Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / JIMMY CARR: Comedy Legend

Transcript

JIMMY CARR: Comedy Legend · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

0:00
Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, and if you think that I sometimes
0:07
get into trouble for expressing unconventional, heterodox ideas on this show, then you
0:14
haven't heard Jimmy Carr, who gets into a lot of trouble for telling jokes about similar
0:19
issues.
0:20
He's one of the most important influential, most watched and funniest comics in the world.
0:25
He's one of the top-selling stand-up acts he plays to arenas all over the place.
0:30
He regularly appears on British television shows like 8 out of 10 cats and QI, big fat
0:36
quiz of the year.
0:38
His recent tour, Terribly Funny, was seen by more than 1.2 million people in 45 countries.
0:44
It was the biggest international stand-up tour in the history of the world.
0:47
He has a new Netflix special called Jimmy Carr, Natural Born Killer.
0:51
I was recently in London, and Jimmy, I'm pleased to say, is a fan of this show, a fan
0:57
of yours truly.
0:58
He did us the honour of renting out a little room in an exclusive Mayfair club, and we sat
1:05
down together.
1:06
It was such a delight to pick his brain about cancel culture, about what you can and can't
1:11
say, about the state of the world, about social media.
1:13
Please enjoy as much as I did, the one, the only, the legend, Jimmy Carr.
1:17
I'm here with Josh and Son Boat, and Gresters, it's a very top-gone jacket, and it's
1:29
very...
1:30
Look, we all saw the movie and went, do you know what?
1:33
I could probably pull that off.
1:34
I'd probably look alright in that.
1:36
But only I actually took the extra step and went out and said, give me a finest Tom
1:40
Grues jacket.
1:41
And before we sat, we were saying you were...
1:43
Very nice guy.
1:44
He was a man in my phone, his wedding, and kind of bumped into him, and he's very engaging,
1:49
very engaging character, very kind of very genuine, and going to an interesting conversation
1:53
with him.
1:54
Or about him.
1:55
Because he did eyes-wide shots with Stanley Kubrick.
1:58
And Stanley Kubrick, I don't know if you know, but the reason he was able to make that
2:00
movie Barry Lyndon was because he had the lenses from NASA.
2:05
So he was able to shoot a movie, basically on candlelight.
2:08
No one could figure out how this guy, I don't know, I mean, great is from director of his
2:11
generation.
2:12
But no one could figure out how Barry Lyndon was made, that the other director is, well,
2:15
this is just incredible.
2:17
And it was because he had these incredible lenses, the best lenses that have ever been
2:19
made by humanity.
2:20
Well, how did he get those lenses?
2:23
It's not like after Apollo 13, NASA had a yard sale and got rid of their stuff, and he
2:30
happened to buy them.
2:31
Right.
2:32
So the theory is that Stanley Kubrick was the greatest director in the world.
2:38
NASA was a project in the middle of the Cold War.
2:41
In order to beat the Russians, that's the purpose of it.
2:44
Yeah.
2:45
How did they put a man on the moon?
2:46
Right.
2:47
You know what their resource was?
2:48
Well, unlimited.
2:49
Their budget was unlimited.
2:50
They went, NASA said, well, what's our budget?
2:52
They went, unlimited.
2:53
What do you want?
2:54
Where anyone you want, anything you want, you got it.
2:56
Right.
2:57
So the theory is Kubrick filmed the B-roll.
3:00
So they did film a fake version in the desert, but that was the rehearsal.
3:06
You think they did rehearse?
3:07
They were working media.
3:08
You think they didn't rehearse?
3:09
They rehearsed the whole thing, shot for shot for shot.
3:12
He's obviously uncredited.
3:14
What does he get as payment?
3:15
The lenses.
3:16
He gets the lenses.
3:17
And then, so I asked Tom Cruise about this, and we're the lenses from NASA, and he went,
3:22
had you know that?
3:23
Yeah, they were.
3:24
Did he?
3:25
Yeah.
3:26
That was quite a good Tom Cruise impression.
3:27
Thank you, yeah.
3:28
That was kind of scary stare.
3:29
Thank you.
3:30
I do scary.
3:31
You could do scary.
3:32
I don't even want to talk about it.
3:33
I want to talk about the illuminati, all my science-ology connections, everything else
3:37
is fair game go.
3:38
Is he a very intense person?
3:39
Does he have, does he feel like his eyes are burrowing into the...
3:42
Honestly, I don't know the guy.
3:43
I met him for 15 minutes once, and he was incredibly charming, very engaging.
3:47
Don't downplay your ability to judge a person's character, Jimmy Carr.
3:51
I could give you, he seemed like a very, very nice guy.
3:53
That's all you were saying.
3:54
Yeah, you're afraid of him.
3:55
You're afraid of him.
3:56
God dammit.
3:57
You were with all your illuminati connections, and you're still afraid of it.
4:02
That's a good name drop.
4:03
I'm sorry, Tom Cruise.
4:04
He's good, isn't it?
4:05
Who else do you got?
4:06
You've got a lot.
4:07
You have a lot to go.
4:08
I've got a lot to go.
4:09
I tell you what, it's a pleasure meeting you.
4:10
I'm loving it.
4:11
I'm loving meeting you now as well, because I'm a big fan of your podcast, but the idea that
4:15
it's what, three, four months since you left, and you've kind of left mainstream media
4:20
and done this.
4:21
I think it's such a...
4:22
It's so right for you.
4:23
It feels like he's exactly the right move.
4:24
I mean, it must be a bit...
4:25
Thank you.
4:26
A bit daunting could be kind of free-floating.
4:27
It is.
4:28
And you've got a very generous way of articulating the relationship between me and my former
4:32
employer.
4:33
But it's those great addictions.
4:34
The greatest addictions.
4:35
It's heroin and a monthly salary.
4:36
Yes.
4:37
Yes.
4:38
The monthly salary is very difficult to get...
4:39
Oh, you know, when you leave.
4:40
Absolutely.
4:41
And then you can't turn anything down for the first couple of years.
4:43
I'm still in that phase now where you go, look, you know, there's kind of... there's rich
4:48
and there's wealthy.
4:49
And, you know, rich people get paid a lot of money to time and do a show.
4:52
But to turn one down, I can't even conceive of that.
4:56
I'm going...
4:57
No, I don't.
4:58
I'll come on.
4:59
If someone books me for a show again, I'll be there.
5:00
I'll come on.
5:01
Turn it up for the show.
5:02
Right.
5:03
The work ethic thing of going...
5:04
Did you ever want to have a job?
5:05
I had a job.
5:06
What was your job?
5:07
I worked for an oil company.
5:08
I worked at...
5:09
I worked for Shell Oil for a couple of years.
5:11
Yeah.
5:12
I'd like a proper job.
5:13
I think it's quite important as well, because that thing of the... the... hadonic treadmill.
5:16
We get very used to our lives being good.
5:18
Yes.
5:19
So you need something to anchor you.
5:20
You kind of need the school years or the colleges or the work years.
5:23
If you're in show business or doing anything creative, you need something to judge against.
5:27
Yes.
5:28
Well, that was really boring.
5:30
And now I do this thing.
5:31
Yeah.
5:32
And it's really fun.
5:33
And you know, that kind of thing of...
5:34
I think that the gratitude, some people in show business or whatever, they...
5:39
What's the phrase I like?
5:40
Pressure is a privilege.
5:42
If you do a job where you're under pressure, that's...
5:45
That's pretty great.
5:46
Yes.
5:47
You've got a career.
5:48
You've got a job.
5:49
Yeah.
5:50
That's kind of amazing, right?
5:51
Very few people get to breathe that rare-of-idear.
5:52
And so I get kind of sick and tired of people complaining about it.
5:54
Negative sounding almost a bit like a self-help guru.
5:57
Yeah, that's my vibe.
5:58
Which is, you know, like...
5:59
That's very much my vibe.
6:00
If you do car...
6:01
If you love, you'll never work a day and your own life.
6:04
I kind of believe that I'm sicker.
6:05
Yeah, but I kind of...
6:06
I believe in all that stuff.
6:07
I really...
6:08
I kind of...
6:10
I think it really helps as well.
6:11
That the problem itself helped is that thing.
6:13
I wrote a biography a couple years ago, which was basically a self-help book.
6:18
And it's that thing of like the Eckhart Tollows of this world.
6:21
It's all correct.
6:23
But it's very po-faced.
6:24
It's very dry.
6:25
Right.
6:26
You do dick jokes.
6:27
Yeah.
6:28
And I think you need somehow to...
6:29
You need to sugar the pill of the self-help stuff.
6:32
Right.
6:33
Because it is very useful.
6:34
It's like reframing stuff is...
6:35
Like perception isn't reality.
6:36
Yes.
6:37
It's everything.
6:38
It's how we see the world, is how the world is.
6:40
Given that I've consumed most of Eckhart Tollows' writings, oh, yes, Holly.
6:44
Yeah.
6:45
Because the way the line is when you...
6:46
Yeah.
6:47
When you start to have this, I guess, some strength.
6:48
Like that.
6:49
So keep it over here.
6:50
Yes.
6:51
Brilliant.
6:52
All right.
6:53
I'm going to leave like this.
6:54
Thank you.
6:55
Well, it consumes most of Eckhart Tollows' writings
6:57
as audio books with him talking gently in my ear.
7:00
I really want to hear the dick joke now.
7:02
Well, nobody on him going...
7:03
Yeah, for that thing of...
7:04
The penis.
7:05
LAUGHTER
7:07
It's a weapon with these audio books as well.
7:09
I find the audio book weird, because I listen to everything
7:11
at like times through the speed.
7:12
Oh, don't you dare.
7:13
But it's like everything, every bit of wisdom I've ever heard
7:16
sounds like a chipmunk set.
7:17
Right.
7:18
Imagine if people were listening to your routines at three times speed.
7:21
You don't really listen to things at three times.
7:23
I do listen to things very fast.
7:24
Doesn't that drain the sort of the charm and the character
7:27
out of the people who are reading it to you?
7:29
It does a little bit, but I suppose it's that thing
7:30
of like just taking me...
7:31
You're a fast man.
7:32
It's not like...
7:33
It's not like you're listening to Dr. Irfsky.
7:35
Or it's not like you're listening to a beautiful novel
7:37
at three times the speed, trying to consume poetry at pace.
7:41
But for, you know, for self-discipline, I think it's pretty valid.
7:44
And it's speaking of saying yesterday everything,
7:47
you've been racing around like a blue-ass fly,
7:49
as we might say in Australia.
7:50
Yeah.
7:51
Because you think...
7:52
What have you been doing?
7:53
I was in South Africa last weekend.
7:54
I did, like, Cape Town and Joe Boge.
7:57
Wow.
7:58
What a Pretoria, that was pretty fun.
7:59
And I went to Paris to see a show, which was...
8:02
I took a night off once to see a show.
8:03
And then I did Istanbul for a couple of days.
8:05
Very fun.
8:06
Great.
8:07
And then did Budapest and then did Vienna.
8:09
Just got back this morning.
8:10
What did I like about you in Istanbul?
8:11
I think they liked it.
8:12
They liked it.
8:13
No, it was all locals.
8:14
And it was...
8:15
You're doing in Turkish, obviously.
8:17
Of course, yes.
8:18
It's interesting.
8:19
It goes and does all these two...
8:20
You know, ideas that...
8:21
Yeah.
8:22
It's a tie of routine in German.
8:23
And it does in French.
8:24
I mean, I heard...
8:25
I've read a report on it years ago.
8:26
I've never really...
8:27
Well, I've told Germany, no one's talking about it.
8:29
No, I guess I may be.
8:30
I'm trusting Eddie.
8:31
I'm trusting Eddie.
8:32
Yeah.
8:33
I'm sure.
8:34
I'm sure.
8:35
By when she lied.
8:36
Yeah.
8:37
I don't know.
8:38
Anyway, but I know I travel so everything.
8:39
It's amazing the English language.
8:40
The thing that's kind of remained...
8:42
From the end of people talk about the end of the British Empire.
8:45
No, no, no.
8:46
The language.
8:47
Right.
8:48
The language is the thing that we've...
8:49
It's everywhere.
8:50
And I think the last 10 years.
8:52
The language has got better globally.
8:54
I mean, I really notice it when I go to places.
8:56
People just get things immediately.
8:58
And I think it's like YouTube and Netflix.
9:00
Yeah, right.
9:01
And maybe podcasts as well.
9:02
The idea that people...
9:03
Early fans.
9:04
Maybe.
9:05
But they're consuming sort of media.
9:07
Yeah.
9:08
It's not being mediated by Canal Plus.
9:10
Yes, right.
9:11
The version of original.
9:12
Yeah.
9:13
And everyone's kind of...
9:14
You have to learn English if you want to be interested in the culture.
9:16
Yeah.
9:17
And then, you know, when you're interested in journalism,
9:19
it's kind of...
9:20
Is making the world a very small place.
9:21
Good.
9:22
News flash.
9:23
Jimmy Carr in favor of imperialism.
9:24
Yeah.
9:25
You heard it here first.
9:26
You know what?
9:27
The Daily Mail will make of that.
9:28
They'll be all right with it.
9:29
I don't know.
9:30
That's going to be all right with anything.
9:31
How do you workshop material these days?
9:32
So you're basically workshopming, right?
9:33
Or do you have your whole routine at the moment?
9:34
Not at the moment.
9:35
I've got a new...
9:36
I've got a new...
9:37
So the new tour starts the day the Netflix special comes out.
9:40
Great.
9:41
Which is when people will hear this as well, by the way.
9:43
So if you think about your past week.
9:45
I think about Jimmy's past.
9:47
That was six weeks ago.
9:48
Six weeks ago.
9:49
Yeah.
9:50
So the...
9:51
It's basically that thing of the...
9:52
I'm on...
9:53
The treadmill I'm on is...
9:54
You write to the deadline of the new show.
9:57
The Netflix thing drops...
9:59
Natural born killer.
10:01
It's pretty good.
10:02
It's the best thing I've ever done.
10:03
Is it?
10:04
Yeah.
10:05
You get better at your job, right?
10:06
Obviously, over time.
10:07
We're talking about that.
10:08
But it's...
10:09
And then, the new one, the next day.
10:10
So there's no gap between tours.
10:11
So you tour that and then you do the...
10:12
But I test stuff every single night at the show.
10:14
That's...
10:15
That's the big innovation that I had the last kind of...
10:17
Two years.
10:18
I've gone every single night trying new jokes.
10:20
Yeah.
10:21
So it's that thing that's quite stoic.
10:22
Like doing this better.
10:23
Yeah, yeah.
10:24
Just write jokes.
10:25
That's kind of...
10:26
I suppose...
10:27
The world ordered a stand-up comedian.
10:29
And I need to honor that.
10:31
I think you can spend a lot of time in showbiz
10:33
kind of looking elsewhere, looking for other fun things to do
10:36
and distractions.
10:37
But actually sticking to the thing that you're...
10:39
You're good at is kind of best.
10:41
I once interviewed Stephen King, who was talking about his routine
10:44
of just getting up in the morning, sitting down and writing...
10:48
Or not writing, but as long as he was just sitting in front of the computer
10:51
watching that flashing curse of blink at him, then the job is done.
10:54
You know, sometimes some days it'll come, some days it won't come.
10:57
Yeah.
10:58
As long as you put in the time, you do the work, consistently, day after day.
11:01
I'm 100% with a he's book on writing.
11:04
It's so good.
11:05
It's phenomenal.
11:06
And it's not necessarily...
11:07
I mean, if you're no interest in writing novels,
11:09
but the idea of going...
11:10
That work ethic of going will do the thing.
11:12
Yeah.
11:13
What's actually doing the thing.
11:14
Yeah.
11:15
And for me, it's jokes.
11:16
That's always going to be my love language.
11:18
Although I was changed up a bit for this special,
11:20
there's some kind of longer routines in it, and there's...
11:22
I'm trying to get better at it.
11:23
I'm trying to have some different clubs, I suppose.
11:27
Like I've got a fastball.
11:28
I'm good with one-liners.
11:30
Yeah.
11:31
But it's trying to have longer routines or stuff that kind of makes a point
11:34
along the way.
11:35
It's really...
11:36
It's interesting to kind of play with that.
11:37
And to get better after doing it for sort of 25 years
11:40
is really interesting.
11:41
And to sort of see the progress.
11:42
Yeah.
11:43
How do you judge the progress?
11:45
I think you judge it on...
11:46
I judge it on laughs.
11:47
And the pull's breaks.
11:49
I judge it on, like, when you do a show,
11:51
what can you...
11:52
Can you make...
11:53
Can you change people's states?
11:55
I think we've recorded your shows and listened back
11:57
to try to analyze them, like some forensic...
11:59
I mean, I'm obsessed by that.
12:01
Yeah.
12:02
It's like the level of kind of detail and, you know,
12:05
the weeds on...
12:07
Like, I'll sort of go through the show.
12:08
I'm just going through the new one now.
12:09
Yeah.
12:10
And I'm analyzing it for joke type
12:13
to make sure that nothing comes...
12:15
There's like 50 joke types, roughly,
12:17
and making sure that nothing repeats.
12:19
Because the audience never realized,
12:21
oh, he's done three pullback reveals in a row.
12:23
The third one doesn't get as much.
12:25
But if you move them around,
12:27
you can't play the same tricks.
12:29
Why some sound ups are boring to watch?
12:31
Because they're, you know, one or two trick ponies.
12:33
And they do the same joke type over and over.
12:35
What do you call that reveal?
12:37
The pullback reveal?
12:39
You sort of, you're telling a story.
12:41
I mean, all jokes essentially work in the same way.
12:43
So all jokes, you're two stories.
12:47
And in the first story,
12:49
you're forced to make an assumption
12:51
that turns out to be erroneous
12:53
in the second part of the story, the punchline.
12:55
So it's the sudden revelation
12:57
of a previously concealed fact.
12:59
And a pullback reveals just a very obvious way
13:01
of doing that, where you're focusing here,
13:02
and the situation changes at the end.
13:04
So can you think of an example?
13:06
I can probably do nothing clean enough to repeat.
13:08
This is a pretty dirty show.
13:10
I mean, you can go away with that.
13:12
Hmm.
13:14
Yeah, it's, you know,
13:16
but that thing of like analyzing the joke types
13:18
and all that weed's fun.
13:20
Speaking of the, the, the,
13:22
just kind of out of the Stephen King book,
13:24
do you know the war of art?
13:26
Oh, yeah.
13:28
You know, it's the same thing about like being a pro versus being an amateur.
13:30
Just takes it seriously, grinds it out,
13:32
doesn't talk about what they're doing.
13:34
He's the artist, Chuck Close, do you know Chuck Close?
13:36
No. It's a great visual artist,
13:38
and he said inspiration is for amateurs.
13:40
The rest of us go to work.
13:42
Right. Love that.
13:44
When did you learn that?
13:46
I think pretty early on, pretty early on.
13:48
I found, I was kind of mid-20s when I discovered comedy,
13:50
and it was that thing of like going,
13:52
oh, this is, this is good.
13:54
This is good, and I kind of felt like
13:56
it was a bit like Indiana Jones getting his hat back.
13:58
But it's quite a small,
14:00
I like, I should really put myself into this 100%.
14:02
So I just did a lot of gigs,
14:04
and it did, it was that thing of like,
14:06
it just what feels like
14:08
play to you,
14:10
but looks like work to others.
14:12
Yeah. And it just felt like play to me.
14:14
It felt like very easy to kind of apply myself.
14:16
And with, certainly, I think work ethic is,
14:18
it's kind of a weird thing work ethic,
14:20
because it's not like,
14:22
it's not across a wide spectrum of things.
14:24
Like, you know, you can give me
14:26
physics homework all day long.
14:28
I won't be interested in it.
14:30
But if it's writing jokes, I can do that.
14:32
I can kind of focus on that thing.
14:34
So finding kind of the right stream for you.
14:36
And when you say writing jokes,
14:38
like trying out new material on this tour,
14:40
does that mean that there's a time of day
14:42
where you sit down and you think I'm going to start writing some jokes?
14:44
Does it mean that you have a flicker of thought in your head
14:46
and then you try and out on stage?
14:48
That's not at all worth it.
14:50
The flicker of thought is the,
14:52
is the, is the issue,
14:54
not the greatest writer, but I'm, I'm a good editor.
14:56
So I come up, I'll generate a ton of material
14:58
and then be able to edit it down and sort of
15:00
and decide what's going to work.
15:02
And then the audience is a genius.
15:04
The great thing about my job,
15:06
as opposed to your job, like you do podcast,
15:08
you're slightly whispering into the abyss.
15:10
You get some feedback,
15:12
but it's weeks later, and it's, you know,
15:14
so I like the show, it's very broad.
15:16
Whereas I get feedback on every line
15:18
and it's binary.
15:20
They either laugh or they don't.
15:22
And they're right.
15:23
And then so you can sort of tinker with it and change it and,
15:25
okay, so what, what can we do with that
15:27
to get a big laugh or to just go,
15:29
it's just work as an idea.
15:31
Sometimes it's just, even after 25 years,
15:33
sometimes you feel like this is going to be great.
15:35
Right. Nothing.
15:37
Just a sentence.
15:39
Just looking at you bemused.
15:41
And then I always test it like after about 90 minutes on stage.
15:43
So you're kind of, you've done your end bit, the big thing.
15:45
And then you go, right, new jokes.
15:47
And if it doesn't work there,
15:49
then do you really want it in the next show?
15:51
You want it in the next show.
15:53
So like this, there's like a ton of
15:55
be grade material that you generate that's just like
15:57
who cares?
15:59
Well, topical stuff you go.
16:01
Yeah. Yeah.
16:03
When do you remember when you started sort of realizing,
16:05
wow, I'm not just sort of able to do this,
16:07
but this is, I'm getting an incredible reception
16:09
and I'm starting to reach a level of success.
16:11
Was that going to Edinburgh in 2001?
16:13
Was that?
16:15
Yeah, I would have thought it was probably around then.
16:17
Like the idea of like, you sort of did it,
16:19
it's weird, the little steps along the way.
16:21
There's a lot of incremental steps of like, you know,
16:23
doing five minutes and getting laughs consistently for five minutes
16:25
was a big thing.
16:27
And then it's 10 minutes and it's 20.
16:29
And you can't conceive of doing an hour.
16:31
Yeah.
16:33
And now an hour is like, well, I'll come up with a new 90 minutes
16:35
over a year and kind of roll it out.
16:37
And it just becomes, you know, it's self-help.
16:39
It's the, you're, the weight doesn't get lighter.
16:43
Your back gets stronger.
16:45
Yeah. You just get better at it.
16:47
I think it's very process-driven.
16:49
And that kind of leads to, you know, it's, it's, you get better
16:53
at the process, you get better at doing it, doing the thing.
16:55
And when you say that it's sort of binary in the sense that people
16:58
eat a laugh or they don't laugh, what if some of them are pissed off
17:01
as they frequently are at your specials?
17:03
No, no one's ever pissed off of the special.
17:05
That's the illusion is that people are offended at the show.
17:07
No, no.
17:09
Well, people out there are offended.
17:11
People like, okay, the Netflix special drops this week.
17:15
So, natural born killer.
17:17
Go and watch it on Netflix streaming now.
17:19
People, they'll be controversy this week.
17:21
I'll get canceled this week.
17:23
Yes. Because it's escaped the lab.
17:25
Yeah. The jokes that people write.
17:27
Right. I see.
17:29
1.2 million people can just see the tool.
17:31
They're all fine. Right.
17:33
No complaints. Right.
17:35
And it'll come out of the way.
17:37
Someone's going to be pick at it.
17:39
And someone goes through and goes, this is, this is disgraceful.
17:41
So I'll, I'll tell you.
17:43
We're in trouble for that.
17:45
We're now probably like four or five weeks prior
17:47
to the release of the, of the special.
17:49
And this is the first page of Google results for Jimmy Carr.
17:55
Metro.co.uk.
17:57
Jimmy Carr's vile joke leaves deaf woman outrage.
18:01
How did Jimmy raise a go?
18:03
New York Post. Who told her?
18:05
From six hours ago, comedian Jimmy Carr's vile joke
18:07
at deaf audience member causes outrage.
18:09
Quote, this isn't comedy.
18:11
I'm, quote, daily star Jimmy Carr branded vile
18:13
after mocking deaf member of his audience
18:15
from one day ago.
18:17
A Kent online.
18:19
I love reading Kent online.
18:21
Kent online.
18:23
Kent online.
18:25
I'm getting dragged by Kent online.
18:27
Def woman, you shut up.
18:29
You shut up. You shut up.
18:31
You shut up. You shut up.
18:33
You shut up. You shut up.
18:35
You shut up. You shut up.
18:37
You shut up. You shut up.
18:39
J комментарique ticket to fansont.
19:03
to find his offensive, which is perhaps a more charitable way of putting it, but this, so this happens
19:10
reasonably frequently. Yes, but I think you have to like size it. I think you have to write the
19:15
size that you have to say, well look, I told a joke and some people didn't like it. That's the
19:19
serious as it is. Right. Like, you can catastrophize and I like that. But it seems to be quite a lot
19:25
of catastrophizing going on. Yeah, good luck. What do you want me to do? Or people will get angry
19:32
at you on Twitter? Yeah, you can. Can I look at it? Don't look at it. Turn it off. I think people
19:39
do get a little bit obsessive about, you know, the, and the idea of like, it's not, that's not a
19:43
cancellation. That's a complaint. Right. And I think there's a big difference. Like, if someone has
19:48
a problem with our joke, okay, I'm not for everyone. I would say there are 50 jokes in that show.
19:54
I do know that show. That's the new one. That was a preview of the new show. Yeah. I mean,
19:58
there's literally just 50 jokes that are worse than that in the show. Right. You have no right
20:03
to be offended by that joke. Right. Because what about the ones that came before and after?
20:06
Well, let me tell you. He's a major stuff. Here's the last thing that I'll say about this.
20:10
The individual who was offended apparently, this is all based on this one individual being offended.
20:15
Right. Says, it's just not acceptable. Jimmy doesn't need to do that. He's rich enough.
20:21
Hmm. Are you rich enough? I don't know if I got paid any extra. How insulting the death. There's no,
20:26
there was, there's no, there's no extra. I like the idea that you get to a point of wealth and success.
20:32
I don't want you to be. Well, I sense a few moments. Obviously, I can't say the funny things that
20:36
I think are funny because I've got enough money now. So I have to talk about anytime things.
20:40
But it's the idea that a joke is a punch somehow or that it's, it's attacking someone.
20:46
You know, a joke should be inclusive. It should be fun. And I like to think of myself as kind of
20:50
an equal opportunity as a fender. And the idea that you go, oh, that sacred cow, the thing that
20:56
offends me you can't joke about. But the jokes in the show about rape or pedophilia or famine or
21:04
disease. Not things to be shocked about Jimmy cow. But all the other stuff is fine. Right. That
21:10
is the specific one. So I can understand that. And you go, and sometimes it's very well meaning,
21:15
and you go, a charity gets involved. And they go, well, we're the charity, and our job is to
21:19
publicize this issue. And he's a very famous comedian and Netflix are involved. And this is
21:26
the, this is great. We can get some traction out of this. And so there's a story. And whether you
21:31
view that as free publicity, or you view that as a career ending thing, the first time it happens
21:36
to you, it's, it's a bit scary. And some cancellations are worse than others. Sometimes it's like
21:41
politicians commenting, or you're on the front of the paper, or, you know, the prime ministers
21:45
of the G20 talking about your tax affairs. There's different levels. And it's great in one
21:51
way, because it's a, you find out who your friends are. You find who stands with you and who
21:58
doesn't. And that that can be, it's, it's a valuable lesson, but it's painful sometimes,
22:02
because sometimes people that you wouldn't, you wouldn't have thought would be, you'll
22:05
go absolutely had your back. And sometimes people really let you down. And you think, oh, well,
22:10
you just, it's roomy under the bus. Okay. Who threw you under the bus, Jimmy? I've had some,
22:16
I've had some people throw me under the bus, yeah. But, but you go, it's okay, it's a lesson learned.
22:20
And it's that thing of, you know, I don't think your friends necessarily have to stand with you,
22:26
like a hundred percent. But I do think they have to not publicly throw you under the bus. Yeah,
22:30
well, they should stand with the principle that jokes are jokes. Yeah, the very least. If they
22:34
weren't in comedy, one would imagine. You would, you would have thought. I mean, actually,
22:37
I think there's a big difference now between being cancelled over something you did and a joke
22:40
you made, something you said. And I think actually the way the world is at the moment, it just seems
22:44
very true. I can't imagine. It tends to be a slow news week when these things catch fire. Yeah,
22:49
right. Whereas normal, it's like, I don't know, what, what, what do you want? One of the quotes from
22:53
the person who has been and says comedy is an amazing tool for progressive change. Is it? Yeah.
23:00
Yeah, I think it is. I think there's something, there's something very true about that. The idea that
23:04
the comedy sort of like a canary in the mind, if you look at like Jerry Seinfeld stopped playing
23:09
the universities in America about 10 years ago. Yeah. It's like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not playing
23:13
the university campus anymore. There were a bit too sensitive. Yeah. That was the canary in the
23:19
mind. Right. That was the, that was, that was 10 years ago. Yeah. And going, this, these,
23:23
these people are being crazy. Do you remember his gag that they, that he got that they were upset
23:28
about? He had a gag about the young people scrolling through
23:34
Instagram and just scrolling or scrolling through Tinder or one of these dating apps or something.
23:38
And he said that there's, they're kind of just scrolling and checking it and selecting and
23:42
yes or knowing like a gay prince or something. Yeah. It was like, it was that mild and they were like,
23:49
that's a homophobic. It's also an anti-royalist slur, perhaps, but all like, or like, I think he's
23:54
a gay French prince or something like that. He was just saying that these people are behaving in
23:59
an entitled fashion. Right. And, but yeah. Okay. That was, that was it. Yeah, but I mean, if that's,
24:04
but it's your, okay. Yeah. Sure, we'll find you by that. I know. How many gay French princes are there
24:09
getting in the world? Good luck in the world, though, because it's, I know, you know, if you're that
24:15
brittle. Yeah. Do you use social media personally? Yeah. A little bit. I mean, I quite like, I think it's,
24:20
it's an incredible kind of tool and everyone's got a voice and it strikes me that's a very good thing.
24:26
And then sometimes people get upset because you go, because everyone's got a voice and then I've
24:29
got an opinion. Right. So I think something that would have been an eye role and a tut is now a tweet.
24:35
Yeah. And then I think the, the press want you to believe that the press opinion, Twitter and public
24:40
opinion are the same thing. Right. And you can be fooled. Like, I've been cancelled and then gone out
24:45
in front of 2,000 people that night and gone, I think I'm fine. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think, yeah. We
24:50
don't seem very careful. I spent the whole day thinking I was, it was over for me. And then
24:55
this is fine. Jokes will work. People still like the show. Yeah. But, you know, it's a, it's,
24:59
it's a way to, I mean, I think people spend too much time on social media. I mean, I think there's,
25:04
there's an issue with it in that people are living for children. I think for us, it's for, like,
25:10
I grew up in a world without social media and formed my personality without it. Now, I think it's
25:15
dangerous for kids because it strikes me that there's no freedom for kids in real life and total
25:21
freedom online. And that's a social experiment that I don't think we should have conducted.
25:26
When you said no freedom in real life, do you mean because we're, I mean, sort of the
25:29
codling of the American mind, this idea of the idea that kids aren't allowed to go to the shops
25:34
anymore on their own. Like, a 14 year old now needs a babysitter. A 14 year old used to be a
25:38
babysitter. That's a weird change in the world. And what's happened to 14 year olds? Well, nothing.
25:44
How much freedom should they have? Well, as much as they can cope with. And it strikes me that
25:48
that thing of going, there are, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. There's, you can either
25:54
protect a child and physically, and that's the upside is that child's absolutely safe. But
26:02
mentally will be, will be very vulnerable. So you've got to find a balance. So how do you build
26:09
resilience? You can't have, you can't have an easy life and a great character.
26:13
Right. Can't be done. And life is kind of self-assignment, isn't it? Life is going out and
26:18
finding your adventure and finding the thing that you want to sort of test your metal on. And,
26:23
and, you know, be yourself putting yourself through hard times. That build character. And we're
26:27
not allowing kids to do that. So online, they can do anything they want. They can be whoever they
26:31
want. But the problem is there's no sort of pushback there. So you go, well, who are we? You know,
26:37
what is, you know, the self has become something that is self-curated. And it used to be that
26:45
it was like, well, you are who you are. And it's mediated by your friends and family and your,
26:49
and the greatest sort of, you know, society. It's a little bit of pushback. If you go, well,
26:53
I think I'm an incredibly good looking quarterback, then the rest of the story goes, no, no, you're
26:58
a funny little fella. It's, you can have to kind of mediate that a little bit. And on that scale
27:04
of resilience and freedom on the one hand versus safety and vulnerability on the other, what was
27:10
your childhood like? Well, we were pretty, I think we were allowed to kind of, it's fairly,
27:15
fairly good in terms of being allowed freedom being allowed to kind of just go off and do whatever
27:19
you were going to do and explore the world. So I think, yeah, good. I think that was, I think that
27:23
was a good thing. Did it build your character? I think it does. Yeah, I think it's, you know, that
27:27
thing of going, the Chris Rocks got a great routine about it where he said, he's seen this routine
27:31
where he's sent his kids to school and they said, there's no bullying in this school. Well,
27:34
you're only doing half the job. That's right. How are they going to know? Because in the real world,
27:39
there's, you know, a certain amount of that. So there's, and really, I think we seek out bullies.
27:43
Like if you think about that, if you have a personal trainer, that's a bully, isn't it?
27:47
It's basically a bully. I mean, he's, you know, he doesn't say it specifically, but if you have
27:53
a personal trainer, they'll look at you like, all right, all right, fighting boom boom, maybe some
27:57
tips today. Mine's a very aggressive Polish lady. Right. I call the Polish bear. So she's a bully.
28:03
Yeah, but you're slightly, slightly, slightly looking for that. Yeah, slightly looking for someone
28:07
that will push you. Yeah. And not make things too easy. It's interesting. I mean, I also think this,
28:13
you know, I know you've got a side and I've got kids who are not a dissimilar age. And I do
28:17
sometimes wonder like, you know, when you're trying to teach them not to punch other kids in the
28:23
playground at school, it would be a lot simpler if it were, we still lived in an era where when
28:28
they do that, they got clunked in the head by somebody, but they don't have that feedback mechanism
28:32
anymore. So you have to sort of tell them and send them to, you know, therapists to try and
28:37
get them to balance. I mean, I think it's, you know, with their ang, to deal with their
28:40
anger, message, message. There's a balance here, right? I would occasionally like it if my
28:44
children got slapped. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. And not by me. Yeah. By me. By another child.
28:50
No, it's slightly larger than them. Yeah. What they use their own podcasts, they'll be fine.
28:56
Exactly. That's right.
29:00
And the other thing about social media, I mean, it's interesting that you say curation,
29:03
because that's what it makes more sense. Social media, if you do it as performative.
29:08
Yeah. It is a performance. And people are on their performing. And if you view it as a
29:13
communication method, it doesn't make sense. Right. So I think there is something about like,
29:19
it's a very performative medium. And the fact that we're always sort of, I mean, I do wonder what's
29:24
happening as, as you sort of, you look at the beautiful sunset. And instead of appreciating the
29:29
beautiful sunset, you think about what a great Instagram photo that's going to make. Or you have
29:34
a thought and you think, well, that would make a good tweet or you have an argument in your head.
29:39
And you think that could be good to put. And it's like, you've got a little version of yourself
29:43
who's sitting on your shoulder saying, oh, they'll be good. So it's like a, it's like constant
29:47
ongoing process of self curation, where instead of being in the moment, we're always thinking about
29:52
our own lives as if it's fodder for the self-representation that we're creating on social.
29:57
Yeah. I mean, I think that's clearly an issue because you're sort of living for this sort of
30:04
legacy, this almost kind of idealized version of yourself that lives online. And people are,
30:08
I mean, people are now going to plastic surgeons. And instead of bringing a picture of a movie
30:12
star, they bring a picture of themselves with a filter on it. And I want to look like that. But
30:16
really, right, like it's kind of nonsense. I mean, it strikes me that there's there's a couple of
30:20
things going on with sort of our lives online, where if you look at what's happening with young men,
30:26
they're playing video games. And video games are a proxy for a career. And if you look at how
30:32
video games work, they literally different levels and different levels of competence. And then
30:38
you have a big boss at the end. It's a career that you're not having because you're looking at this.
30:44
And people are looking at porn and they're not having sex because they're getting, they're getting
30:50
their dopamine hits. So cheap. So it strikes me that it's, George Orwell wasn't right. Or does
30:57
Huxley was right. We are giving up our freedom not because there's some authoritarian leader trying
31:03
to take our freedom away. We're giving it away for cheap dopamine, for the validity for cheap
31:09
thrills. And those things of going, well, how do you like the message of like, don't look at internet
31:13
porn isn't a strong enough message. It should go and get you dickwats on. That should be the
31:19
message. That should be the message. But take the risks. It's risk is like sports are better
31:25
than video games and a career is better than sports. Like, but they're skin in the game and there's
31:30
risk and it's it's difficult. But as you do that, you build kind of resilience and you grow.
31:36
So being, I mean, there are people that put so many thousands of hours into, I don't call
31:40
of duty or, you know, vice city or whatever they're playing. It's, I mean, do you have a
31:46
guy share all of these concerns and then sometimes I just turn around and I think, well, newsflash,
31:51
middle-aged middle class guy thinks the things were better when he was growing up. Well, they
31:55
say this these days. You know, they used to say this about novels. Yeah. 150 years ago, people
31:59
were television. They're just sitting around reading. Already. Exactly. They should be out there
32:03
building your mouth. Yeah. Exactly. Yes. Do you have a wonder whether our criticisms of what's
32:09
going on are just what happens to you when you're your age? No. No. I don't think there's, I mean,
32:15
I think the idea that people are watching too much porn are not fucking enough and not having kids.
32:20
That's that's a problem. It's independently true. That is a problem and that's, you know, our
32:25
destiny is is caught up in that. So yeah, that's that's going to be a problem. And the idea that
32:31
that having a career is as valid as called of duty. No, no, I'm right about that. Right.
32:36
They're like, they're fun things, but they're the dose is the issue. Social media is amazing.
32:41
Video games are incredible. Porn. Fabulous. The dose is maybe the problem. Right. And what does
32:47
have porn do you enjoy? Do you mean? Well, the daily recommended allowance. Right. Yeah. No,
32:51
I finished in the first lockdown. I finished porn hub. Is that right? You've got to the end of it.
32:55
Yeah. I put my initials in. Well, that's amazing. I didn't know there was an end. Yeah. It just
33:00
comes up on the screen just as rehydrate. Speaking of coming to an end of a website.
33:05
Coming to an end. Great. Coming to an end. Speaking of coming to an end. Yes,
33:08
is going to go in interesting directions. Do you know when Facebook began and there,
33:13
yeah, there was no like button and there was no ability to share things and there was no algorithm
33:18
behind it. It was just a reverse chronological list of your of things that your friends had posted.
33:23
You could get to the end and there was no infinite scroll. So the infinite scroll was something
33:28
that they actually invented that engineers at Facebook invented. But you used to be able to
33:31
get to the end of Facebook. Well, and then you would just like, oh, and that's it. I've got
33:35
to see finished Facebook. Oh, done. Isn't that cute? Isn't that cute? It's a lovely idea. You know,
33:39
that's all the things your friends had posted lately. But I think there was, there was a year.
33:44
I forget what year it was. I think it was the library of Alexandria. There was a year
33:47
the last year when you could have read everything ever written. Right. There were only human
33:53
life. They were only like, yeah, there were like a couple of thousand books and you could,
33:56
you could have read them all before your eyes gave up on you because there weren't glasses yet.
34:01
Right. In that year. And that total amount of data now gets created purely in pornography
34:09
every second. Yes. Well, there's a weird fact, isn't there about the something like 95%
34:15
of what's consumed online was made within the last 24 hours. Yeah. And we'll be forgotten
34:20
in the next 24 hours. Yeah. It's like there's this concept of like Lindy books. You remember
34:25
this concept? It's quite a good concept. So the idea of like a length of a piece of media will be,
34:31
will probably be projected into the future. How long it's lasted in the past. So if you take all
34:35
wells 1984, you go, well, that was written in 1948. It's lasted this long. So it's lasted
34:40
75 years. So probably still be relevant in 75 years time. That's worth reading.
34:45
No one ever goes, oh, let me show you my favorite TikTok from last month. Yeah, that's right.
34:50
It's just gone. It's just it's it's it's it's throw away. So the idea of like reading things
34:54
that really that really matter is it's quite easy to find those lists as well. I'd like to be,
34:58
okay, these are important good things. It's a permanent kind of now, you know, way. It's like
35:03
we're all just living in a, you know, detached now state of nowness where we're changing the
35:09
ball of novelism. I'm assuming. Yeah, it's kind of just hoping with no kind of anchors to the past
35:15
and no particular planning for the future. It's just like this is what I'm seeing right now that I
35:19
want to share with you because it had us to have scratched some dopamine itch. Yeah, but then there's
35:24
real stuff down as well. There's real stuff going. It's like why do people want to go to concerts?
35:28
Why do people want to go to comedy shows? If there's a weird sense of like people want to belong,
35:33
they want to feel apart something. But certainly think at a comedy show, it's like people laugh a lot
35:37
more when they're in the room than watching it on a screen. Yeah, you know, watching the new special
35:42
on the headphones on the bus to work is great. And you you may well think that's very funny. That
35:47
is a very well constructed joke. Well done Jimmy. But you won't laugh in the same way you laugh
35:53
when you're with friends at a show with a thousand strangers and it's tribal. What do people
35:58
all want to get a music festival and sing along? It's it's tribal. It feels fantastic to be part of
36:03
that group. It's a really beautiful. I think there's there's people are longing for that, I think.
36:10
Yeah, because they're looking at screens all day long. You get up in the morning, you check
36:13
your phone and then you check the satnav in the car and you get into the office and you look at the
36:16
screen and when you take five minutes off, you look at your phone. Screen, screen, screen, screen,
36:20
screen. And then suddenly you want to go and be part of something. Do people ever film you? Are you
36:24
all staged? Constantly. Constantly. Yeah. Is the body? No. Fine. I mean, as long as once every
36:31
three years, Netflix has some cameras and a bag of cash. Fine. You're fine with that. Fine.
36:37
And in terms of permanence and you know, so 1984 having an expected life expectancy of 150 years
36:43
or whatever it might be, you're in a profession which is impermanent. It is about the creating that
36:48
moment. You have that moment with the crowd. It is, but it's very new. Comedy is very new.
36:53
Comedy doesn't even have a language yet. I'm kind of working on something on this at the moment,
36:57
but comedy really, if you trace back it through, it's you can go back to the the tricks to gods,
37:02
skunk and antsy and all of that. But really, I'd say 6970, if you look at maybe Richard
37:09
Prior and George Carlin as John the Baptist, these guys come along and they start selling out shows
37:14
where it's just them talking for sort of an hour and a half, two hours and being hilarious and
37:19
they kind of, they've come from the nightclubs, but they're doing an hour and a half. They're playing
37:23
like rock stars in these venues and people are coming to see them and they're looking at them and
37:27
they're saying something very interesting. There's no filter. You know, if you really think about
37:33
what friendship it's like really good friends, you got no filter. Work colleagues got a bit filter,
37:38
strangers, you got a lot of filter. A comics, no filter. If it was direct with them, it's like a
37:42
friendship. And then as things progress through the 70s, 80s, 90s, it's getting better. It's getting
37:50
more relevant. I'd say it's more relevant today than it's ever been. So I'm going to work on
37:54
a thing at the moment on teaching stand-up comedy because it strikes me that it's more relevant
38:00
than music. Like music is non-verbal communication and it's incredibly important to me and it
38:05
it anchors an emotion within you or can anchor emotions within you that are just it's phenomenal,
38:11
right? But it's not as relevant as stand-up comedy. If you talk a kid, if you give a child a gift
38:18
and they say, well, I'm going to teach him stand-up comedy. What's he going to learn? Well, he's going
38:21
to learn his own voice. He's going to find his own voice. He's going to learn how to order and
38:27
write down his thoughts and then he's going to learn how to express himself to other people and
38:32
connect to them. That's what that's all he's going to learn from stand-up comedy. Yeah, put me
38:36
here for others. And you really think about the tragedy is most people live and die and they never
38:43
hear their own voice. And stand-up comedy at its best is teaching people to express themselves.
38:50
And yes, there's a there's a it's it's one facet of their personality. It's about being funny
38:56
and it's about making people laugh. It's not a joyful thing. I think it's got a real
39:01
potential. I'm trying to write the language of comedy. I'm trying to write the joke types
39:05
and the the almost like music has a language and you can... Do you mean like write an instruction
39:13
manual? Yes, sort of, for stand-up. Yeah, like the aim. Well, the aim is to kind of... I'm not sure if
39:20
it's really about giving something back, but it strikes me as a very useful thing to do with my
39:24
time. Yeah. And it's also... I hear something. I forget it. I read something. I remember it.
39:29
I teach something. I know it. So I want to teach it. It's for me, really. But if I can teach it,
39:34
if I can sort of do it in a way that the people can go, Oh, well, look, I'm not a fan of his comedy.
39:39
But the guy knows what jokes are. And he could teach me how to write jokes. Because sometimes I see
39:44
people and they're brilliant. They've got great stage presence and they've got a great story. And
39:48
you go, yeah, but you've got one joke in it. Right. And it's... You need to... You could do more.
39:54
Yeah. But you don't have the language. And it's not like you're not being lazy. You're just...
39:58
It's... You're chopping through the jungle with a machete and I'm saying, well, I'm going to build
40:02
the highway. Yeah. I mean, I think the crime... The craft of writing jokes is fascinating. But I
40:08
mean, I'm still interested in your attitude towards not the relevance of comedy, but just the
40:12
posterity point that you made earlier. I like to worry about... What do you think about death? And like,
40:17
what the world is going to make of Jimmy Carr after Jimmy Carr has gone? Like, what? And do you care
40:21
about legacy? Like, do you know what he owns old line about? Like, you know, I don't want to achieve
40:25
him mortality through my films, I want to achieve him mortality by not dying. I'll say that, I'll raise
40:29
you marked, tweined. Mark Twain said, I was not alive for billions of years before my birth and it
40:34
caused me not the slightest inconvenience. We're in a brief shaft of light between two oceans of
40:40
darkness. Great. We get to die and we're the lucky ones. As we get to live. Like, it's so... I kind
40:48
of... I view it as like gratitude as the mother of all virtues, but the idea of legacy is slightly
40:55
caught up with heaven. In a secular world, a fame, you know, rich and famous replaces heaven, right?
41:03
It's the land of milk and honey. It's the future. And I think that's a... It's great. It kind of
41:10
works. I like being rich and famous, but I don't think it's... I don't think it's the answer
41:14
necessarily. You were raised religious? Yeah, raised Catholic. Is there a difference?
41:21
Yeah, it's better. I mean, look, the God I don't believe in is the real one. Fabulous, great.
41:28
And what made you lose your faith? Well, I suppose it's like it's always a mix of things,
41:32
but it was the... If I'm right, you're wrong. You know, hey, it's good news. That's always the
41:36
thing in the Bible. It's good news, not for you, Ishmael. Yeah. Yeah. Not a tariff. Not you. Yeah.
41:41
Just good news for us. Yeah. The rest of you can... So that thing of like, that's very difficult
41:45
to... to circle that square. I think there's... It's weird. My favourite quote on religion at the moment
41:51
is the... It's ACDC's... Great Australian date. Thank you very much. ACDC's Rodi. Right, he said this.
41:59
Who knew? He said, God is the name we give to the sheet. We throw over the mystery to give it shape.
42:07
Was the Rodi Eckhart tolle? It's kind of great. There isn't this great because you go, yeah,
42:12
there's a huge mystery. No one knows why we're here. And some people go, well, I'm going to...
42:17
I call that mystery Jesus or I'll... I'll... I'll... Whatever you want to do. And then you go
42:23
and some of us go, well, science and... But there's two kinds of idiots. There's... There's some people
42:28
that take religion literally and they believe fairy stories. And there's other people that think
42:32
it's got no value at all. Both crazy. You know, the rituals all work. But the rituals don't work
42:39
because God's pleased. The rituals work because people bond and they come together and they feel
42:43
part of something. I would say the Pesh mode last week in Paris. Genuinely, a religious experience.
42:50
Genuinely, like, the sing along and actually all of that stuff is kind of because of what religious
42:55
understands anybody. It's so beautiful and so lovely. So you find it where you find it.
43:00
Do you still have religious, do you still participate in religious rituals? Do you miss that?
43:05
I mean, part of the... I miss the... It's nice. It's nice to think, isn't it? It's nice to think.
43:15
Well, even without the think, the traditions, there's something where I've never been a religious
43:23
person. But, you know, the Muslim call to prayer or the huge Greek Orthodox churches or the
43:30
just the way of kind of creating artistic reverence for life in a way that transcends
43:37
the everyday, a way of punctuating our lives with particular ceremonies so that when you
43:43
die, this happens and when you get married, this happens, when you're in a birth, this happens.
43:47
Well, the ceremonies, I mean, they do it very, very well. They're good at it. They're good at it.
43:51
They do certain things much better than secular society. Yes. We do forgiveness.
43:56
Good luck with that, council culture. Right. Right.
43:59
There's no, because we live in an everlasting now, whatever you said that was the offensive terrible
44:03
thing is the offensive terrible thing for ever. And there's no way back. Yeah.
44:08
It's not great. It's not a great system. Yeah. So there's a lot to kind of recommend it.
44:13
But it's... Yeah, no, I mean... I just wonder whether we need secularized versions of that.
44:17
I mean, some... Do you know, do you think in a couple hundred years we'll have secular,
44:22
I don't know, ways of framing community and... Do we not have events?
44:27
But do we not have that now with it, you know, I mean, the self-help stuff or whatever you're
44:31
doing, you know, talking about Akka Artoli or something, the idea of going, it's a way of framing
44:35
the world, a way of kind of looking at the world and a sense of community. People are finding
44:40
their own communities. I mean, the other great thing about, you know, we talk about the downsides
44:43
of social media and online life, but the upside is you can find, you find a community there.
44:47
You find other people that kind of have the same mindset as you and you come together.
44:50
That's a lovely thing, or people come out to a comedy show and they feel part of something
44:54
and they enjoy the experience and then they go up. Yeah, it's the... It's the,
45:00
sort of pathological worship of the individual is maybe slightly an issue.
45:04
Right. It has been since sort of the early 70s and sort of the left sort of gave up
45:10
and started doing yoga. It's what happened really politically in the early 70s. And you go,
45:16
it was the worship of the individual rather than the group. And it's, it's... Yeah, that's
45:22
that something's missing a little bit. It didn't that unleash a huge amount of creativity and
45:26
I don't know, individualism and interesting stuff. No solutions, only trade-offs. Yeah, there's
45:32
great stuff and then there's downsides. Yeah. There's downsides to it. So there's, you know,
45:35
the world changes. I mean, the world's, I sort of, I'm very positive about the world. I saw
45:40
things are terrible. They're just better than they've ever been. Yeah. Yeah. It's like democracy
45:46
is the worst political system apart from all the others. Yeah. And capitalism's awful,
45:51
other than anything else you can think of. That's right. You mentioned the magic word
45:56
cancel culture. Where are we on that? Do you think we're getting better or worse? I think it's
46:01
same as it ever was, right? The words you can't say change over time. And it was much
46:09
worse, I think in the old days. I think it was much worse in the 1970s when you couldn't sort of
46:13
make jokes about the church and you couldn't make jokes about pedophilic priests or you couldn't
46:17
make jokes about these things. It would be pretty acceptable now to make jokes about. Yeah.
46:21
But it changes and it's like language. It's language is kind of the greatest example of anarchy
46:27
in the world, right? There's no system that tells us how to speak English. And it ebbs and flows
46:32
and changes. So every 50 years, if you took a snapshot of the English language, it's changed.
46:37
And somehow that's just happened. Isn't that part, I mean, you sound a little bit like the people
46:41
who sort of defend the cancel culture who are on the kind of social justice left in the sense that
46:45
they say, look, it's not cancel culture. It's consequence culture. We're just trying to hold
46:49
people accountable. It's accountability, right? Norms change. What a huge difference. Yeah,
46:55
so there's sharing those. Yeah, but there's the idea of, it depends how you'd find cancel culture.
47:01
So if it's an odd and in argument against someone, if you go, it's not about the argument,
47:09
with comedy, I think it's weird because it's never an argument. It's a joke. So you can go
47:13
against someone's argument or you can go against the individual. If you go against the individual
47:17
and say, well, he must never work again. You call for him to resign. And you say that anyone
47:21
that defends him is also guilty of the same crime. Well, that's cancel culture. And that's the,
47:26
you know, there's a, there's a language around that that I do not subscribe to. I mean, the idea
47:31
of like, it's like the Maoist sort of language around thought crimes and unconscious bias.
47:39
Unconscious bias. So I don't even know that I'm biased against this. It's, I mean, straight out of
47:44
Mao's playbook is disgraceful. That's that. And then there's people getting upset about jokes and
47:50
certain things, push buttons. And I think it's sort of the comedy comedian's job or certainly my
47:55
job is to kind of go, well, I'll navigate that. I'll sort of in a world where censorship doesn't
48:01
come from above. It's about self-censorship. So people don't talk in the office openly.
48:05
You know, why did you leave ABC? Because you didn't feel you felt that you were self-censoring
48:11
within a great media organization. You had a great job, great colleagues, great people around you.
48:16
And you went, oh, now I want to do a podcast because I don't want to self-censoring more.
48:20
I want to speak freely. And you spoke freely. And people are drawn to you now because you're
48:24
speaking freely. I feel like I'm doing the same thing. I feel like I'm on stage. I'm speaking
48:29
freely. I'm saying what you want to say. And it's not about agreeing with the point. It's just
48:34
the freedom. It's the, it's the, it's the exaggerating in the freedom of saying anything.
48:39
And getting laughs on it. And it's, you know, you only laugh at the bad thing because you know
48:42
what the good thing is. You know what it's meant to be. So you can laugh. And it's, it's very
48:48
cathartic to be in that space because comedy lives between public and private discourse.
48:54
And really, I mean, the reason you're a new media is because you know there's never been
48:59
a bigger gap between how people talk on the news and how people talk in the real world,
49:03
in their houses, in bars with our friends. What's caused that, do you think?
49:08
I think it's, there's a certain amount of fear. There's a certain amount of, you know,
49:13
if you want to see who's really powerful in society, what can I be saying?
49:19
And I slightly, I put it at the, I would put it at the feet of the mere Marxists. I would say that
49:26
when I was at college, I was very interested in that stuff. You know, Foucault and Adorno and
49:31
Leotard and Maccusa and all of those kind of big names on the, on the left. Don't be saying,
49:36
oh, you know, Marxism, it's not about class, it's not about money, it's not about capital,
49:41
it's about power. It's an interesting thought, but that's, it's escaped the lab. That's taken over
49:48
now. And so there's this weird sort of people that sort of worried about saying anything because
49:52
they were, what about the power dynamic? Well, that's not the only factor. It's a weird irony that
49:57
Marxism has entirely left behind the core idea, which is that economic inequality is a problem.
50:05
Yeah. I don't think we can give a fuck about that. Well, the left has as well. I mean,
50:08
not just Marxists, but even the center left. The center left, I mean, really the, you know,
50:12
the reason I think the Labour and the Democrats in the States lost the recent elections that they
50:21
lost is because they had had the working classes. It's, it's madness. There's no voice for the working
50:26
class. Were you a lefty when you were young? Yeah. I mean, I said, I'm very sort of centrist now
50:34
with a, with a salt bay of libertarian, a little bit of that on top. Like, I'm very much like,
50:41
what should we be involved? The idea that politics should give us some kind of heaven on earth
50:49
is madness. And I think that's, I think anything that goes, whether it's religious or whether
50:56
it's political, that says we have just around the corner heaven for you, you get very quickly to
51:04
buy any means necessary. So you get, you know, it's starting. But who's saying we have heaven
51:09
around the corner? Well, you know, this is, this is the, this is the argument on the, on the
51:14
super far left that we're going to have a quality of outcome, which sort of matters, isn't it?
51:20
Because there isn't a quality of effort and input and all those other things. And the world
51:26
isn't fair. Your equality of opportunity seems to be something that we should be shooting for.
51:31
You know, but that's the, it's classic, classic kind of liberal views. That's sort of what I have.
51:37
They would say that, you know, equality of opportunities all very well, but there are structural
51:41
impediments to particular groups of from getting ahead because there's entrenched racism,
51:46
homophobia, transphobia, whatever it might be. And until you address the unequal outcomes of
51:50
particular groups, you're not going to be able to achieve the quality of opportunity just by
51:54
treating everybody equally because some people are coming from a lower position than others.
51:59
Okay. What do you want to do? I mean, great. But okay, it'd be lovely if the world was fair.
52:06
It's not going to be fair like because it's nature's not fair. Not everyone's given the same
52:11
gifts. You know, different people have different abilities. So there's always going to be hierarchy.
52:16
Is it going to be just or unjust? That's an interesting question. And I think when you get back to
52:22
kind of original Marxism, the original brand, still the best, and go, well, actually we should
52:27
we should level up things financially for people, give them equality of opportunity. I mean,
52:31
I think education is maybe the key point there where you could hope to make a difference.
52:37
But it's economic Marxist, not cultural Marxist. Yeah, that seems to be hard.
52:42
It doesn't the first. Sure it does. And on the question of taboos and cancel culture,
52:46
like it's sort of neat to divide it, but into cancel cultures beyond the pale when you're trying
52:51
to get somebody fired for making a joke about something. But then on the other hand,
52:56
it's good to, you know, sort of stir that. Well, I'm freedom of speech. So if they want to try and
53:01
get me fired, have I have to say, you're in a protest, right? You go, you go. Because I'm just,
53:06
I'm interested in because the your critics would say, well, but you know, a whole part of your
53:10
persona, a whole part of your act is about intentionally picking at the scabs or or puncturing the
53:16
taboos that we've, that we're trying to set up. So there's this forward march of progress. There's
53:21
this vanguard of what is okay and what is not okay. You go back to the 1950s and you see how
53:26
casually racist and sexist everybody was presumably in another 50 years time or 70 years and
53:32
else in 70s. Yeah, we're going to be more enlightened. The joke that ends my career, I've already told
53:37
it. I can relax, Turner. It's out there somewhere when YouTube on Netflix and I probably told it 15
53:42
years ago and it didn't cause any fuss, but someone's going to do the, you know, outrage archaeology
53:49
and job and go back and find it at some point and be offended. Okay. Right. Oh, where it? I said,
53:54
you know, right. I didn't say it by accident. I said, it got a big laugh. I had fun with it.
53:58
The weird thing is that you didn't say it in the cultural context of today, which is what's so
54:02
weird about outrage archaeology, that, you know, you're talking about an era when, you know,
54:06
when Kevin Hart was uninvited from hosting the Academy Awards because he'd tweeted a homophobic
54:12
tweet a decade before. He was tweeting that at a time when it was more saying about, was it
54:17
okay? Well, that was the allegation. Well, the allegation, but the, the gag was, it was a joke
54:24
about his son being gay. It was like, my son was gay. Okay. I think it was, if my son was gay,
54:29
I'd kill him or something. Yeah. Mildly, I'm a phobic, perhaps, but nonetheless, there is a weird
54:37
thing where you have to not only be conscious about who you're offending today, but who you might
54:43
offend in 15 years' time. Do you have to be conscious of the more aides of, do you have to? Well,
54:48
that's, but can you, or can you just roll them dice? But that's what the social justice warriors
54:52
would say. They'd be, they'd say, well, so, you know, they're not coming to the show. But there's
54:56
not, but they would say, no, Jimmy's complaining and, you know, Josh Blanning at the hotel culture.
55:01
Fine. You know, he's looking at how successful Jimmy is. You can say these things. People say,
55:05
oh, you can't say this. You can't say that these days. Of course, you do. People say them all the
55:08
time. Conservatives say them in the press. People, you know, Fox News says them,
55:12
live ads on television, say they're on time. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you know what I mean.
55:16
They're, you know, people say, oh, you can't even question, I don't know, you know, the transgender
55:20
orthodoxy or something like that. Well, the trans activists will say, people do it all the time.
55:23
But that's the, that's the opening line of the special. Yeah. People say, you will
55:28
hurt this. People say, you can't joke about anything these days. Watch me now. Yeah.
55:34
It's an hour of that. Yeah. It's an hour of that. And really, the thing, the thing in the special,
55:38
the thing I have in natural board kind is about sort of cancel culture is, I've got a plan
55:42
for next time. Next time we get canceled, right? So next time we get canceled, I'm going to come
55:47
out on the day of the cancellation, the day the news story breaks, I'm going to make a public statement.
55:50
I've rehearsed it. I'm going to say, I'm sorry. And the people that I've offended will say,
55:55
well, you don't really mean that apology. And I'll say, so you're saying, I can say something
55:59
and not mean it. There we again. Yeah. It's jokes. You'll be, you'll be coming.
56:07
But I mean, one thing that the media is doing at the moment that aggravates me enormously,
56:11
is that I seem to have understood that social media backlashes and kind of mobs are not news
56:17
necessarily. Give me an example here. It's, it's the, it's that thing of that very much the,
56:24
it's bad faith. Like, totally. Have you ever hung out with journalists? I know you have.
56:28
I have. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Then she was one journalist, right? Quite a nice bunch. Yeah.
56:33
Let's be honest about it, right? Quite a nice bunch. Yeah. You would want to go for a beer with them.
56:37
Yeah. They're fun journalists. And are they the most PC people in the world? Not in my experience.
56:43
No. No. There's quite a lot of bullying in the newsroom. And they're quite a fun bunch. And they
56:47
use language liberally. Okay. And then when you read while they were, I was outraged.
56:53
It's extraordinary. Were you outraged? Yeah. They don't even say they were outraged. What they do
56:57
is they'll find two people on Twitter who were outraged. Here's one Mr. Carr. That's you.
57:05
Yes. It was recently branded painfully unfunny. Right. Five viewers. After you shared a
57:10
selection of his controversial jokes for his Netflix show to plug his US tour. And it says painfully
57:17
unfunny. That's, it says that's harsh. This is what, this is the one they're basing this on.
57:21
One person on X formerly known as Twitter. In case you didn't know what X was, right?
57:25
Wrote, God, that was so bad. And he fell off so bad. What is this? The joke were so bad.
57:33
The joke were so bad. Said another. These were so cringe. So two people have commented on Twitter.
57:39
Well, both of them though with, with degrees in English.
57:44
The daily mail has written up a piece on the basis of, I don't, but someone's going to see that
57:54
and go, oh, she'll be cast on tour. She'll get a ticket of that. Like someone's going to,
57:59
like it's, yeah, he's going to have some positive effect on it. It's going to go, all right.
58:03
Did he? Like, and then I go on what basis are they writing an article about this?
58:07
Is it two tweets? Yeah. I go, it doesn't seem like very new. There are other things that came
58:11
right about. There must be other stuff going on, surely. But really? Apparently not. Yeah.
58:16
Not according to your, to any of those. It's fine. It's fine. But you're about to get,
58:23
or you, you just have been depending on where this goes out. Well, this will go out when you're,
58:26
yes, I will have just come off the back of a Douglas Murray tour. And people will be, people will
58:31
be upset. But, you know, I think that thing about it's, it's nice that people have the way.
58:36
To hear the rest of this conversation, go to uncomfortable conversations dot substack dot com slash
58:40
listen. And you will get your own personal premium podcast feed with at least three extra episodes
58:48
of the podcast every month and heaps of extra stuff, including the remainder right now of
58:53
the fabulous conversation you've just been hearing. If it was worth listening to this much of,
58:57
don't rob yourself of the rest. Well, let your phone light now and search for uncomfortable
59:02
conversations of the substack dot com.