S6 EP8: Jimmy Carr discusses the secret to his comedy, being a late bloomer, and controversial stand-up gigs

23:58That's what you've got to remember. It's also, you've got to contextualise this, right? There's a phrase in therapy, which is you've got to right-size things. and I think right-sizing this is I told a joke and some people didn't like it. That's what happened there. I mean, we can dress it up and call it cancel culture and get all upset, but you go, I told a joke, some people didn't like it. And then we moved, everyone moved on. People that still like me come and see me. Anyone that takes that seriously, anyone that sees that bit of comedy and goes, oh, he must think that, it's like, okay. I mean, I can't engage with that.

24:30I think as soon as you get into the discussion, it's over. The only defence of super edgy jokes is getting massive fucking laughs with them. That's the defence. Did they call you into Netflix to meet people from the Romany community? Did they do anything like that? Like, come and sit down? Netflix are like, yeah, do your thing. We signed you up. We, okay, this will be great. Do your thing. And it's still on there. Because take it down, cut that bit out, but it is still up there. Who said that? Take it down, Nadine Dorries. Yeah. You seriously think the guys at Netflix give a fuck about Nadine Dorries?

25:04Clearly not. Not for me to say. But they're doing their thing. That thing of like going, Netflix is kind of serving the artist. So they've come for Netflix a couple of times where they've tried to take stuff down and they've gone, no, no, that's not what we're about. They tried to change the law for a while. Did anything happen? They said, we should make this illegal. Yeah. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said the government was toughening measures for social media and streaming platforms who don't tackle harmful content. Did they actually change a law? No, they've got to be really careful on that.

25:34They've got to be very careful on the free speech thing. What was it like to be in the middle of it? I've been in it before. I think you have to... The first time it happens, I think it's very... You think, oh, well, that's that then. I guess we need another career change. I guess we need to think about something else. It's all over. When was the first time it happened? The first time was probably a joke about the soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. That was the first time that it was like front of the papers. I thought the joke was quite funny. it doesn't stand on whether you think it was funny or not.

26:01That can't be that. And that's where you always get to with the, whoever the minister was at the time, making a comment of, well, I like jokes as much as the next man, but that's not funny. Okay. Let's agree to disagree about that. Freedom of speech is, you have to defend what you don't like as well as what you like. You can't just defend the stuff you like. I often think about with comedy, the patron saint of comedy is St. Lawrence. You know this guy? No. He was killed by like, I can't remember the emperor's name, but some Roman emperor had him burnt alive over hot coals. And as he was burning alive, the last thing he said was, turn me over, this side's done.

26:43That's not true, is it? Yeah, it's true. Really? Yeah. They had barbecues in those days. I think it was like Valerian. It's like Emperor Valerian or something. It couldn't be more Game of Thrones. Turn me over, this side's done, he said in the face of this. So cool. So funny. And that goes to the the Chappelle had a great take on this, which was as comedians, the joke that makes you roll around laughing and you tell your friends, you can't wait to tell your friends. It's the best joke in the world. And the joke that offends you and you think is disgusting comes from the same place. We're trying to make you laugh.

27:18Trying to lighten the load of life a little bit. And we're paid for the attempt, like evil can evil. We're paid for the attempt. We are not paid for the jump. Sometimes swing and a miss. Sometimes something offends. There's 30 other jokes in that show that could be the thing that we're talking about. What about, because we're similar ages. You were born, what, 72? Yeah. Yeah, I was born 1970. So we grew up sort of the tail end of, well, black and white minstrels was a thing, right, on TV. And there were comedians like Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson and others whose comedy was, I would guess, would now be considered offensive and would make liberal use of stereotypes.

28:06Yeah. And then alternative comedy came along, people like Ben Elton and The Young Ones and Rick Male, and they said, actually, you know what? Comedy should think more carefully about social justice. So in a way, I guess that always became part of my thinking, was like, oh, you can make someone laugh and it can still be a bad thing because it's bullying, let's say. But it sounds like you're disagreeing with that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's all... The comedy world is very broad. I mean, I think it's like you can't really cheat what you find funny. There's that great Titania McGrath line that Andrew Doyle wrote.

28:41Titania McGrath is a fictional social justice warrior written by Andrew Doyle. And she had a great line, which was, if you find yourself laughing at a joke, maybe it isn't progressive enough. Yeah. Which is such a great line. Yeah. Such a great line. I don't know. Like, you know, I'm not for everyone. I'm pretty edgy, pretty out there in terms of the stuff I talk about on stage. Saying something's too terrible to joke about is a bit like saying this disease is too terrible to treat. Or you never say that with a journalist. God, I can't believe you covered that story. It's gross. You want them to cover those stories.

29:17If anything, you drag them over the coals if they don't cover the terrible stories. You want them to go there. I'm aware that there's things that I might joke about among friends or privately. That you wouldn't say publicly. That I wouldn't say, yeah. Yeah, but I would say. That's normal, right? But I would say that what is a comedian, right? What is friendship? Your best friend is the person you have the lowest filter with. Virtually no filter is like, that's your best friend in the world. I could tell him anything. Like, that's a wonderful thing. You want to be a proxy for that for your audience.

29:48You want to be that close to them. You want to treat them as friends. And you'll be rewarded. They get it. They get when you're serious. They get when you're not serious. I mean, sometimes I say very serious things on stage. And there's never any confusion. I've never had anyone be confused as to, oh, no, that's a serious bit of advisories chatting to someone there that's going through something. Or, you know, we post these things. People know when it's serious and they know when it's a joke. They can tell it very easily. Would there ever be a joke you'd think that will get a laugh, but I'm not going to do it?

30:18I tend to let the audience decide. Really? In terms of, like, balance in the show, sometimes there's something where you go, well, there's been too much. There's too much of that in the show already. Okay, so I'll leave that for another time. Are you conscious of trying to balance it out a bit so everyone's getting a pop? Kind of subject matter-wise or if you do, you don't want to feel like you're piling on. You kind of want to feel like, well, you've done that and then we'll do something else. And then you kind of want to mix it up a little bit. I think in terms of also I'm kind of a one-liner guy.

30:48One-liners are kind of my love language. But you don't want to have like two hours of one-liners. You want to mix it up and do some crowd work and mess around and tell some stories. and you want to have enough kind of different kind of rhythms in the show. Who did you watch growing up or who did you enjoy? I mean, Ben Elton would have been a huge influence, like in terms of like going as a stand-up comic that came along. And Vic and Bob, I think for my generation, they were kind of the punk rock of comedy. They were very avant-garde. Surrealist. Yeah, surreal and different. And I don't know, it feels like we're kind of, extraordinarily influential, I think.

31:29Then it would have been like, you know, the young ones and the two Ronnies and things. Because Ben Elton... Ben's still touring. Yeah, Ben's... He sort of came back. We live in Australia. We've had Ben on the pod. Ben, I think, would be conscious of power dynamics. He'd be thinking about, actually, is this okay? Has he ever reached out to you? Do you know Ben? Are you friendly with him? I know him pretty well, yeah. But he's great. I saw his last tour. His last tour was, like, pretty edgy. I mean, he's like... He deals with some difficult stuff and he does it in such a fun way. He's a brilliant comic.

31:56He's a brilliant writer and comic. Who else? Yeah, he doesn't seem to get the props he deserves. I mean, really, he's had his hand in a lot of great stuff. Ask him. He'll tell you that himself. Well, I shouldn't say that, but he's conscious of... I think he does feel a little bit bruised. I think he's not had... He hasn't had his flowers. Why not? I don't know. I do. I don't know what it is. I think he should get his flowers. I'll tell you. Do you want to know why? He's great. I think you know why. Why? He's too left wing? No, because... Well, because he came up as an alternative comic and then he became enormously successful and wrote the Queen musical and there was some sense of cultural consent or whatever.

32:32It was seen as being too close and people felt maybe Stuart Lee was chief among them that he sold out. Right. People saw him as a hypocrite. Good luck, everyone. Good luck with that. You've got no time for that. I've got no time. I just think that thing of like the comics, criticising other comics, It strikes me as the narcissism of small differences. Like we're all doing the same job. We all sort of started off together. Everyone should, you know, get along. If you don't like something, don't watch it, I guess. That would be as far as I would take it in terms of critiquing other performers. If it's not for you, it's not for you.

33:09Let people get on with it. What's your writing process? I mean, I think it's like you can have, I think systems better than goals. I think write every day and then try stuff every night. That seems like a pretty good system. So it's just constant. Constantly writing new stuff, trying new stuff. Every night you'd write something? Not every night, but most working days you'd be there. So I get, like, at the end of the show, I'll get a piece of paper out at the very end and I'll try, like, ten new jokes. Really? And some of them will work and some of them won't. And then you're constantly kind of building the next show.

33:46So you've got these kind of little building blocks of Lego of, like, oh, that's a joke that works and that's a joke that works and what would go well together and what's a good sequence. So you're constantly, you're never looking at a blank page. You're constantly looking at stuff and writing and trying to improve. And I guess your hit rate gets a little bit better over the years, but not much. I write so many jokes that don't work. It's amazing. And you can kind of never really second guess what the audience is going to do. Sometimes you kind of think, that should work. But then sometimes it doesn't.

34:16You're trying to stick the landing. You have amazing poise on stage And in fact maybe above the writing Is kind of confidence that you project An ability to own the room Yeah but I think that comes with I think it's like being an airline pilot It's like time in the air I probably have more stage time than anyone else Do you think? Maybe You put more hours in than most comics? Yeah I do maybe a two hour show Twice a night, four nights a week That's a lot of time on stage holding that. And I also do a lot of audience work. And I think that's like... Crowd work during the show. So that thing of going...

34:58The load doesn't get lighter, your back gets stronger. So that thing of years and years of doing that, you get used to being on stage. I mean, in some ways, you're kind of conducting the audience. I do quite a lot of stuff. I mean, I seem to be standing stock still the whole time. I think that's the impression that I give. but there's quite a lot of stuff going on. It's quite sort of, yeah, it's very performative. It's striking, you know, reading about you, reading your book, this almost Damascene moment that took place when you were 26, would you say? Yeah, about that, yeah. When you were working as a marketing guy for Shell and you'd gone to Cambridge, you'd grown up in Slough, west of notoriously, I shouldn't say this to all my fans in Slough, but it's my word for being kind of a dreadful place, only because of the Betjeman poem.

35:46It probably is lovely, isn't it? Well, the Betjeman poem and lovely Ricky. Ricky Gervais in the office. And Steve Merchant. Set in Slough. Set in Slough. He could have set it in Reading, where he's from, but he went a little bit closer in, it's better. Come friendly bombs and rain on Slough. And fall on Slough. It isn't fit for you humans now. There isn't grass to graze a cow. Rain over death or something. Yeah. Lovely. It's not a great review. It's not on the, we haven't got it on the sign. They don't put that on. Yeah. I don't know. On the website. I don't know. I mean, I quite like growing up there.

36:19But that thing of like the 26 is an interesting age because there'll be people. Quarter life crisis, you called it. Well, but there'll be people listening to this. It's more of a third life crisis. Yeah, maybe a third life crisis. The last 25 years of you, like 75 to 100, not much is happening. Who knows? If Peter Atty is right, maybe we'll be running marathons. I think there's something that we don't talk about, which is the teenage years get a lot of attention. like that transition from boy to man. But I think there's another transition that happens. I think for women, it's 24, for men, 25, when the frontal lobe completes, where there's another kind of waking up that happens mid-20s that I don't think people talk about very much.

36:57I think it's a really interesting phase where you kind of become yourself a bit more and you stop, you kind of wake up and look around, right, what are we doing? And if you're working as a marketing guy for Shell, you must have... I had very little agency, though. I hadn't really made a decision until I decided to be a comedian. That's really the first decision I made in life. I've heard you say that. Everything else was like the line of least resistance. You were four A's at A level, right? Yeah. That must be smart. What, to get A levels? You got four A's, though, at your A levels, no? I think I might have got five, but I don't count general studies.

37:32Stop it. General studies, I mean, that's a grift. It's nothing. No one gets five A levels. Have you had your IQ tested? You have, haven't you? I'm sure it's... Very high. I'm sure it ain't nothing special. But IQ and education, it's not a good... I don't know if it's... No, it's bullshit. It is. IQ's a dodgy metric. Really? Yeah. So you went up to Cambridge. Was there no one trying to recruit you for Footlights? No, but I was there around the same time as Dan Mazur and Sacha Baron Cohen and that crew, yeah. Dan Mazur, who was Sacha's writer and partner in crime, right? Yeah. So I knew a few of those guys.

38:08They were fun. But then were you not thinking, oh, I'd love to be, you know, I'm creative. I want to, you know, I'm a bit funny with my friends. Maybe I'll get a job that will. I didn't think I was creative. What were you thinking? I really hadn't given it enough thought. And I think we don't spend enough time on, like, careers advisors are the worst people in the world, right? Because it's a guy that ended up being a careers advisor. So by dint of that, you go, well, this guy shouldn't be giving anyone advice. This guy's a fucking idiot. I think careers advisor should be a bit like jury service.

38:42I think, you know, you should get a letter in the post. Ah, I've got to go and speak to 18-year-olds for three hours. Fuck. And then you have to go and talk to them and go, okay, well, here's the risk I took. What do you want to do in life? And what are you willing to sacrifice to be a person that you admire? What are you willing to give up? That's why we go and talk in schools, isn't it? You're not allowed in schools, are you? After the incident? I'm putting that behind me. Okay. So you went into it, you basically attacked it. I took it very seriously because from the off... You had a bit of money, you got your redundancy or whatever.

39:21Yeah, I had like a year's float. I was able to kind of sustain myself and I viewed it like... I think if I'd done it straight from college, I might have thought this is a childish thing and I need to grow up and get a proper job. and I was suddenly introduced to the Edinburgh Festival at like 26, 25 maybe. Went up there and went, sorry, I didn't know any of this was going on. I didn't know there was this incredible... Was this after you quit or before? This was after I'd quit Shell. Went up to the Edinburgh Festival. The first year I went up there, I went up there with Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant and Robin Ince and we went up and did a show together.

39:58And we all did sort of 20 minutes in the show. And then The Office hit that summer. What was the first joke you wrote? Can you remember that you performed? Or the first one you delivered? I do remember it. It was about being working class kids talking about being boxers and they always talk about there's only one way out. I was growing up, I was very middle class. We lived in the cul-de-sac. There was only one way out. It's a perfectly serviceable joke-shaped thing. It's sort of they're like crossword puzzles. And I sort of view jokes as being they're little, it almost feels like they're there and you're trying to chisel away everything that isn't the joke.

40:33You're trying to get it down to as few words as possible to get the meaning across, to get someone to have this reaction, to laugh. And I just found that it was that, you know, Naval Ravikant thing of like going, it's about what could you stand to do for 10 ,000 hours? What is... Who was Naval? Come on, now you're just making them up. Naval Ravikant is brilliant. One of the most brilliant people in the world. What, is he a sociologist? No, he's like a business investor. And he's just a very wise man. And he shares it. He's very open. But his thing is like you find something that is work for them and play for you.

41:12That's like don't follow your dreams, follow your talents. What do you find easy that everyone else seems to find difficult? Follow that. And I could do this thing. I could write jokes and I could do that thing. You know, I'm still thinking about what we were talking about earlier and that idea of comedy, and comedy is a sort of special realm. Comedy takes place with its own logic in some ways. At the same time, comedy is part of life. Someone once said to me, there's no such thing as a joke, which is an intriguing, challenging, you could say paradoxical observation. But I think what it meant was you can't just remove jokes from the realm of the rest of reality.

41:53And some things take place on the edge of being jokes. But certainly, especially once you're off stage, you might just be communicating in ways that slip in and out of a kind of comic register. Right. These aren't tightly defined areas of discourse. Does that make sense? And I'm struck sometimes. Well, when you do your crowd work, you're walking this line between making funny observations of people, sometimes humorously insulting them. But you deliver it in a way that is funny most of the time. Right. I mean, I hope so. And sometimes it's serious. Sometimes there's like a serious interaction. Sometimes it's like it's combative.

42:33Sometimes it's like there's a big difference between someone heckling, joining in at the show. Heckling means we need kind of separate terms because heckling feels like, especially in America, people don't want to join in because they think, they've been told in clubs, don't talk, don't join in. He's doing his act and you're watching the act. And I'm very much sing along. play with me but fine it's very very clear when I'm doing you know performing jokes in the show and when it's like yeah join in have fun and you do crowd work and there's there's compilations of your working your crowd work or dealing with heckles and they're not heckles in fact you've invited the interaction and because it's quite clear that you're in a real setting where you might have some prepped stuff but you're deploying it in a way that's organic and spontaneous or you're just coming up with stuff on the spot with whoever you're talking to.

43:24I think that's the fun of it, is the improv stuff. It's like asking a magician to do real magic. Everyone's suspending disbelief. So for the first 20 minutes when I go out for the big shows, I'll do 20 minutes of just probably four jokes a minute, four big laughs a minute is what you're solving for, and you're absolutely beating people over the head. And then memorised. You're trying to get them to a step. And everyone knows this is pre-prepared material. He isn't just thinking of this off the top of the head. So you're trying to get people to release dopamine and serotonin, right? Essentially, I'm a drug dealer.

43:57Yes. And those are the drugs that I'm dealing in, serotonin and dopamine, and it's a variable reward system. So that idea of it's varied rewards. You don't quite know when the punch is coming. You kind of know something's coming, but somehow it's the sudden revelation of a previously concealed fact is how they kind of work. And you're doing this, and then you get to this space where, okay, right, we've all established this is going to be a fun night. Let's join in. And then people mess around and challenge you to stuff. And sometimes someone asks something poignant, interesting and beautiful. And sometimes it can be funny.

44:28And it's great. Light and shade. And all life can be there.

44:48This episode is brought to you by Shopify. When I was younger, I always wanted to be either an astronaut or an athlete. I was a fast runner. I thought maybe I could make it to the Olympics or be blasted off into space. As it happens, neither of those dreams came true. I had to settle for being an award-winning documentary maker and international celebrity. Ah well, we've all had big dreams and it's never too late to make them happen. This is your sign to stop holding back and go for it, especially if your dream is to run a business, because Shopify is making it easier than ever. It's there to support you every step of the way, from designing your website to marketing to product descriptions to sales.

45:30The list goes on and on. So give it a shot. Turn those dreams into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S. That's shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S.

46:018 out of 10 cats do countdown. I've never rewatched it on TV and then I watched a compilation. I know, it's so fucking embarrassing. Why? Why is that embarrassing? I don't know. We're friends, you don't have to watch my stuff. I'm too busy reading Proust and studying up on my Latin. You can't read. Now it's out there. I had 10 cats do countdown. I watched it. I watched a compilation of it this morning is where I'm going and it was so funny. That show is going to be a hit. Thanks, man. Seriously, mark my words. We're 180 episodes in. You're really good on it, and fingers crossed it gets renewed.

46:34Thanks, man. It's good. It's really good fun. Really good fun. Elon Musk. How well do you know him? I met him a couple of times. I don't know him well. No one knows him well. I mean, I think he's a really interesting character because he's McNamara, isn't he? If you think about McNamara and the fog of war. Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defence during the Vietnam War. Yes, he ran the Ford Motor Company. He's always coming up in this podcast. He ran the Ford Motor Company. And then he got a call from JFK saying, will you come in and help me run the government? And it's kind of exactly the same thing.

47:08Engineering principles. Yeah, Elon Musk got brought in by Trump to, you know, engineering principle, the government. I mean, these are very strange times. Have you met Trump? No. Have you met Peter Thiel? No, never met Peter Thiel. You know who I mean, though. I know Eric Weinstein very well. He used to work with Peter. Eric Weinstein, is an academic? Physicist. Physicist. Yeah, very good physicist. Who became a figure of sort of intellectual and cultural pundit, sort of on the right, I would say. I wouldn't say that. I'd say he was kind of the intellectual dark web. That's what they call him.

47:45He coined the phrase, I believe. Did he? Yeah. Sometimes called heterodox thinkers. People who are outside the constraints of what would be perceived as sort of conventional liberal orthodoxy. Yeah, but that's kind of, that's the interesting place at the moment of going, well, what's going on in the world? Like the Trump phenomenon, I find fascinating, but very, you know, it's very, it's troubling because it's a huge change, a huge shift. And really the tectonic plates of politics have shifted. Hillary's deplorable speech is kind of the crux, right? So the idea that somewhere the parties on the left, which were the parties of the working classes, became...

48:27People talk about gentrification of neighbourhoods. I think those political parties became gentrified and stopped talking to the working classes. And now the working classes look to the right-wing parties. That's a big shift in politics. We've, you know, been around 50 years and we haven't seen anything like that happen before. That's a huge shift politically. And I'm not sure what happens now. I don't think it's a question of like we can live without institutions. I think we need to rebuild our institutions. But you look at something like the UN and you go, well, Russia and China have got seats at the table.

49:04We're in a war with them. And India doesn't have a seat at the table. Nigeria doesn't have a seat at the table. Japan, Germany, no seats at the table. It's crazy. So those institutions will be rebuilt. and, you know, the world will turn and, you know, things will be all right. It's also like I'm quite optimistic about the world. I do think it's like it's better than it was, but it's still very troubling and very – so many things are in flux at the moment. That all may be the case. I definitely see social media as being – and the internet as being a huge part of what's happening. And when you mention mainstream media being disrupted, obviously – and I don't see, like, the BBC or legacy media as being replaced.

49:45I think they now have to exist in a jungle alongside all the other beasts, if you like, big beasts of Spotify, Netflix, TikTok and so on. So, you know, the mainstream or legacy outlets still have enormous influence, but as does academia, but they don't monopolise the conversation the way they did. And I also think that the idea of like 50 years ago or 35, 40 years ago, many of the same ideas existed. You know, Trumpism, it wasn't called that, but there was a sort of nativist outlook that was embodied by certain politicians. But it tended to be gatekept out of the conversation to an extent. Yeah.

50:27You know, it was also that thing of like when you talk about the foundation myth, you go, well, why was America so productive? Post-war, why was it so productive? Everything's about geography in the world, right? Everything's about geography until it isn't. And then everything's about Shakespeare and personalities. But America is uniquely blessed in terms of it's geographical. So it can afford to have a kind of crazy political system. But that politics in the 50s and 60s and 70s, well, those guys had all served together. All the politicians had been in the same uniform in the same war. And so they worked together.

51:01So the guys across the aisle were not enemies. I mean, I think the issue really is there's too much debate going on in the world. And debate is about winning. And there's not enough deliberation. They're kind of conflated words, but too much debate, winning, owning the other guy. Lots of stuff on the internet about, oh, that guy owned that guy in that debate, or that comedian owned that heckler. Fine with a heckler, but if it's something serious, you want deliberation. The world that I see is 80 % of people agree about 80 % of everything. Maybe 90 % of people agree. And then you've got the extremes on the left and the right, and they think the other one's the problem.

51:36But there's real problems in the world, and how do you address them? How do you get to that? Okay, let's talk about the solutions now, rather than blaming the other side. Geopolitics is a nice segue. We can touch this or not. I'll be guided by you. The Riyadh Comedy Festival was in the news. Yeah, no, I played it. I loved it. So I hear. I loved it. I thought, I think we need to... Some comedians... Oh, I'll say, it was controversial. Yeah, yeah. Because of the human rights record of Saudi Arabia, there's been a lot about so-called sports washing. I guess this would have been perceived as laughter washing, or I don't know what.

52:09Some comedians elected to stay away and spoke out about it. Shane Gillis, very funny man. Theo. Oh, love him. Theo Vaughn, I think. He didn't speak out. Mark Maron spoke out. Did anyone else? A couple of others, maybe. I like Mark a lot. I mean, I like all those guys a lot. Yeah. Some people didn't want to go. Fine. It was rumoured that they were being spent between$250 ,000 to more than a million, I think. On what? On what people got paid? Yes. How much were you paid, Jimmy? Okay. I was paid, I would say, a commensurate amount with selling out an 8 ,000-seater room. That's a big room. I didn't got paid.

52:46I earned it, is what happened. But here's the thing. I think we need to give up on the idea that the Middle East becomes Western Europe. The Middle East is a very different place. And the same people that will tell you diversity is our strength will tell you don't go there, they're not like us. And the thing that I like about Saudi Arabia is the direction of travel. Look at where it was 10 years ago. Look at where it is now. The direction of travel is pretty good, like where they go. They clearly, they kind of want to be Dubai, which you could have said this about Dubai 25 years ago, don't go there, they're not like us.

53:18And you go, it's a different culture, a different way of, you know, of conducting a society. So the idea of going, don't go there because they're not like us. Well, I play 50 countries around the world. I don't, I'll go where the audience. Louis C.K. went? Yeah, we played the same. We played the same night. We did a doubleheader. Did you? Yeah. Are you friends with Louis? Yeah. He got into some hot water. By the way, I'd love to have him on the podcast. Would you say he got cancelled? Yeah. Yeah, I'd say that. I think it's fair to say. He's not on legacy media anymore. So I think that's a form of cancellation.

53:57I think some people would argue that you're not cancelled unless you lose everything. But I think he's still got his audience. He's still got the people that love him and want to go and see him. Well, I think part of the issue we're up against is the word cancelled. And I'm not going to be that guy who says, it's not cancelled culture, it's consequence culture. I just mean that it's so binary. Yeah, but there is that thing with freedom of speech. Yeah, but you have to deal with the consequences. If you're going to say that, you've got to be willing to say it and go, yeah, I don't regret telling that joke.

54:29That's fine. Some people really were upset by it. That's okay. I've got the people that come and see me and they really like that stuff. And I've got to serve them, not someone else. Not Nadine Dorries or whatever she was called. I don't give a fuck what she thinks. Have you ever lost work over a joke? Who knows? I suppose it's that thing of going, how much more successful could I be were I to cut out the 10 % most offensive stuff? Could have been a bigger mainstream hit. Yeah, probably. But I don't want to be a grifter. I don't want to sell you something that I wouldn't buy myself. If I'm not for me, who is?

55:16your book is a self-help book. Nevertheless, there's... That's not what they wanted. Well, I... They wanted a celeb biography, and I kind of went, I really don't care about that. You didn't. And I think, nevertheless, there is self-revelation in there. Yeah, there's a few kind of bits in there. But I mean, it's really... I kind of, I thought it was... The idea of doing a sort of self-help book for people that wouldn't necessarily read a self-help book. I got that. I sort of think I'm quite aware of, like... There's some great quotes in there that you found from people things that had helped you through life.

55:50You talk about your relationship with your mum. You lost her to cancer when you were... No, pancreatitis. Pancreatitis. What is that? It's when your pancreas stops working. I thought that was a kind of cancer. A slightly different thing. But yeah, that was pretty... It's a lot. Here, I'm going to throw a few things out there and you can pick up from this whatever you like. You said when mum died... You were very close to her. Your parents had separated. I don't know if they were divorced. I don't think they were divorced. They were separated. You talk about almost being overly close. You said, when mum died, I was lost.

56:18We were close. I suppose a therapist would tell you I was enmeshed, a surrogate partner for my mother. Maybe, maybe we were too close, but I don't see it negatively. Yeah, so we were in a very close relationship and you don't know what normal is. Partly because your dad was gone, do you think? Yeah, emotionally absent, certainly. You don't know what normal is, right, as a kid. It's your house is your house. How you live is how you live. how you play, what you eat, whatever. It's just normal to you. And I think sort of stepping back at that and looking as an adult, you go, well, that's probably a lot of oversharing there going on.

56:51And actually, I just needed to be a kid, but whatever. Oversharing about what? Everything, life. Really? Yeah. And I was very aware that my mother was... You said she was depressive. Yeah, so she was, I mean, very severely depressed and getting no help at all. So I thought it was very normal for your mum to be in a dressing gown when you got home from school. and hadn't been able to get herself out of bed. I thought that was just absolutely, yeah, yeah, mums are tired. And you kind of look back and go, oh, just like a therapist would have been something. But there was no access to that and no real, I don't know.

57:27I feel in a sense like I let her down. Why? Because I didn't help in any practical way. I didn't have what I have now. I didn't have access to, I didn't know what was going on. What kind of help could you have given, though? I think just to point in a direction. I think sometimes it's just the idea of going, you need to go and see a doctor. You need to go and see a medication. You need something here. Like any kind of intervention. She didn't take care of herself. Were you having to be a relationship counsellor as well? In a sense. But, I mean, listen, I did not have a tough childhood or a tough break.

58:05I had a lucky break. My mother was incredibly funny. she had a thing called narcolepsy, which is a sleep disorder. Cataplexic narcolepsy. Yeah, so she had like a laugh where she would make no noise at all, but she would kind of melt if you made her laugh. She would like literally lose muscular control and just melt. So my whole child, I mean, the whole reason I'm a comedian, I think is clearly linked to making my mum laugh was the funniest thing in the world. It was just joyful. They were both Irish born? Yeah. Yeah, and you could bring her... Yeah, from Limerick. And then they moved to Slough.

58:42Well, look, you said my mum's dead, my dad's dead to me. I thought that was a big thing to put in the book. Jeez. Yeah, it sounds harsh. Yeah. I think it's okay, though. I think it's... I get a lot from Al-Anon. They've got some great lines. They've got great lines in... I really like AA as well. I really like AA language. I drink a little bit myself, but I like the language of that. And they talk about detach with love. One of the most spiritual places you'll go is an AA meeting. Amazing. But detaching with love. You don't need to hate someone. You don't need to wish them ill. But he's not in my life.

59:15He hasn't been in my life for 25 years. That much? Yeah, I haven't seen him since I was 26, something like that. But it's okay. It's all right. It doesn't matter. I think there's a statute of limitations on your parents being the problem. I think an 18-year-old telling me, listen, I'm sorry about that, but my parents were terrible. Seems fair. I think a 40-year-old saying that is fucking tragic. And I don't know where we draw the line, but the answer is somewhere. Somewhere it's no longer acceptable. Of course. I mean, you bring it up, but who fucking cares? I'm a grown man. You've got two kids now, though, and there's a part of me thinking, well, that's going to be so meaningful for your father.

1:00:01Like the idea of having a relationship with his grandkids, and that might be meaningful for those kids when they're a little older as well. I mean, I sense it's not a road back, maybe. I don't think so. I don't think so. But that's OK. I'm all right with that. Accept the apology that you're never going to get and move on. You talked about father figures. This is an awkward segue. But I know that Jordan Peterson's been somewhat meaningful for you. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I like Jordan a lot. I think Jordan is trying to help a lot of people, and he's very authentic. He just says what he thinks.

1:00:45I think he's a good guy. I mean, a lot of people think he's the worst, but okay. Yeah, for many, he's viewed as a sort of manosphere figure, which I think is overstated. You know, the idea that, oh, he's like Andrew Tate. You know, people see him on an axis with that. That's fucking lunacy. Which seems extreme. Nevertheless, he's clearly, he's said a few things. Partly, I think, it's a symptom of being overactive on Twitter or X, maybe. But is that not a, to conflate those two just seems, that seems quite mad to me. It feels like that's kind of a concept creep. If you put everyone in the same brackets, like, it loses meaning, right?

1:01:23He came to a Canadian psychology professor specialising in a lot of Jungian type disciplines. Nevertheless, he came to fame relatively late in life through YouTube lectures, having gone semi-viral or achieved some notoriety because he resisted compelled pronouns. He said, like, I'm not taking a view on whether it's right or wrong to call yourself by a certain pronoun of your choosing. He said, I don't want to be compelled to use your pronoun. Yeah, I believe his stance was, I will do that with an individual because that's the polite thing to do, but I'm not in favour of compelled speech. What do you think you're getting from him in general?

1:02:01What do you think is the key takeaway? I mean, it's an awful lot. I'm not signing off on everything he's ever said, but I think if you're a young man in search of something, I'd say he's quite a positive force. The 12 rules thing is, you know, that's quite positive. You've become quite friendly with Jordan. Yeah, I know him. I sit and when we're in the same city, we'll have dinner. He'll come to a show. I wonder how he identifies politically. Is he swimming quite close to Trump at this point? I don't know. I mean, I think he'd be... He took work with Ben Shapiro, didn't he, on the Daily Wire? Yeah, but I think that's, you know, that's all right.

1:02:41I feel like you're on the edge of coming out politically, but maybe not. Well, I'm a creature of the left, but I don't like where the left has gone in terms of going that idea of leaving the working classes behind, leaving the original kind of Marxist ideas behind of the redistribution of wealth. Like I think there needs to be a redistribution. But for me, it isn't from rich to poor. It's from old to young. I think we need to deal young people in to society. Like if I was going to run for office, my thing would be, okay, no one under 30 pays any tax. We have to give them a little head start. They have to be allowed to buy a house and start a family.

1:03:22Just that's what society is for. And the whole of our political system is sort of solving for the old, which is, I don't know, I don't think it's going to work long term. It's striking reading about you, reading your book. the kind of the most mind-blowing thing in your book is learning that you were a virgin until you were 26. That's the most mind-blowing thing? I would say. No, I think you take away fame and fortune. You're a good-looking guy. Stop it, you. Stop flirting. You're intelligent. You went to university, right? You have a lot to offer. Thank you. This sounds like the wind-up to a joke, and it isn't.

1:04:01No, well, yeah. But I think it's very good to talk about this, because I think there is a lot of pressure on young men to lose their virginity and feel like they're... It's that weird thing at the moment where the world is harems and peepholes. It's a very small percentage of men getting all the girls and everyone else is hopelessly addicted to porn. And I think it's very good to be open about it and say, not everyone develops at the same time. I was enmeshed with my mother and maybe that was part of it. I'm sure that's what a psychotherapist would say. And you go, you don't find the person until you find the person.

1:04:37You don't feel, you don't love yourself. You don't like who you are particularly. What does that mean in meshed? Yeah, I think you're emotionally kind of unavailable. Right. I don't think you're very attractive when you're in your early 20s to women. Because really, if you had to sort of summarize what women find attractive, it's competence. Being good at something. Guys get attractive around 30 because they start to get good at something. It seems like it's shallow, but I don't think it is. But I feel that when we were growing up, it seemed, I mean, And this is TMI, I'm sure. I'd lost my virginity when I was 17, which felt quite late, you know, in my peer group.

1:05:13That guy was like, oh, I lost mine at 14. I'm like, really? 16. And then I was like, 17, got it in, finally. Who was the lucky guy? Thank you. There you go. There's a joke. Yeah, but that thing of going, okay, but it is what it is. Were you trying? I did have some intimate relationships. Were you trying? Yeah, I had some intimate relationships, but I just didn't have six months. You were a committed Christian. Was that part of it? Yeah, I think that was part of it, yeah. Want to make it forever? Were you like one of those? I think that kind of, that was a part of it, certainly. It's almost like unrecognisable now to look back because that thing that I was saying earlier about when you're kind of 25 and you feel like you're suddenly yourself, this kind of a waking up mid-20s, and I feel like I was quite a religious guy growing up.

1:05:54I was Christian, and then I had a close relationship with my mother. This is not, you're not a qualified therapist. Why am I telling you this? But that thing of like going, it's okay. It happens at different times. it's not a race no but i think a good thing to talk about yeah because it feels like people don't talk about that and it feels like there's a perception that everyone else is having more fun than you i think now more than ever with social media the comparison is the thief of joy everyone is having a fucking amazing time online would you look back and say like what's holding you back like what would you say to your younger self like get a grip man get out there no no i'd say i'd say this is great, just do this.

1:06:35You'll like who you are, don't worry. Because it's also that thing of like you go, losing Virginia at 26 makes me, what, OG incel. But you go, there's another side of that where you go, I've had an amazing life. So you can't pick and choose the bits of, like that thing if you're going to be, if you're going to go, well, what if I was different there? Well, maybe I wouldn't have, maybe I wouldn't have had the ambition to get on stage and to try and be something and to try and get really good at something. because I felt like I needed to impress. I thought that would be the impressive thing. You go, okay, well, that's valid.

1:07:08It's like I don't quite know what the impetus was to make me want to do this thing that's clearly terrifying, stand up in front of people and tell jokes for two hours. But something did, and maybe that was a bit of it. That's okay. Use it. It's all good. It's all in the mix. So I think going back and changing stuff is like, hmm. Sounds like you weren't trying that hard. To lose your virginity? No, I don't think I was. It's also in a Bill Clinton terms, yeah, there was some stuff going on, don't panic. Right. But then there was a block there. I think a lot of kids are not having sex now. Yes, well, I think it's, again, it's the harems and peepholes.

1:07:53It's 5 % of the people online are having a great time and 95 % of the people are having a terrible time. I'd love it if there was some kind of dating thing associated with shows I'd love it if you could get people to date at your show at my show because I do think well I would say I would say sense of humor is the thing yeah that thing of like if you can laugh together if you if you laugh at the same things if you find the same stuff funny if you have a little sense of humor like in jokes that just organically come between I mean, that's the long term. That's how you build a reservoir of goodwill that's going to be a relationship that's going to last for years because you can get through anything if you can laugh together.

1:08:36I agree. That's what's keeping, well, among many other things, keeping me and my wife together, for sure. That's a big part of it. I can still make her laugh. Not with reading my jokes, you can't. I wouldn't try that. I think we might be good, man. It's so lovely to sit down with you. Likewise. It's just such a nice... I don't know. It's cool. You're welcome back any time. I think it'd be weird if I did three in a row. How far could I take that? There'd be questions about that. Yeah.

1:09:24welcome back should I stop doing that what did you think I liked it I'm answering my own question thanks to Jimmy for coming on the podcast a few notes these are my footnotes punching up, punching down Look, respect to Jimmy for making no bones of the fact that he thinks it's a fallacious or kind of flawed or bogus analytical term. And I do agree that where is up and down, right? You're saying like ups there and downs there. Well, I know that. But in power relations, it's not always that clear. You know, it's like the term elite. Who's in the elite other than me? You know, we're told that the elite is this sort of woke liberal consensus sometimes by populists, but they would say that they're not the elite and the elite is the oligarchs who are funding the populist movements.

1:10:20You know what I mean? Am I getting too political? I'm moving on. I said there's no such thing as a joke and I couldn't remember who said it. I googled it. It said Freud might have said it. And then I re-googled it and I don't know if Freud did say it. I don't know if anyone has really actually said it in writing. Nevertheless, it gets repeated quite a bit and is sometimes attributed to Sigmund Freud. And it does bear on, I suppose, an idea of Freud's, which is that all jokes carry some sort of emotional charge and that they are giving vent to something forbidden, that there's a tension release.

1:10:58So they're not benign or pallid expressions of some sort of neutral language game, that they are actually a truthful expression of some deeper sense of conflict or turmoil or anxiety. So there you are. I said I made that up and there's more stuff on the teleprompter, whatever we're calling that thing. I think I said it better than Freud. Jimmy said, the world is harems and peepholes. Harems are obviously gatherings of women, stables of women, often at the courts of Ottoman sultans that were at their disposal. Peepholes are small holes through which you peep. And that's a metaphor, I think, for social media.

1:11:48So many peepholes singing. and that will be featured on the album we've done that joke it was blur, you got that, Park Live all the peepholes harems and peepholes I just freestyled that we don't even write this shit down except for this bit and with that all there is to say thank you for listening this year Brackets, Millie's written some LT sincerity question mark question mark question mark can you perform some sincerity no but seriously folks it's been a big year for the pod I'm reading this I can't pretend that I care what you think too much honesty has the masks has the mask slipped but seriously folks thank you for listening and watching what a year it's been let you I'll let you cast your minds back it seems a long time ago when we had Armie Hammer.

1:12:54We spent a long time trying to think of how we would describe him for our intro and we settled on actor and figure of some controversy. It took about an hour to think of that. Florence Pugh, Brian Johnson's Nighttime Erections is the name of my jazz combo. Other highlights, I went to LA for Sean Penn, interviewed him in Malibu, we became friends. Well, I won't say we didn't become friends, but I haven't seen him since. Sean, if you're out there, you know, we could hang. Other favourite moments? You can't really have favourites. You can't really have favourites. It's like favourite children. It's not that you don't have them, you just don't like to say which ones it is.

1:13:45It's like they used to say there was a certain airline I can't even remember which one it was and they'd say, we understand here at United I guess it was United, that you have a choice so thank you for choosing us we understand at the Louis Thru podcast that you have a choice it's a crowded landscape there's a lot of podcasts out there, some of them are actually pretty good so thank you for choosing us me thank you to Spotify right? why not? it's Christmas thank you to Millie she's down there thank you to everyone the production elves who slave behind the scenes can I say slave? that feels potentially insensitive and unguarded that's it for this year all that's left to do is to wish you a very Merry Christmas or whatever your festival of choice is and leave you with the credits the producer was Millie Chu the assistant producer was Amelia Gill the production manager was Francesca Bassett The music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira.

1:14:47The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse production for Spotify.

1:15:00This episode is brought to you by Shopify. When I was younger, I always wanted to be either an astronaut or an athlete. I was a fast runner. I thought maybe I could make it to the Olympics or be blasted off into space. As it happens, neither of those dreams came true. I had to settle for being an award-winning documentary maker and international celebrity. Ah well, we've all had big dreams and it's never too late to make them happen. This is your sign to stop holding back and go for it, especially if your dream is to run a business because Shopify is making it easier than ever. It's there to support you every step of the way, from designing your website to marketing to product descriptions to sales.

1:15:42The list goes on and on. So give it a shot. Turn those dreams into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S That's shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S