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Before & Laughter: The funniest man in the UK’s genuinely useful guide to life

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Exploring how the comedian found personal and professional happiness, Before & Laughter will be published by Quercus on 28th September. Rather disarmingly, he stresses repeatedly throughout his book that anyone could have done this, and that he had no supernatural talent for comedy. “Or any talent at all,” he says. “I’d never written a joke before I was 25. And now I’m good at writing jokes. It’s a learnable skill. And I learned that skill.” Currently appearing as one of the judges on the BBC One talent show I Can See Your Voice, Carr is set to resume his stand-up tour, Terribly Funny, at the Palace Theatre in London on June 15. From prioritising the future over the present to understanding the benefits of laughter, and from working on your disposition to finding your edge, Jimmy takes us through some key pillars to help us free ourselves from punishing patterns of behaviour and negative internal voices, so that we can pursue our dreams.

I’m not an expert on tax accounting, but I think if the prime minister of the country where you live has broken off from the G20 in Mexico to talk about your personal tax affairs and called you out and named you, that might be a problem.”He trails off and reconsiders what he’s just said. “No, I think I probably was a little bit stressed about it, a bit down about it,” he decides. “But it was probably a good thing, because if things had been a bit better in my early 20s I might not have quit my job for comedy.” He laughs. “Is this making me sound like an incel elder? I did have opportunities, but I was bad at reading the signs, and I would friend-zone people. A lot of girls I was very, very close to growing up, we had incredibly intimate relationships, but we didn’t have a physical relationship, and it was lovely…” He says the uproar was far worse than anything he has faced over offensive jokes. Even the prime minister at the time, David Cameron, got involved. “I’m not an expert on tax accounting, but I think if the prime minister of the country where you live has broken off from the G20 in Mexico to talk about your personal tax affairs and called you out and named you, that might be a problem.” Carr worked as a marketing executive for Shell, a job he hated, before a "quarter-life crisis" at 25 led to him study psychotherapy and begin doing stand-up. An intensely dedicated open spot, for two years he performed for more than 300 nights a year, two years running.

As a result he spent his first 12 years of comedy success avoiding alcohol completely. “Which was much better. You have better conversations. The only thing about being sober around comedians is that, around 2am, you might as well f**k off home. You’re just going to be told the same anecdote again.” Carr opens up admirably in the book about his mental health, his problem drinking and the grief he experienced when his mother died in 2001, just as his comedy career was beginning. “I found the book incredibly cathartic to write,” he says. “Especially about my mother. There’s that lovely phrase, that you die twice – once when you die, and again the last time someone says your name. So I loved that thing of being able to talk about my mum.” I'm sort of trying to bank another tour, I'm trying to change my style a little bit stand-up wise" he told fellow comics Lou Conran and Sally-Anne Hayward on their Spit or Swallow podcast. "I find writing jokes very easy and I find writing routines more difficult. And so I'm trying to write more routines. The book covers most of his life, from growing up in Slough, near London, and going to university at Cambridge to meeting his partner of 20 years, the TV producer Karoline Copping, and hosting shows such as 8 Out of 10 Cats. He may not think his showbiz stories are particularly interesting, but I loved hearing about his friendship with Stephen Hawking, whom he would take out for a curry and a musical.I wonder if all this talk of wubbwubb has softened his act. “No. I’ve been writing new stuff and it’s brutal. My sense of humour doesn’t change.”

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