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

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Carr previously wrote the 2007 humour analysis book The Naked Jape: Uncovering The Hidden World of Jokes with Lucy Greeve. It’s no use me getting a sharp intake of breath onstage. That’s nothing. It’s no good offending people. I’m there to make them laugh. If it doesn’t make them laugh first, it’s gone. 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.”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. Jimmy Carr: hilarious, successful and unmissable. At the top of his game, he is an award-winning comedian who consistently performs to sell-out arenas around the world. He's also, by his own admission, a happy guy. Yet it wasn't always like that. The joke that cancels me is out there already. It is on YouTube somewhere and it is perfectly acceptable until one day it isn’t.’

I think if you have a friend that’s tetraplegic you have to be quite chatty, because obviously the typing takes him so long,” he says, in a remark that feels like one of his jokes, but isn’t. “We’d do shots together sometimes too. His care team said tequila would be too much so he’d be on the Cointreau.” As for drugs, “I’ve tried everything once, but I’m not a drug person,” he says. “I’ve met people who are funnier after a couple of pints. But I’ve never once in my life met someone and gone, ‘Oh, he’s a bit quiet, but you’ve got to meet him after he’s had some cocaine.’” Well, there had been pictures of me pushing a pram in the pictures,” he says. “What did people think was in that? Old CDs?”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…” Jimmy Carr has written his autobiography in the form of a self-help book, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal. It’s not the first time that comedian Jimmy has spoken about cancel culture. The 49-year-old funnyman previously admitted the thought of getting cancelled doesn’t faze him one bit. 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.

Speaking about writing comedy in 2021, Jimmy went on to say: ‘When you’re doing a try out show, when you’re testing things out for the first time, you’re a little bit nervous. There's two things going on. One is when people would have thought 'oh, he's doing alright'. And then the other thing is when you think ' I'm doing alright. Drawing from specific moments and incidents in his own life, he shows how he managed to make it work for him. But with jokes throughout, he promises "self-analysis through the power of laughter at its most rewarding."I'd never written a joke before I was 25. And now I'm good at writing jokes. It's a learnable skill Exploring how the comedian found personal and professional happiness, Before & Laughter will be published by Quercus on 28th September. Before I have time to ask the Covid-era question “Are we doing handshakes?”, Jimmy Carr has thrust out his arm and grasped my hand. Then, suddenly, he lets go and screams: “Oh God, no! My hand’s covered in Covid!” Perhaps this unusual devotion to his mum (“I suppose a therapist would tell you I was ‘enmeshed’”) is why he found himself still a virgin at 26, although he says the situation never bothered him. “It’s, like, not everyone’s doing that at the same time. But if you’re watching Euphoria on TV as a 16-year-old you’re going to think, ‘What the f**k? I’ve never had a threesome – what’s going on?’” 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.”

Jimmy Carr has slammed cancel culture in a new documentary, calling it the modern equivalent of book burning. He seems to mean it, too. It may not have been for me, but if the book helps anyone else reach the same level of contentment as Carr seems to have, maybe he’s on to something. 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.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.” During his appearance on Australian morning show Today, host Karl Stefanovic expressed his surprise that the comedian hasn’t been cancelled due to his edgy sense of humour. Carr is an engaging presence – friendly, enthusiastic, happy to answer uncomfortable questions, albeit with an unnervingly intense stare at times. He seems a little dejected when I tell him I was more interested in the memoir sections of the book. But he rarely gives much of himself away, so it’s interesting to read such personal material. The book covers most of his life, from growing up in Slough 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. A recent review said: “Many of his one-liners are barely jokes at all, just boorish cliches.” But Carr is unflappable when it comes to defending his act. “To be punching down you need to be looking down. And it’s saying you can’t joke about those people, because they can’t take it … whereas, actually, some people with disabilities like really rough, dark stuff.” 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.”