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

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He delves into specific moments and incidents in his own life that shows how he managed to make it work for him. And because we're talking Jimmy Carr here, there are jokes, jokes and more jokes throughout. This is self-analysis through the power of laughter at its most rewarding. 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 …”

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.” How often does it happen? “I try not to think about it, because I think you’d be looking for it. But it happens occasionally.”Exploring how the comedian found personal and professional happiness, Before & Laughter will be published by Quercus on 28th September. 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.

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.” 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. 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 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.” Jimmy was asked whether there were jokes he wrote 15 years ago that he would no longer perform, or whether the threat of cancel culture had changed the way he writes comedy during the programme.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.” 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. 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.”