right? Are you spending time with people that you love one-on-one, having real conversations?

3:47Like if you've got that stuff done and you're still depressed and anxious, then we need professional help. But actually getting those basics right, and it's so hard to hear that when you're in the middle of it. So I suffer a little bit with anxiety, but it tends to be when it bubbles up is when I'm traveling too much, I'm not sleeping enough, I'm not eating right. I think there's a trick where you think the anxiety is about what you're thinking about, but it isn't. It's just anxiety. And if you weren't thinking about that thing, you'd be thinking about something else. so anxiety is thought without control and a flow state is control without thought so you want to get into more control states and more flow states it might be standing on stage it might be whatever your thing is that you do that you go just time passes doing this and i just i don't really have to think about it it's great so i've got a whirring mind so in order to i mean it's good right Everything creative I've ever done has been because I can't switch off my mind.

4:45I think we've coded boredom incorrectly in our culture. So boredom is seen as a bug, but it isn't. It's a feature. It's where everything comes from. It's like being a bit bored and sort of thinking about things and just kind of sitting around. Like, I think boredom is unappreciated serenity. there are guys up mountains in tibet trying to get to where i can get to in an airport in luton it's gone but it's boring i might think of some jokes great like having that that's kind of the basis of it i think we're overstimulated i think being bored is is a good thing i think problems are misdiagnosed in our culture problem just means you have something to deal with right There's no no problems.

5:35There's just bigger problems. So it's like, it's Plato and the Zarathustrans that I think came up with it around the same time. They both came up with the idea of heaven. What was heaven for the Zarathustrans and perfection for Plato, the platonic ideals. It's horseshit. There's no perfect. I'm with Nietzsche on this. I say embrace the chaos. It's a chaotic, mad world, and you just kind of do what you can with what you've got where you are. Great. And what is the trick that you've found for quelling the overwhelm. I think the first time you have a panic attack, you think, oh, is this my forever now?

6:12And then the second time you go, I remember this ends. This ends. You'll be okay. Be gone in a bit. You'll be all right. I don't suffer as bad as some people. Some people can't white-knuckle it, and they need professional help. So I think I'm lucky as well. Again, in the gratitude practice, that thing of going there's a there's a big you know difference between me and my mid-20s feeling sad which i was but you would call it depressed but it's weird because you know depression is two things it's like there's a you know a chemical imbalance in your head and also circumstantial if it's circumstantial that's better because you can do something about it so have you got yourself to that place mid-20s i was like i was working for a large oil corporation and at some point I went yo-ho-ho, a pirate's life for me.

7:06But I think it's the first decision I made. I think everyone, there's a lot of talk about puberty, going from being a boy to being a man. When you're 12, you're a boy and when you're 18, you're a man. Something magical happens there. I don't think many people talk about that second transition. 24 for women, 25 for men, the completion of the frontal cortex. But I know a lot of people that have that awakening in their mid-20s where they go, they kind of look around, what am I doing? What am I doing with my life? And, you know, it's that classic, I think it's Confucius, isn't it? Every man has two lives.

7:38Yes, yes. And the second starts when he realizes he only has one. Yep. You have one life. You can do anything you want. You only have to face the consequences. Isn't that glorious? But it's kind of a rush of blood to the head, right? Yeah. There's that beautiful line in your first book, Jimmy, that you used around that time when you were working in the oil company. And you asked the question, how much does it take for you to give up on your dreams and your ambitions and you realize that it was actually a lot less than a lot less than what you might imagine you would think like but your life is it's it's what have you got you got time and attention and where are you going to put your time and attention what's what matters to you i mean people talk a good game about what they're interested in but look at the diary from last week and that really tells you what your priorities are so when you were 25 and you were coming to that realization what was it that made you was it more the attraction of going and doing something that was relatively unknown and chaotic or was it running away from the stability that you obviously had i i don't know i mean i think it's very easy to you know we live our lives forwards and then sort of understand them looking back and it's easy now to think once it's a simple decision leave that job in a corporate uh environment and go and travel the world being a successful comedian but that isn't what i left for i left because i'd seen a couple of stand-up gigs above a pub and I got very, very lucky.

8:58I mean, I do a gratitude practice and I never think it's enough. You can never have enough gratitude because you go, I got into comedy and it was darts or field hockey or lacrosse. And now it's premiership football. How did I get that lucky that I rode the wave? That wasn't me. That's like comedy has become culturally much more significant and bigger globally in the last 25 years for as long as I've been doing it. That isn't like, that's not me doing that. That's just, that happened. And I rode that wave. I got incredibly lucky with timing and I was very inspired by the people around me that, that maybe I could be creative.

9:35And I'd come from this sort of very nice, um, you know, middle-class background, slightly overeducated. Um, and I felt like I had to kind of fall into this little box. And then it's that idea of just going, well, no, you can do anything. And I think, increasingly now where we don't really know what to train people for in the future, I think that thing about being a non-fungible human, being sui generis, being yourself is the thing. Especially as AI becomes more and more important and takes away the jobs that we can see, it's going to create new jobs that we can't see. So that's troubling. But I think ideally, you know if you're an optimist as I always am it's the idea that you go well if it takes away the drudgery and makes us more human then the more human things become important so actually the dramatic arts become much more important that's what we should be teaching kids drama becomes much more important than learning even you know the ABCs yep learning about Anne Boleyn I often think when my kids and you've got a child as well they come home with their homework and you're like, I do not see the relevance of the stuff.

10:49Well, okay, but if we go back to the Greeks, right, and what education used to be, education used to teach character, not information. And we've taught information for the last, you know, 100 years because we needed people to go and work in the empire, whatever. We've still got that system, kind of Austrian education system. And actually, you want to teach character. You can't make someone more intelligent, but you can give them character. character. I think there's different levels of, you know, high performance is the name of the game, right? So there's different levels and there's discipline.

11:23And discipline, I think, gets you two weeks into January doing sit-ups, right? Discipline. Yeah, do it past your exams. Why? Because I'm going to hit you if you don't, right? Get a kid and go pass this test or you're not going to, you know, a holiday, whatever, you know, it's fine. Then there's motivation. motivation like i know get to university great you want to go to a good university right that'll get you somewhere right now you work pretty hard with that it's above discipline and then above that there's obsession what could you be obsessed by what could be play for you and work for them what could be the thing that you could give your life to you work is sacrifice right so you're you're sacrificing something now for a better future what are you willing to sacrifice everyone talks about what they want but no one talks about the flip side of that what are you willing to sacrifice what what are you willing to everyone's jealous of what you got no one's jealous of what you had to do to get it well what do the marines say everybody wants to eat a few people are prepared to hunt yeah i mean i'm not a marine but well you could be yeah but everyone wants to eat not not everyone's prepared to go to asda it would be like my modern version of that yeah Not everyone's willing to nip to the shops.

12:36But there's some interesting research on it, Jimmy, about an organisational psychologist at Stanford talks about everybody has either a job, a career, or a calling. Depends on how we choose to view whatever task we have. So a job is I'll just get it done, a career is I'll do it because I want to go to uni. To use that example of a calling is more the obsession. This is what I love doing. I would do this even if I wasn't being paid for it. Yeah, I think we've got, I think there's slightly a, what's the fancy term for it? Capitalist ontology, I think is Mark Fisher's term for it. The idea that everything has to be about money.

13:12So you go, I want more people to get into the arts. I don't know. I mean, hopefully some of them will make a living doing it, as I do. But sometimes it could just be a hobby that you absolutely love. You know, sometimes you've got to work and pay the bills. I think especially when you're young, like a job could just be a job. But earning a few quid and taking care of yourself and taking care of others is that's, that is something that we've kind of lost our admiration for that. Just working is great. And then doing something artistic doesn't always have to be. Everything doesn't have to be viewed through the prism of capitalism of going, well, you know, I want to play guitar.

13:49How do I do it? And what they mean is how do I make money doing this? I don't know, but I know you can do it. And if you can't not do it, then that's the thing you should do. The reason I started that line of inquiry is because I think I want to go back and explore more the emotions when you choose to leave a safe corporate job and go after pursuing your ambition of going into comedy. And I get the context of luck because I think we often downplay that it's scary. You know, leaving a comfort zone can feel scary. It can feel intimidating. and it can step into ambiguity, can cause a whole spike of emotions that stop us.

14:27And I'm interested in how did you regulate your emotions to be able to make that leap? I did, I mean, I did tremendous about it. I know a lot of people have got negative things to say about it, but I did lots of NLP. I was working in this oil company. I got introduced to kind of neurolinguistic programming. And I really liked the kind of central premise of that. If you take nothing else from it, the idea that the map is not the territory. Yeah. And how you think about things. it's really no more than Marcus Aurelius and kind of stoic teachings. Like the idea that you go, I mean, you could get the same from reading Viktor Frankl.

14:58It's the idea that you go, look, things are going to happen to you. How you react to them is all you have control over. And the idea of going, yeah, it's incredible. The anxiety is real. Like the idea of going, I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. Am I messing this whole thing up? But the good is the enemy of the best. And you want to do something fun. You want the people that listen to this are going to, you've got a self-selecting audience that want to do something with their lives, that want to achieve. And why? Well, I think people always want to achieve. I think it's part of human nature that we want to find something transcendent.

15:38And, you know, the thing that I'm getting to in my life is like you want something, you want to connect with other people. you want something that's you know more than just jokes like the proximate reason to make jokes is to laugh but the ultimate reason is to connect and that connecting with other people is becoming rarer and rarer it's becoming I think a bigger thing stand up comedy because everything we care about I don't care who you are but talk to anyone what are you excited about and they'll talk about play It's always play. It doesn't matter whether it's sports or whether it's theater or whether it's literature, whether it's stand-up comedy.

16:21There's not enough play in modern life. And play for me is our superpower as a species because play really is upstream of cooperation. We learn how to play first and we cooperate through play. We play well together and then we cooperate and then society. So that idea of going, it's the most important thing. We're very drawn to it. And it doesn't feel like there's enough of it in our lives at the moment. It's that classic old thing of like, we don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. The idea of going, there should be more of that in our lives. And sometimes it's the reason I kind of wrote a book about writing jokes and getting into stand-up comedy.

17:03Because actually, I think we've made a huge mistake in our societies. in that we moved from the country to the city. And in doing so, everyone used to be in a choir and everyone used to dance in the middle of the village. We would all join in. And maybe we weren't great at singing, maybe we weren't a great dancer, but we're all doing the thing. And then we moved to the city and there's great opera singers and ballerinas and Oasis and Taylor Swift. And we stand in awe of them and we watch them. But it's passive watching and actually joining in is the sweet sauce doing the thing. I'd rather people gave it a go and got involved.

17:43And even that thing of like the appreciation of it's going to be so much greater if you join in and do it. Like, do you have to make a living doing it? Well, no, you could just do it. If you could play the guitar a little bit and then you see Oasis, then you go, okay, no, Noel's good. And he good. We've always had this conversation with our kids. My daughter dances and talks all the time about a career as a dancer. and my son plays football talks all the time about being a professional footballer. And we've put that on them. They're 13 and 11, right? They're not born thinking I have to make a career out of anything that I enjoy.

18:16But what I thought was really interesting, what you said there, is this idea of play together. Because I was talking only last night to my wife. And I said, I just get this sense that we help our kids with their homework and taking them to clubs and groups and classes. But it's a passive exercise for us. We're kind of helping them do their thing. We then talk to them about our work or our jobs or our careers. But again, it's like, they're not part of it. I say, oh, met Jimmy Carr today, Seb. Oh, I love last one laughing, but he's not here making you a coffee and being in the room. And this idea of having something that we actually do together with our kids, I think we've lost that as well.

18:50We service them in the pursuit of good exam results and they service us in pursuit of a nice cuddle after a hard day at work. But where's the overlap here? Well, isn't that thing of like, we've lost something in our culture the last 20 years because for the longest time we gathered around the fire and we spoke like this. Like, why are podcasts popular? Because there's not enough conversation in real life. So it's a proxy. So we sat around the fire and we had these conversations, right? And then we gathered around the wireless radio for a generation and we chatted. And then we gathered around the TV.

19:25And you watched what was on. You watched what mum was watching. I watched Dallas growing up. I never chose to watch Dallas. Bergerac. But yeah, you know what I mean? it's like, okay, mum's watching that. It's a Sunday night. Okay. Right. I guess. Lovely. And then you chatted about that. And then we got phones and suddenly everyone's off in their own spaces and we're all our own channel controller and the algorithms in charge. And we've lost that thing of the, that shared experience. So why is there such a draw now to get to Glastonbury, to get to the comedy gig, to come and see the show? Because we're tribal creatures.

20:02We, we, have a dispersed identity. There's an illusion in our society that the individual is the unit, but it isn't the unit. We have dispersed identities. So we're better with other people and we're different with other people. The idea that we're consistent with lots of different people. No, it's like, I've often said this, but every argument between every couple is the same argument. It's you're not enough people. You go, the best thing you can do for your relationship is invest in your friends and have that, have a night out with the boys, have a night out with the girls and then come back together.

20:35And why does that help relationships? Because your identity isn't just, you can't have one person be everything for you. It used to be a village and now we expect our partner to be everything. So actually having that space to go and explore and then come back together is incredibly healthy. How much would you love to enjoy the high performance podcast with no ads? Well, you can sign up right now to go ad free and there's a free trial period. So check out our ad-free offering on Apple, on Spotify or on the High Performance Podcast website.

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22:53on the commute in the morning and when they asked them beforehand most people said i will fucking hate this yeah and then when they actually did it and measured it afterwards most people went it's the highlight of my day and when they looked at sort of the health benefits that accrued from just that one moment of connection it was off the charts in terms of it yes i mean i kind of think that thing about there's a way of looking at stand-up and and sort of what i do of being it's sort of friendship at scale yeah but because you could go oh you know i must be You've never reckon talking to 10 ,000 people.

23:25You're not. You're talking to one person, but sort of 10 ,000 at once. But it's, you're trying to connect with people. You're trying to have, and you're trying to be open about stuff like, who's your best friend? Well, it's the person that you have the least filter with. If you sit next to someone on a commuter train and you go, oh, the weather. You see the game? It's a nothing conversation. But if you open up and tell them something personal about yourself, they will open up. we're very sort of reciprocal like that. And I think actually the, the, the idea of like creating friendship groups is like, you know, I think there's, there's a few things that we're missing in, in our society.

24:01I think there's, you know, there's obviously, there's a bit of a crisis with going on with young men. And I think, I think I have the solution. You want to hear the solution? Okay. It's, it's spicy, but stay with me. Okay. Okay. So I'm pro gang, pro drinking, pro gambling, but I'll, but hear me out. I've set up youth clubs, all around the country. They're wonderful. They've got pool tables. They've got like jukeboxes. They've got darts. They've got drinks. They're called pubs. And I think we should lower the drinking age to 16. I think 16-year-olds should be allowed to drink because this may come as a shock.

24:4216-year-olds drink anyway. So I'm just living in the fucking real world. I just don't want them to drink in a park. I think 16-year-olds should be allowed to drink in pubs, But four of them. You can't go in on your own. 16 to 18, you've got to find three friends and go in and check yourself. Because the pro-gangs thing is like going, yeah, guys check each other. They're pretty good at that. You know, there's a small cohort that get into trouble, but most guys kind of check each other and behave. And they learn how to behave from older men. And the idea of going, we've already kind of got the stuff there.

25:18We've got the youth clubs. You could start a five-a-side club out of a pub. And actually, it's fine to have beer and wine when you're 16. Fine. You've got to learn how to integrate into society and be part of a community. And that strikes me as like, it's not a crazy idea to go, actually, where else are they meant to be? Is Andy Burnham likely to turn this into law? I don't know. I mean, who knows? I think the prime minister now, I think it's like going to a deli. You just take a ticket and you do it for six months. It used to be a long-term commitment. Now it's just like a quick thing. But that idea of like going, so pro-drinking, pro-gangs, but also pro-gambling.

26:01I'm pro-young guys sort of doing what I did, gambling on themselves. Not sports betting, not that kind of a quick fix, but the idea of going, taking a chance on yourself and going, right, what can I actually do? What can I do that would be fun and exciting? and an adventure but that requires vulnerability right to put yourself out there and think what could i do and i still think that's the that's the missing thing here i'm very bad at connecting but i've recently joined a group of guys shock horror i am the cliche it's a group of men who play paddle right and i go and play paddle for an hour i come home and my wife's first question is what's the gossip i'm like how do you mean what's the gossip what did you talk about i'm like well we played paddle and then we all went home again no i mean i've got a huge bit in the the new netflix special about this about how uh this is why men need therapy because uh men do things together and women talk together yeah so it's it's that weird thing where you can see an old friend and you get home to the other half and you know wow how's the new baby you go don't know didn't come up what'd you do we play snooker like it's that that yeah it's but that's fine that's the thing of like going it's the sheds movement in australia is fantastic for that standing shoulder to shoulder and doing something uh it's we bond in very different ways that's okay but leaning into that is fine i mean even even you saying that you said it apologetically like i'm playing paddle and then we just play paddle and then we go home like no it's great that's great i think that's a it's a wonderful thing to do to go and hang out with other dudes and find that space and do you do that?

27:41Yeah, I do a fair bit of that. I mean, I'm very lucky with my friendship group. I've got lots of friends in my industry and I've got lots of friends outside the industry as well. And I don't know, I'm, yeah, I'm very blessed. So can I take you back to again, when you first make the leap, because you're talking as a young man there, like who was in your inner circle then that nurtured and encouraged you to gamble on yourself? Well, I think that thing of going, there is kind of a lonely period, a lonely chapter when you leave everything behind. So in order to get to the new place, you have to leave the old place and you kind of go, right, well, I'm just going to go and make new friends and try this new thing.

28:19It's sort of, I suppose, that thing of going, it's your, you can't really say to your old school friends, right, I'm going to be, I'm going to be, I think I'm hilarious. I'm going to be a standup comic because they go, what? What are you talking about? We're all funny. What are you talking about. And then you go, no, I think I can do this thing. And so it is kind of making new friends and connecting with other people. I mean, the comedy circuit is kind of great for that. The comedy circuit was, it's, I mean, we need more things that bring people up now. We need more things. We need a ladder down to go, like I play, you know, arenas and big theaters and, and there's, there's the circuit.

28:55And it feels like the circuit has been in the same place for the last 25 years, like the playing the comedy store, whatever. We need kind of more clubs, more theaters we need more avant-garde because that's what feeds culture so the you know you go the culture needs an avant-garde in order to feed it and give us new things you know there's a reason why there's a sort of cultural oligarchy at the moment what tends to be like five bits of ip are all the movies that you see yeah well there's five books a year or five artists dominate the charts or, you know, in comedy, you know, there's like a couple of big comedians and you want more people to come up.

29:34It used to be there were more shows that people could kind of have their first appearance on TV and kind of learn how to do that and get better at it. You know, I mean, hopefully there's, you know, something like Cats over the years has done a little bit of that, but I think there needs to be more of it. I've read a few comedians talk about your role of mentoring them and advising them. They've spoke about bumping into you onto trains when you've sort of been willing to sit down and share your wisdom. What's the most common advice you pass on to anyone that wants to come into your world? I suppose, I mean, this is really applicable to everyone.

30:08It's life is self-assignment. Like that's what no one tells you. Kind of, it's like there's sort of two stages to life, right? There's the sort of school, university, training, whatever you do, right? It's like, you know exactly what the next thing is, right? You're doing it. I'm not saying it's easy, but you know what the next thing is. you know what the grade that you've got to get is, you know what exam you're going to be sitting. And then suddenly at sort of 23, 24, whatever it is now, you're launched into the world and you go, what am I meant to do? And for a lot of people, it's like for a while, they're trying to please their parents maybe, or they're trying to keep up with a group, but it's the, you know, don't look at the competition, look at the prize.

30:48What do you want? And what do you want is, I suppose, the most fundamental and difficult question in the world. It gets, you know, metaphysical very quickly because what do you want is it's very like having stuff isn't fun. Getting stuff is fun. And most desires that we have are mimetic. It's, um, you know, René Girard, uh, a mimetic desire, that idea of like uh the idea that you you want what other people have like um that that's what passes as glamour in our world having something that someone else desires what do you actually want like that that thing and from life you know the the that thing of like going what's the what's the metric i often think about simulation theory as a you know are we are we all in a video game are we in the matrix it's kind of not interesting to me whether we are or not the interesting thing is if this is a video game what's the metric for success and i think there are resume points and there are eulogy points and what you what you find is you want to stack your eulogy points you you want to be who's going to speak for you who who who are you going to touch who are you going to have a connection with who are you going to matter to in a deeper level rather than just you know stacking qualifications and money so for people listening to this who are thinking all right i'm going to take a leap one of the big things that holds them back is self-belief and i often hear on many platforms social media people going just got to believe in yourself and see where it takes you but how do you have the belief in yourself if you don't have the evidence you can't build the belief without the evidence but yeah don't have belief stack receipts this is alex or moses a mate of mine and he said i think the greatest like it's my favorite quote real self-confidence doesn't come from shouting affirmations in the mirror real self-confidence comes from giving the world irrefutable proof you are who you say you are stack receipts like it can be small it can be small things like just you know if it's comedy go and do a show you've done one show and then go and do 10 shows and then do 100 shows and it's kaizen is it kaizen the japanese thing or kaizen yeah or british cycling i always refer to that thing of like it's not it's not repetition it's iteration just change don't do the don't do the same mistake again yeah yeah that's a tactical learning experience make different mistakes every time and get a little bit better every time and choose something that you can get a little bit better at and then you stack receipts.

33:38Self-confidence without competence is delusion. There's no need for that. And sometimes you need a little bit of fooling yourself to start with. Sometimes you need to bullshit yourself a little bit and fake it till you make it. A little bit of that. But really it's about like, you know, because talent is direction and nothing more. You won't be out-talented by anyone. You'll be outworked. Craft and graft are the things, right? It's like, know what the work is do the work and do enough of it and am i right in thinking that after each of your performances you make notes even to this day about what was good what was bad or i try new jokes at the end of every show yeah every show to try and stack a receipt there for for yourself no well it's that thing of going i i know i've got another tour coming yeah so every gig that i do i sort of go well it's not re i'm not really being paid for tonight's performance i've already got the money for that.

34:34I could just stand there. What are they going to do? It's an advert for next time. So I'm trying to, in two hours, get them to go, I don't remember anything he said, but I feel so happy. I'm a drug dealer, right? They've got dopamine, they've got serotonin, they've already got the drugs on them. I'll never be taken alive at the border. But the idea that you can release those chemicals. And being in an audience is performative, right? It's not just me performing. It's like being in an audience is a performative social activity. It could be exhausting to be in an audience for two hours if you're laughing consistently three times a minute.

35:13It should be that it's, wow, I don't remember anything you said, but that was great. We've got to book it next time. That's what I want people to get from the performance. And then at the end, getting some new jokes and saying, well, every day I need to have the discipline to write jokes. Because no one ever tells you that. No one ever tells you, oh, you have to do that. The imposter syndrome, it's an immune response to success, right? Because the work that you did to cause your success happened 18 months ago. The show that I performed last night is something that I wrote, you know, two years ago.

35:51And, you know, so you kind of, that's already kind of factored in. You go, okay, they laughed at those jokes, but will they laugh at the new ones? Can I get to that place? And so you're constantly trying to sort of do the work so that you, yeah, I think imposter syndrome is like incredibly healthy. I think everyone should be feeling it every 18 months because it's kind of the fuel for me of going, I don't feel like I'm enough. I had it, you know, I remember getting into university and thinking everyone here is smarter than me, I better work really hard. And then eventually you work so hard that, oh, actually you do deserve to be here.

36:23But that's the story. I'm reminded of the conversation we had with Gary Barlow, where he spoke about the craft and the graft. So he spoke about what was so important for him was being sat playing the keyboard behind great comedians like Bob Munkhouse on the working men's circuit. And he saw what he now describes as the show graph, how he plots every one of his music shows is about you start big, you take them to an emotional core in the middle, and then you leave them dancing and you blow the roof off at the end. I'm interested that you put new material at the end. It's not right at the end of the show.

37:02It's not just before I leave the stage. And good night. That one didn't work. No. So yeah, I mean, I absolutely buy into that. And I think actually that thing of going, what do you want from a night out? It's giving people what they didn't know they wanted. so that there's increasingly at my shows there's more interaction with the audience I've always kind of done I've always been you know fine with hecklers yeah because I kind of think that's where a lot of schoolyard humor certainly in Britain comes from it's your mama it's just worse than jokes it's that idea of like going you know putting other people down but it's that it's that kind of classic Australian thing if you call you call your mates cunt and you call cunts mate it's it's very british australian kind of yeah you can say the meanest things in the world to a close friend because it's understood you all right um so yeah i think that that thing of like the audience stuff now has become something else has become like a connection i don't know whether it's fatherhood or whatever or turning a certain age but i feel very comfortable talking about anything on stage now and sometimes it's serious and sometimes it's funny and it's fine it's like Like it's light and shade.

38:10But you say you don't know why that is. I suspect you do as somebody that reflects deeply. Like where is that connection, that willingness to make yourself more vulnerable? I think it's getting better at the job and understanding what the job is. You know, so it's that thing of like, you're hosting an evening and there's lots of people in the room and some of them might be struggling with something and you want to hold space for them. want to make it okay for them to make anything funny i think having a dark sense of humor is a the time when it really pays off in life is when things go horribly wrong you know on your darkest days you get the diagnosis or a close friend dies something dreadful happens i feel sorry for the people that are easily offended because they have to white knuckle it through those days at least if you have a dark sense of humor you can there's some levity on those days There's a little bit of respite.

39:05And comedy is about perspective, really. It's about kind of seeing things as they are. I mean, really what jokes are, I suppose, if you get into... Cardamon's very good on this, System 1 and System 2 thinking. I think you should have made this an example in the book because it's System 1 thinking is setups to jokes. In a setup, I make you make an assumption that turns out to be erroneous in the punchline. And then you really see things in a different way in the punchline. It's like, oh, that's what he was talking about the whole time. And you go to system two thinking, which is real thinking. System one is the two plus two equals four or driving the car, stuff that you don't really have to think about.

39:45And I think as adults, mainly we're not thinking. Our brains are not designed to think. Our brains are designed to see patterns and just go into just kind of, you just have the same day again and again, the same commute again and again. actually what people don't people don't want more time they want novelty and intensity yeah and that's what comedy give gigs kind of give you right so would you tell us how you do that though because that's a really amazing skill to be able to go from that system one into system two to be able to find a pattern of behavior and then shift somebody's perspective on it well that's kind of the that's really kind of the joke writing skill is is going well how do you how do you write so how do you surprise someone?

40:30Yeah. How do you, and how do you make that enough of a leap so that they get the joke? And, uh, there's, there's, I mean, listen, there's a, there's a book I've written about this. How do you deliver a joke? I think, I think comedy should be taught in schools. I've, I think what a drama more generally, but you know, comedy specifically as part of that, because I think a lot of people would be drawn to it. I think it is a teachable skill. Is it, uh, an innate ability? Are you born funny? I don't think so. I think it's like saying you're born able to play the piano. Yeah, people have musical ability.

41:02People might be drawn to it or have a talent for it. But I think it is something that can be taught. And even the people that say it can't be taught, and some of the greats, some of the absolute greats that people admire most in the world. Jerry Seinfeld said, stand-up can never be taught. And one of the greatest comics of all time, Doug Stanhope, a friend of mine, one of the greatest comics ever, said comedy courses are a raging scam. And yeah, okay, I see the perspective. But they were on a comedy course as well. But their comedy course was the club that they started at, and the people that they met there, and that mentored them, and that they worked with and came up with.

41:41And that group, that social group, that's how they learned through that thing. Now, not everyone has access to that. So the reason to write a book is to go, well, actually, this can go around the world and to anyone. And if they read it, it'll at least give them directionally. The idea is to give it a language. In the same way as, I mean, really part of the inspiration for the book and my sort of favorite story in the book is Gregorian chants. Do you know the story of Gregorian chants? You've heard of Gregorian chants? Heard of them, yeah. Let me tell you why you've heard of them. Because Pope Gregory back in the day, this is 11th century or whatever, I forget the history, but Pope Gregory's in the Vatican and he's traveling around and everyone's singing the songs differently in the different churches.

42:24And he went, well, this is, I want them sung the same. I want them the same as we do in the Vatican. And the bishops and the priests or whatever go, well, music though is ethereal and it comes through a man's soul and it can never be written down because it's music. what are you talking about and he goes look here's the thing i'm the pope write it down and so they do right and musical notation comes from that and 400 years later bark now you couldn't have got to bark and mozart and beethoven you couldn't have got to any of that stuff without musical notation so the idea of going there's too much magical thinking in my industry and he's just funny and it's a funny thing happened and he's relating a story.

43:12And actually, if you break it out, learning how to read music doesn't affect your ability to create. If anything, it aids it. It gives you more gears. And I want more people to join the choir. I want more people involved in comedy. Sometimes heckles are just funny, right? And sometimes I see a frustrated performer. And the funniest shit I've seen in the last 10 years, I bet you guys too, is like some meme on the internet. And I don't know who wrote it. I don't know who came up with that joke on the day of the thing. And like someone's created some brilliant thing and it pops up on your phone. You go, wow, who created that?

43:52And I think I do know. I think it's someone in telesales in Telford that's a frustrated performer that should be up on stage doing something. And even if that's not his full-time job, he should be in the spotlight at some stage, or he should be writing more. He should be encouraged. And the idea that we're not teaching drama in schools is ridiculous. There's an organization I'm involved with tangentially called Drama Matters, where it's these like 6 ,000 drama teachers in the UK going, we should be teaching drama in every single school. It shouldn't be on the national curriculum because that's death for drama.

44:28Drama teachers are creative people. They want to be able to excite the children and teach them what they want to learn. But the idea of going, giving people that passion, then you go from discipline to motivation to obsession. What do you want to give kids in school? A lifelong love of learning. That's what you want to give them. And drama strikes me as like, that's the clearest route through to giving people a love of learning that will never end and an appreciation for the arts that will never end. This country punches way above its art in the arts. And we don't lean into that. You're talking out language.

45:02You know, we've created a foundation from this podcast called the High Performance Foundation, which works in schools. We're currently working with 100 ,000 young people. They're being well looked after when it comes to science, technology, English, maths. But we've done a lot of research that tells us that they're leaving school without the resilience that is required. And if we've learned anything in the last seven years hosting this podcast and hundreds of conversations, it's that resilience beats talent, hands down. Would you agree with that statement? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that thing about failure and success are on the same road.

45:32Failure is just an earlier exit. Like you got to stay at the thing. Like most people get into the arts because they love great work, but they don't stick around long enough to make great work. Everyone's got great taste, but to stick around long enough to be able to create something great. That's, that's the key, right? So you've got to be able, it's the, it's the first, you know, people talk about 10 ,000 hours. It's the first thousand that's difficult when you're shit. Now it's easy. It's easy when you're good. That becomes an easy thing. But that sticking around and having a passion for something, I think teachers is just massively, I mean, all kind of joking aside, massively underappreciated.

46:14That you go, that community that a school builds, and actually we do have a good education system in this country, but they need to be kind of left to do their thing. They need enough space in there to go, actually, what are we solving for? And it's not necessarily exam results. I think building character is the thing, that Greek thing, building character, giving kids character. Well, you know, what's character? You can't have an easy life and a great character. So you've got to give yourself a challenge. Some research recently with head teachers across England said that, I think it was 40 % of them said they're struggling with their mental health.

46:52so we're expecting broken teachers to build mended children this is one of the big problems with the amount of pressure that's on teachers and then expecting that they're going to create the next generation of people that aren't yeah overwhelmed and struggling and i think i mean i think the the the privatization of uh mental health problems is is a massive issue yeah i think the idea that we've said if you look at the rates of uh people um uh suffering you can't say that that's individual failings. I think that's, and that's how people feel about it. Like it's an individual failing. It's actually how we've set up our society.

47:27I don't think we know how to nurture young talent and, uh, encourage young people. I don't think, I think there's, there's like a sense of, uh, hopelessness in that, you know, even if you do the right thing, I mean, really the, you know, university is sort of seen as the only, I mean, really, if you think about recent politics, right? So Tony Blair effectively raised the school leaving age to 21, right? And university is now a luxury product. Well, if everyone has the luxury product, the value is diminished. So the idea of going, well, actually, some people just want to go and get a job, go and start a business, go and do something.

48:04It isn't right for everyone to go to university necessarily. But there's such a stigma in not going. It's weird the way that we have things set up now. I don't have all the answers, but I think the idea of going more creativity and more sort of faith in your abilities to create something at school rather than just learning something. And what are you doing as a parent to encourage creativity and agency and responsibility in your child? Play. Play is everything. Learning how to play well together, learning how to get on with other people, learning how to laugh and have fun. It's that thing of like, go.

48:41we have things now that are proxies uh that aren't the real thing video games are a proxy for rough and tumble play right i mean people love video games and they are one incredible industry and they're brilliant but the moderation right you can't they don't replace going out and playing they don't replace rough and tumble play and they certainly the idea that they are a proxy for the career that you're not having with a big boss at the end i think is you know it's the analogy is there. And the idea that, you know, pornography is a proxy for sex and drugs and alcohol are a proxy for joy. And you want to, you know, we will, I think Aldous Huxley was right.

49:23We will, we will give away our freedom for cheap dopamine. You know, he even predicted it. He said it would be tablets. He thought it'd be a tablet called Soma and it turns out it's a tablet called Apple. can i ask you about um commitment and relentlessness because i think that that's something which is a hallmark of your career the fact that you've adapted you've changed your act today will be so different from the act that you started out with one of my favorite things on um if i very rarely do go on x i will often see one of your videos and it isn't you delivering one line as it is you interacting with people normally on a hard conversation with maybe someone who's having treatment for cancer or something and i see like a freedom in the audience like a everyone's like oh my God, he's spoken about this.

50:06Now we can speak about anything which you can't do in society. I think the real magic happens. You know that concept of the Overton window in politics, like the most left-wing, the most right-wing thing you could say, like at a polite dinner, right? So I think there's an Overton window of conversation. And I think comedy, when done right, I think increases the Overton window of what you can discuss. So I think the real magic doesn't happen at the gig. I think it happens on the way home or the next couple of days when you can have a more open conversation about life. because I've opened up the can of worms.

50:38And why is that important? Because I think the idea that you go, people don't feel like they can express themselves. People don't feel like they can have the hard conversation. Can I ask you about dismantling the armour though? And I'll give you an example that I lost my dad a few years ago and it was a week after it passed that we were doing a show in Birmingham and I'd committed to being there. and I'd spoken to Jake and he said, should we mention it? And the idea of taking the armour off and being vulnerable in front of other people, I found it impossible. I didn't want to do it. I was worried about almost like losing control of my emotions.

51:18I was still in grief. But I mean, still in grief is, I think, I mean, I'm a big fan of this guy. I think he's called Stephen Jenkinson. He's the grief walker. And he speaks beautifully about grief. He's worked in palliative care his whole life. He's written books about it. He's wonderful. But the idea of like people that haven't been through it think that you get over grief or through grief. No, you walk with it. Yeah. It's still there now. It's that, and it's cumulative over a lifetime. So the idea that you go, at some stage a pet dies and you're in a puddle because it's easier sometimes to grieve.

52:00it's a less complex relationship so you can just be more open with your emotions on that but the idea of like going well what's you know grief is it's it's a part of life and we we kind of hide it away and the opposite of grief isn't happiness the opposite of grief is forgetting and as painful as grief is you wouldn't want to forget yeah but i but i found it very difficult to drop the armor if that's what I mean I went into professional mode rather than human mode and given some of the topics that you do address with people whether it's talking about grief or whether it's talking about mental health challenges I'm wondering about how do you get into a place where you feel comfortable making yourself vulnerable doing that I don't know I mean I'm quite comfortable chatting to people and talking about difficult things I'm not really I'm not that interested in small talk.

52:56I like it when it's real and life is messy. I don't have the answers. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't, I think it's like that thing where you go, as long as you're comfortable going, what's, you know, you've, we're all dealing with this stuff, right? You're all, what's the rammed ass line is my favorite. We're all just walking each other home. We don't know. It's fine. It's fine. Just a whole space. We're all just walking each other home. But that's, that's the thing, right? That's the thing. And it's, it's, you know it all gets buddhist in the end it's all equanimity with impermanence this too shall pass the cup's already broken yeah everyone it's it's fine and it's fine to have this conversation it's fine to it's kind of that thing of going listen you could you know you could be really funny on a night out you want to have a great time and then if there's a moment where someone shares something and there's a moment where everyone connects and goes oh that's nice and some people are bored by it yeah sometimes you know politics comes up no tell some jokes okay it's fine it's like i think we all sort of contain multitudes and it's nice to be able to be more of a a whole person on stage yes rather than just sort of one element you lost your mum when you were 28 right 26 yeah 26 yeah did that change your view of connecting with people and yeah i mean she was very, very funny.

54:19I think she's the reason I do comedy. I think that thing of like going, if you only have one question with a comedian, it's which of your parents were sick. Because really it's a, um, you become a thermostat on atmosphere in a house. So whether they're physically sick or, or mentally, um, uh, suffering the idea that you can, you can cheer people up, you can make things okay. You can change the mood. So that ability becomes a pathology. you know that becomes your kind of reason for doing this so and it becomes maybe easy for you because that's your that's your sort of childhood but yeah I think it was it felt very I suppose like people never talk about the positive sides of that you know losing someone like that it does make you kind of go it's that thing you've got two lives and the second begins when you realize you've only got one and the realization, oh, you know, you're there with someone and they die and you're holding their hand and you go, oh, right.

55:23Okay. Oh, that'll be me. Oh, okay. So what are you going to do? That feels like a rush of blood to the head rather than, you know, and it's the, and I suppose you think sort of in a slightly, um, you know, what would she have wanted me to do? And there's an element of i guess you know bravery to or maybe full hardiness to go well i'll go and do go and tell some jokes did she did she see an enough of your career do you think for to understand what you were becoming at that time no i don't think so no i died uh i just about started yeah um but you know that's not you know i think it's uh yeah it was it's it's it's it's you know i i I think it's kind of you walk with your, your grief and you, it's, it's fine.

56:12I mean, it's, uh, it's something that I don't, uh, I don't know. It's like, it's a, it's a long time ago now, but it's weird how it kind of comes in waves and you think about it and you see it in your own children and you, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's lovely. I, you know, I, I kind of, it's a weird thing when you're going through grief, you, you never think, oh, I'm going to miss this. But as it fades over time, you miss it. You kind of miss that connection. And when the wave comes, are you good now at sitting with that? Yeah, I can sit with it. It tends to be music is the thing. We used to buy records together in the Slough Record Center.

56:55I think it was like Monday was the release date. And we would go and we would buy records. And the guys in the store knew us. and whatever so it's like sometimes if a record comes on i sort of either it's something that she loved or something that i go oh she would have loved that what is the song that you think that is the one for mum uh it probably uh she was big just before she died very into jeff buckley so jeff buckley hallelujah when when grace came out that album came out it was kind of before that became a sensation that's a hard song it was very yeah to be reminded of your mum by i mean that is already that's a moving song for everyone right and then yeah it's a it's a it's an interesting piece yeah it's uh it's nice it's uh it's nice but i think it's that thing of like you know listen we've got on to talking about uh grief and i think it's like fine right it's fine to talk about it's fine to to share and to open up and i think men are kind of weird about crying yeah yeah sometimes you cry don't worry about it well we've had a huge number of the guests who have sat opposite from us and when you actually have these conversations you realize that so much of their success comes from grief and it for so many people provides an energy source and it provides a relentlessness or a like a commitment to grabbing hold of life and what's the the beautiful quote about i want to be thoroughly used up when i die george bernard shaw i think for a lot of people that those grief moments create that sense of like let's just get the most out of this i wonder if there's ever a thought process from you that actually the grief is really valuable because it drives me and it pushes me and if you were to if you were to to really be comfortable with your journey and your grief whether it would remove a bit of that energy source from you um i don't know i i don't know i don't know what the i think the work ethic comes from finding the thing that you want to do yeah so what is that thing that you worked hard at it's like different things in life i remember kind of you know getting to i was sort of terrible at school when i was like 16 and then i remember like a levels was kind of the motivation was there to go oh well i'm gonna go to cambridge that's gonna be a huge deal yeah i thought that was kind of it and then it was you know so you work hard at that thing having something that you're aiming at is really good like having something transcendent that you're trying to put together so you're trying to put a show together or put i don't know trying to trying to find something to find a moment is lovely.

59:17Always like that Terence McKenna line. You know that line about rockets and pyramids? Rockets and pyramids are the same thing. They're the same. A huge amount of human capital is employed sending a chosen few to the heavens. And I think culturally there are moments where people achieve that. Like I think going to see the Oasis gigs last year for me was like seeing Notre Dame completed. It was like a transcendent moment. Like it was just the most, and actually weirdly I saw Taylor Swift like the year before. And it was the same thing, like that same thing of like seeing 90 ,000 people sing in unison was this transcendent moment.

1:00:10and I think when people come together at a concert at a show like it can be that it can be that kind of incredible sort of transcendent thing we go wow that's kind of that was more than a sum of its parts that was beautiful and do you get that as a performer and you have you reached that moment in your career where you've been like this is it this is it this you don't get better than this or are you still no that's what I'm that's what I'm shooting for I'm shooting for the stars I mean no i'm you know i'm i could be i could be a lot better but i'm trying i'm working really hard i mean you've got specials and stand that you just come back from canada you're like one of the most recognizable comedians on the planet like 26 year old jimmy would have surely gone i think you've done it but now you don't think that you have done it well it depends what what it is it depends what you want to achieve.

1:01:02And in terms of going, it's the, the road is better than the inn, right? We're built for adventure, not for comfort. And the idea of going, you're trying to get better on this journey. You're trying to get better as a performer. You're trying to get better on a, as a standup to write funnier, tighter, more interesting jokes. And that then I feel like gives you permission to have conversations like this. I feel like I didn't have conversations like this when I was 30 because I didn't feel like I'd earned it. You know, I feel like now there's like, okay, well, I've done, I've done my time in the trenches.

1:01:41Yeah. And I can have these conversations. I could be more myself. Imagine this podcast with no adverts. Well, you can sign up right now to go ad free. Sign up on Apple, on Spotify, or on the high performance website.

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1:03:18So can we talk about the road then? Because your new book covers like the journey that you've been on in comedy. I was particularly taken with the opening section of it when somebody, where you get your five standing ovations in Portsmouth and then you open yourself up to somebody coming to challenge you with a metronome. I didn't write the book on my own. So this book on jokes is written with Amanda Baker, who's been working with me for a while now. She sort of directs my live shows. So she'll sort of come in and go, not that, maybe that and move that around. And it's really interesting. And Abby Grant, who's a comedy writer, and she's wonderful with words.

1:04:01and the idea we've sort of come together to kind of go well this is kind of you know how to perform how to get better at a performance because you can sort of always sit back you can always get to you know any level and just go well you've done enough you've done that you know you've you've been on telly you've done some shows put your feet up relax and then go well how how do you get better at something yeah um and what what are you looking for then it's it's difficult sometimes to really sort of put your finger on what you're looking for from a performance point of view. But you're looking to get better and to connect, to get bigger laughs, to get rolling laughs, to get more applause breaks.

1:04:40So the idea, my timing was a little bit off. So we found that, I mean, it's in the book, it's really talking about rhythm and cadence and speech and delivery is 92 beats a minute, which is kind of a comfortable walking pace seems to be the the approximate speed of cognition for everyone for audiences like whether it's it doesn't matter about how fast or how slow you're speaking but you're hitting a rhythm in your speech every two and a half seconds you're hitting a word and the audience tune into that if you if you i mean the kind of best examples are like if you walk with someone, you fall into step with that person.

1:05:26So as a comedian, you're walking in step with an audience. Or if you think of a nursery rhyme or a limerick, if you read it and you read it wrong with the wrong emphasis, it's like nails on a chalkboard. It doesn't feel right. And I think sometimes those kinds of simple things are like getting that rhythm right within a joke. If you have a funny idea and you want to deliver it, how are you going to deliver that? So it's So it's palatable to the audience, and you stay in that rhythm. So I think one of the great joke writers of all time, this guy called Mitch Hedberg, one of the great joke writers, and his gigs bombed half the time.

1:06:06And no one could kind of understand why, because he was brilliant. But it was the cadence. His rhythm was off. He had this kind of strange cadence, but he wasn't on the beat. So sometimes it would just be wildly inconsistent. And the audience kind of didn't know where to laugh, even though these were incredibly funny ideas. He's like a brilliant performer. He's sadly no longer with us. But it's really interesting to me of that thing of going, what can be taught and what can be pushed on? How could you get better? Because it reminded me of that old anecdote I read years ago where Jack White from the White Stripes was talking about how he went into the art of creation.

1:06:43And he would sort of come up with rules and then look to break them. So it might be we'll only play certain instruments or will only play certain chords. And creativity came out of knowing the rules, but knowing that you could break them. I'm a big fan of that. I'm a big fan of constraints. But in life as well. I had a great conversation. I saw him recently in Vegas. I went out to lunch with Alex Hormozy and we were talking about, he's great on this stuff. Have you had him on the show? No. You've got to get him. I mean, he's just, he's a mensch. He's such a nice man. But that idea of going constraints as freedom, the idea that you go once you decide what, like people are obsessed by options, especially young people.

1:07:21It's optionality. Get these exams, do this. You've got options. You've got so many options. But if you don't cash in your options, they're worthless. So you've got to cash them in. At some stage, you've got to choose who to live with and what to do. And then life gets so much easier because you can stop thinking about how to live and get on with living. It's great. Like the constraints of going, right, well, I'm going to write jokes. Okay, well, that's what we're doing. Let's write some one-liners. And that's kind of my love language. But all comedy that you love is made up of jokes. Sometimes they're very well hidden.

1:07:56But otherwise it's just spoken word. You want this to be funny. You want to be able to deliver some humour here. And you've just said the secret to sort of freedom almost is constraint. How do you provide those guardrails for your own life? Okay. Strategic ignorance. There's a lot going on in the world. choose what you're going to give a fuck about and really give a fuck about that. But strategic ignorance, I think is very, very valuable in our world. So if you go, I'm not a sports guy. I don't know anything about sports. Okay. All right. That's, that's okay. Well, I get my Saturdays back and you can't like, don't be a generalist, be a specialist, like get good at something in your twenties, really good, specialize, like mess around a little bit, early twenties, find something and then specialize in something and be non-fungible.

1:08:51In my business, there is no such thing as the greatest, the GOAT. You know who came up with the term GOAT? Greatest of all time? Muhammad Ali. Is that right? Isn't that cool? But there's no such thing. Yeah. I mean, even in boxing, you go, yeah, well, could he have fought him? Well, there's different training methods now and there's different things and things have developed and MMA, who could take it? Whatever, different eras. You can't compare. the greatest of all time is for comedy is the person that makes you laugh the most and it will it might change throughout your life the person you think but who's non-fungible who's someone that there's no one else like that be yourself be your in the world that we have coming being yourself being like like why teach stand-up comedy why would that be a valuable thing in schools well you will write down and order your thoughts you'll learn to communicate them and you will speak in your own authentic voice.

1:09:45Is that not more valuable than grade three on the piano? I think it is because it's that thing of going, that's a transferable skill, no matter whether you do stand up or not. The idea of being able to present to a group and have a little bit of humor and that will help your relationships and help your job and help your presentations and everything else. It's a valuable skill to learn and just having a little of attention on it. And, you know, that's, it's a sad thing. Most people live and die and never hear their own authentic voice. Yeah. We've all reached an age, I think, where hopefully we've all found that.

1:10:19I think the real challenge is for young people. So we've got teenagers. I picked my daughter up from school and I honestly am like that out the car window. Which one is my daughter? Same North Face jacket, same short skirt, same scrape back hair, same, it's like, and it's so depressing. And as much as I speak to Florence about exactly this, be a non-fungible human being, stand out, be different. I think it's so challenging for them. No, no, but you have to fit in. You've got two things at the same time. In the teenage years, you've got to fit in before you stand out. And it's also you're in a different phase of parenting than me.

1:10:54It's dad, isn't it? Dad. So it's direct for the first 12 years, then advise for the next six years, and then discuss. Dad. And where are you? You're in direct, the direct phase. I'm staying in direct. I'm staying in direct. I'm just in the advice. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's a weird thing. It's a weird thing being a parent. I think, you know, this again is the, I'm very pro-natalist. I think having kids is sort of the greatest. But it's so hard for people now. It's so hard. You know, it's hard to get a house, to get a head, to do it. And the time when people should be doing it, It's like, I'm a big advocate for like, should there be any tax for anyone under the age of 25?

1:11:41Like, I don't think there should be. I think it should be that if you're under the age of 25, or either you're in full-time education, in which case, great, you're getting yourself where you want to be in life, or leave school at 16 and get a job. But we don't take anything off you until you're 25. Stack some cash, do you think? I'd be all for that. I just think something needs to change where young people are given a break, something fundamental. I think what makes you non-fungible is, of course, your comedy is different to other people's comedy because comedy is. But I think it's these kinds of conversations.

1:12:18I'm really interested in when you first had these kinds of deeper conversations with no mask and no joke to hide behind at times, not in front of a big audience, but this real connection. When did you first realize what it did for you? Um, I don't know. I suppose it was that thing of like in lockdown, I wrote a book called Before and Laughter, which was kind of a, it was, it was like, I was writing like a, I mean, we sold it to the publishers as like a celebrity biography. And then I wrote a self-help book because that's what I'm interested in. So it was, uh, what was my joke? It was like Eckhart Tolle for dummies was kind of the log line.

1:12:55Um, but the, but the idea of like going, I wrote that and I liked it. And then I went on Modern Wisdom and Diary of a CEO and Joe Rogan has kind of spoke about that stuff. And it's, you sort of show a different side of yourself. And people have been very nice about that. And, you know, it's very rewarding, but it feels like the book and these conversations are pretty close to what it's like with my friends. If we go on a long walk, a friend and I will go and sit in the sauna for two hours. This is the kind of conversation that we might have about life. so it's it doesn't feel like it's anything new for me it just feels like you're revealing yourself a little bit and i am who i am on stage you know if i'm in front of 10 000 people and i want to make them laugh for two hours that's it's a different thing and then you can you can pull from this and and also these conversations made you a better comedian do you think um i think there may be a better performer i think it's that thing if you go you put more sort of thought into into life and you go well actually i'm more willing to deal with difficult stuff there was an author i enjoyed a few years ago a business writer called barry gibbons who spoke about the danger of um of the elvis moment and he said the elvis moment was at some stage quite early on in his career he learned to curl his lip and women screamed and then almost when he gets 20 years into his career he's still having to curl his lip because people almost expect it of him and he almost get trapped by that by that one moment.

1:14:25And what I was interested in is you seem willing to keep reinventing yourself. Well, no, I mean, don't mess it. I mean, I'm still very much, I see myself as being in the service industry, right? And I make something that people want. I make them happy. But that's the job. Like, I can't go out on stage and have this conversation in front of 10 ,000 people. I mean, it might be interesting to some of them, but you go, but actually, no, I need to deliver a product here. people need to leave having laughed consistently for two hours i mean we need to have a great time tonight we need to like i need i'm hosting a party everyone's got to leave incredibly elated right and happy and a little bit shocked and oh my god i can't believe you said that and and and edgy and all of that it's it's that thing of like going and why edgy well sort of why not i i never want to be a um a grifter we think grifters are people selling things they wouldn't by themselves right like i i pay to see me live i like that kind of humor i like that it's exactly what i yeah okay that's where my level is and actually i want i want it to be a bit edgy and transgressive and fun and i think your authenticity is something that absolutely shines through when you're on stage but also when you sit and have conversations like this you know there are a few a few times we've sat and had a conversation both of us have thought is this a grifter sitting in front of us trying to tell us how to get to happiness in five simple steps or change our health in a 10 second routine every day but i love like your depth of thought the fact actually that you do the most important thing which is hold your beliefs lightly like often you don't have the answer but you have what is the answer for you but it might be different for other people i think there's not enough of that necessarily in there yeah i suppose it's like i i don't know i mean i think that thing about i think before we started rolling we're chatting about like you know reading biographies or listening to kind of in-depth interviews and you go well what could you take from that and you're very aware that there might be something that you do that is transferable to someone else's career no one's gonna no one's gonna do the same thing but it's almost like the that structure that people are looking for i think sort of jokes are a bit like that like you can't like in my industry you can never take anyone else's joke but the structure for jokes is there for everyone to use the scaffolding is there and when i started it was like we were you know macheteing our way through the jungle and you know you write a book and you you know you there's a there's a little bit of a coursework so it's like different people do it in different ways you know some people joe rogan set up a club so the mothership is is doing the same thing as the book right so it's the it's the idea that you go i'll create a community that does this and people will check each other and teach each other and they'll learn and you create a little scene uh And that thing, you want to kind of, I don't know.

1:17:16I mean, comedy is kind of weird like that. I think everything, comedy kind of rots. Like everything goes back into the pot. I mean, I still watch George Carlin and Richard Pryor, but I'm not sure how many kids do these days. But you go, but it's the, it feels like it's quite an exciting time in comedy because it feels like it's the 70s for movies or music. you know it feels like there's they they were standing on the shoulders of giants these guys came along and made it a thing that people would go out and see someone speak for two hours on stage the comedian used to be just someone on the bill right so and now it's like i think people go out and they do and people are playing arenas around the world and it's like well this is incredible you want it to you want it to continue want more people to do it more variety i mean i think the the youtube thing's been incredible for it netflix has been incredible like the idea that there's something for everyone.

1:18:10It's like, you sort of can't say, I don't like stand-up now. It's like, you just haven't found the right one for you. There'll be something for everyone. And what a privilege for you. What, to be in this world? I mean, wow. Yeah. We're going to finish with some quick fire questions, if you don't mind. Oh yeah, sure. These are brought to you by our partner Vitality, the life and health insurer, proven to help you live up to five years longer through rewarding healthy living. Three non-negotiable behaviours that are most important to you. I would start with politeness. Very good. like i mean i think if you're it's it's it's nice to be nice i mean maybe that's yeah just uh i think don't be don't be a dick i think disposition is more important than position in life nice um i don't know if you need much more than that are there three you can have one no okay i mean i would go with that i would go like disposition is more important than position and the only thing that shifts your disposition is gratitude gratitude is the mother of all virtues like that thing of like having a gratitude practice, not just for the big stuff, like for the things that you have, but the world that you live in.

1:19:11Can you tell us how you do your gratitude practice? I try and little and often try and think about a big thing that I appreciate, like the big stuff that's kind of all around us that we just take for granted. What's the greatest piece of advice you've ever received and why? Probably that thing about stacking receipts, It's the idea of going, you know, do the thing. Doing the thing. Everyone talks a good game. Go and do the thing. Go and stack receipts. Go and... But there's lots of great stuff out there. I mean, equanimity with impermanence is pretty good just in terms of going that slightly Buddhist philosophy of just going, it's already...

1:19:52It's going to pass. Try and enjoy this now. What's your biggest strength? I don't know. I mean, I'm funny. We'll give you that. Yeah. funny we won't argue with not on this podcast said all funny but i think it's quite it's quite nice to have a rest once in a while um yeah that that uh that's probably my yeah uh my thing i don't know i think uh i was thinking about this recently like someone asked the other night about what superpower would you have and i think not giving a what other people think of you as a superpower it's like it's like to have that ability yeah like if you could it kind of stands in for self-confidence for young people as well if you don't care what other people think you're sort of all right have you got there though because i i love it when you say i listen i've already told the joke that'll get me cancelled so i've got freedom so i'm just gonna say what i listen my whole job is standing up in front of 10 000 people going please love me like it's it's Clearly, this is a personality flaw that I do as a career.

1:20:54So, no, I'm not there, but I like the idea of going, no, no, it's a weird thing. Robbie Williams said this great thing to me once about, like, it's really sad. I love Rob. He's a wonderful man. But he said, I'm an entertainer in the true sense. If you don't love me, I don't love me. It's like, oh, man. And to hear that from someone that you love is like, that's hard to hear. I think comedians are entertainment adjacent. so we want desperately to be loved but entirely on our own terms so it's kind of it's nice because you go well I can do a show but I can't like the audience can tell me what is and what isn't funny but they've got to be my jokes they've got to be stuff that I think is I've got to love them first what's your greatest weakness?

1:21:38I don't know I mean I'm slightly drawn towards I get into trouble occasionally I mean not like like occasionally I tell a joke and some people don't like it. I mean, you could call it cancellation. It's not really. I get dragged every now and then. And it's always something that like, I could cut 5 % of jokes from my show and that would never happen. But I would feel very inauthentic doing it. So it's that thing of like going, I probably could give myself an easier ride if I wasn't drawn to saying those things. But I don't know. One habit that has changed things for you? Sauna cold plunge every day.

1:22:18I love it. What advice would you give to a young Jimmy, just starting out? Start and keep going. That's kind of the secret to success, isn't it? Start and keep going. Just start and like, just, it's kind of easy for me because I'm a one-liner guy. So you're sort of building with Lego bricks. You can sort of do a little bit of work in, oh, the flight's been delayed by 20 minutes. No, okay, let's think about this. Try and write something. Let's try and create something. and then I can try it that night and I get immediate feedback. So it's like the feedback loop is so quick on that. It's like you could always be doing a little bit of work.

1:22:57So I think that thing about don't overstimulate. Just sit and do the work. Is there one goal that you haven't yet said out loud? Yeah. I got offered a job recently and kind of thought it was really interesting. I don't think I ever want to do something that I couldn't deliver on. You know, it's hard sometimes. It's easy sometimes to kind of go, oh, that would be really fun to do. But then, you know, I think the thing that I'm preaching is be a specialist. Don't be a generalist. Be a specialist. Get really good at something. And the podcast is called High Performance. The last question is, what was your definition of high performance?

1:23:42I think it's that thing of like, do what you can with what you've got where you are. Like it's all very well talking about, we're so aware of the greats in sports, in entertainment, in science. We're so in awe. We have the whole of human history to look back at and these icons to look at. And actually, all of them started somewhere and started small. and just and built up so it's that thing of like going for me high performance is like just just just doing your best in that within the confines of what you've got there that's enough that's enough and and realizing that's enough and it's you know it's iterative and you're building something and even if you don't do that thing getting good at something is even if you don't pursue that thing even if you just get good at that thing you prove to yourself oh yeah i learned how to do that thing.

1:24:40I think for most people, the last thing they learn is how to ride a bike. That's tragic. Learn something new. Learn something new. Try something new. Get good at it and prove to yourself, oh yeah, I'm the kind of person that can do something. I'm capable. Yeah. I'm useful. I'm necessary. Great. Brilliant. You can find out more about living longer with vitality at vitality.co.uk, the life and health insurer that uses a behavior change program to incentivize healthy lifestyle choices. Thank you so much, by the way. Really, really interesting. My pleasure. Damien. Jake. Well, what a fascinating guy.

1:25:17And I think coming into this conversation, we knew Jimmy was a fascinating guy. We knew he was more than a stand-up comedian. We knew that he sees the world in an incredible way. I think what I didn't understand was how, right? Which is what this podcast exists for. The fact that he constantly references books. and authors and thinkers is a reminder that he is a voracious reader and he is a as he mentioned himself actually in the episode he's a lifelong learner yeah definitely and i've yet to meet anybody that's stayed at the top of any profession whatever they've done that hasn't done what jimmy said of specializing and then being obsessive about it be constantly looking at those two factors of craft and graft how do we get better and how do i work harder to get better i thought he was a great example of it what i loved was his willingness you know when he talks about the carnaman the system one and system two i was anticipating the system one stuff quick fire jokes like it deflects any question we asked him with a funny line and yet he invited us into system two the reflective stuff whether it was talking about not taxing 20 under 25 year olds or seeing the pub as a youth club things like that as somebody that is deeply reflective and willing to look at the world from a slightly different perspective and i think there's such an amazing quality that that anyone can take and apply in their own life and think about their own industry their own family their own challenges yeah i mean i liked him talking um i liked him talking really openly and honestly about his his mum and her passing when he was only 26 because he said numerous times and i got this sort of um energy from him that he's found freedom by doing things that are not jokes.

1:27:02Like he's found a freedom through these kinds of conversations. Then when you talk about something that's really personal to him, which is the death of his mum when he was young, it's very easy then for him to kind of prove that he can talk about it but can't deliver it. And actually he, and I haven't really heard Jimmy on any platform talk as much as he did about grief and the power that grief gives you and what it's done for him. And that idea of like, what did he say? We're all walking each other home. Like that's when he said, you know, when you hold someone's hand who's dying and you suddenly go, oh, this is it and this is how it ends for me as well.

1:27:35So let's get busy living. I think that is very, very powerful for people listening to this. Yeah, it's great. It's great. And I love the fact he listens to the show. Yeah. It's always nice, actually, when someone says that. Well, again, I think that's consistent with what we said at the start of this reflection that he's a lifelong learner. So he's somebody that's open to different perspectives, different ideas. and you know it is really gratifying that he gives us his time and his focus the two things that we all have he chooses to invest it in listening to us so i thought that was brilliant yeah me too thanks a lot buddy cheers mate and i hope you enjoyed that as well i think it's a conversation unlike any other that we've probably had on high performance in the seven years or so that we've been going but if like us you sort of thought there's not one or two or three but seven eight 20 lines that Jimmy delivered in that conversation where you're like, that could change not just my perspective, but the perspective of someone who really needs it.

1:28:31I would love you just to send this to someone. That is the most powerful thing you can do at this point. Literally just hit the share button, WhatsApp it to someone, email it to someone, just tell them they might find something in this episode that's valuable for them. And we'd be so grateful. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, of course, to Jimmy Carr for being so amazing. And we'll see you next time on high performance. Stay humble, curious, and empathetic. See you soon.

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1:30:22Terms and more at applecard.com. Thank you so much for enjoying today's episode of High Performance. Just a reminder, you can also sign up for our ad-free service at Apple, Spotify, or on the High Performance website.