The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Jack Whitehall's Emotional Confession About His Dad, His Biggest Fear & His New Life!

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

n this new episode Steven sits down with the British comedian, actor, writer and presenter, Jack Whitehall. Jack is a three time winner of the ‘King of Comedy’ at the ‘British Comedy Awards’. He began his television career as a presenter for ‘Big Brother's Big Mouth’ in 2008, before appearing on panel shows such as ‘8 Out of 10 Cats’, ‘Would I Lie To You’ and ‘Mock The Week’. He co-wrote and starred in the TV shows, ‘Fresh Meat’ and ‘Bad Education’, making his film debut with ‘The Bad Education Movie’. He appears with his father, Michael Whitehall, in the Netflix comedy documentary series, ‘Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father’. The two have also written a book together, ‘Him & Me’. Jack is starring in the new film ‘Robots’ available now in theatres and on demand. In this conversation Jack and Steven discuss topics, such as: How comedy is an escape for Jack Using comedy as a way to hide his anxieties His fears that his success can leave him at any moment How he struggles with achieving a work life balance His relationship with his father and aims for fatherhood Jack is currently touring the UK with his 2023 live show, ‘Settle Down’, tickets and tour dates are available here: https://bit.ly/3BTdeqF Follow: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3ompM6Z Twitter: https://bit.ly/3IFnc2C Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to amazon music who when they heard that we were expanding to the united states and i'd be recording a lot more over in the states they put a massive billboard in time square um for the show so thank you so much amazon music um thank you to our team and thank you to all of you

that listen to this show let's continue he's the most loving person ever. I want him to have a relationship with my kid. I mean, that's why... I said I wasn't going to do this on this and... I'm now getting emotional. Jack Whitehall, ladies and gentlemen. Actor, writer and award-winning comedian. You are in for a treat. Oh God, that's tequila.

What is the reason why you're a comedian? I use humour to connect with people and have always done so. Growing up, wanting my dad's approval and definitely not receiving it. It dented my confidence, but it also made me like I would one day make him proud. If people really knew you, what would they be most surprised about? I do feel the pressure and I do feel the anxiety about worrying about stuff that is not worth worrying about. Bad reviews, rejection, online trolls. So many times I'm just like, why don't I just delete all social media from my phone?

That would be such a good thing for my mental well-being. I have a little bit more sensitive and vulnerable than I tell people. Do you doubt yourself? Yes. What impact does that have on you? Overworking, not prioritising family and I'm not present when I should be present. Roxy's pregnant now.

How are you honestly feeling about it? Now I'm regretting putting this on camera. What you're doing is incredibly high stakes art. Why are you smirking? Stephen, I've got a punchline about off a tramp behind a wheelie bin i mean that's not i've sat here with so many incredible comedians and it's funny because there's there's an ongoing

stereotype with comedians that they they get into comedy for a variety of different reasons a lot of comedians have said to me you know comedians themselves are depressed in some way then i had jimmy car say to me when you meet a comedian you should ask him which of their parents are depressed um and then i sat here with one particular comedian who really didn't fit into any of those stereotypes at all. What is the reason why you're a comedian in your own words? I think in the most reductive way, it's because I use humour to connect with people

and have always done so. And so I think I've always enjoyed making people laugh. And that's felt to me like a great way to connect with people, whether that be in real life or my audience when I'm up on stage. And I think there are, you know, lots of different reasons that people become comedians. And there is this kind of the sad clown trope. And that's definitely one that does exist. And I think there are people that use comedy for other reasons. But for me, I don't think I fall into that category necessarily. I have always loved comedy and stand-up as an art form because I just really enjoy making people happy and making people laugh and using comedy as escapism. As escapism? Yeah. From? Like if you've had a bad day at work and you come and see a stand up on stage and they make you laugh, bring you out of a dark place. Or if you're, you know, on your phone and watching the news and depressed about the world and then you can go and forget about all of that.

And, you know, it's a great way of, I think, you know, just and uh completely relaxing and listening to someone else entertain you and uh i think that for me like that's what i see my kind of duty as a comedian that's your parents are comedians yes i spent a lot of time watching the wittering white white walls yeah on youtube your father in particular is absolutely fucking hilarious yeah do you think your sort of comedic edge came from there or because you have siblings right yeah who aren't comedians they're not comedians i mean they're both pretty funny people and there was a lot of laughter in our household when we were growing up and i definitely think my dad in particular was my kind of most you know dominant early comic influence because again i would watch how uh he used humor and how making people laugh was this way that he

had to kind of unlock people and he was an amazing raconteur and told these incredible stories and i watched how people would hang on his every word. And I remember being really in awe of that and thinking, oh, I'd love to not only amuse him when I'm able to do so, but also, you know, emulate him and try to be, you know, someone that people enjoy the company of and the presence of because of my kind of like wit, I guess. And so, yeah, he was definitely like, for me, the person that influenced me the most when I was thinking, Oh, yeah, that's definitely something that I would be interested in pursuing. When was that point where you thought I could pursue comedy professionally as a real job? I don't know. I think it probably wasn't until the

edinburgh festival when i went to the edinburgh festival in my teens and saw stand-up comics i mean prior to that like most of my knowledge of comedy had been stuff that i'd seen on tv and movies and laurel and hardy and norman wisdom and that felt like you know hilarious but kind of very alien in a way and then going up to ed Edinburgh and seeing like stand ups performing and people that were maybe slightly closer to me in age and were talking about things that I could relate to. And all of a sudden, I was like, wow, this is like genuinely a viable career path had I known that they were probably all up there performing for a month at Edinburgh and hemorrhaging money and not filling out the venues every night it's like a really really difficult career path uh for the vast majority of comedians but like I was kind of young and doughy eyed and just saw you know the the the incredible aspect of it which is um you know the other thing that appeals to me about comedy

which is that it's a way of doing something that isn't a real job and isn't sat in an office doing something that to me would be kind of mind-crushingly boring it's a creative pursuit which i think i would always have been gravitating towards was there not a lot of influences in your life telling you that comedy is not a real job like yeah a lot who are those influences and what were they saying and why didn't you listen um well people so at school that i was always talking about trying to do stuff off my own bat and do sketches and um taking a show to edinburgh was my idea and the school were very anti that at the time and the drama teacher thought it was a waste of time my parents were very very keen that I didn't necessarily pursue a career in the like arts I think because my dad was an agent and he'd looked after loads of really successful actors but he'd also looked after a load of actors that had been out of work and had really struggled and my mum had had a career as

an actor that hadn't necessarily given her the fulfillment that I think she'd wanted it to and you know she'd had some sort of bit parts on television and then had to give it up and so they were very aware that you know that it was a very very competitive industry and so they were very aware that, you know, that it was a very, very competitive industry. And so they were very keen that I make sure that I focus on my studies and have something to fall back on if I were to not make it in, you know, the arts. I mean, it was a little ill thought through because the other passions that I had were things like art. And so I ended up going to university to study history of art, which I don't necessarily think is, you know, of industries to fall back on, like art history is not the most transferable skill. And then also, by pushing me away from, you know, going to drama school or becoming an actor, which would have been the other thing that I would have wanted to do at that age. I was so frustrated that I wasn't able to do that,

that I went and I did the degree. And then I was like, I need to perform in some way. Oh, my God, I could do stand up and they'll have no control over that. So then I started doing stand up as my side hustle. And, you know, they pushed me into comedy, which, again, is like, a really, really competitive industry. And, you know, if they'd wanted me to become a lawyer or a banker, which they always claim that they did, they went about it completely the wrong way. In hindsight, hindsight, such a wonderful thing. What do you think? If you could reverse the clocks now, and you could be Jack's parents, and you could make the decision for Jack at that age, that really pivotal age, what he did next in the,

with the intention of accelerating his career, his happiness, his, his talent. What, what should, and what would you do as Jack's parents in hindsight? Oh, I don't know. I'd push him towards drama school. No, no, no. I think they probably, they did probably play it right. It's the weird thing. In a roundabout way, it all sort of worked out okay.

And I don't begrudge them for any of those decisions. And they were, which people are always surprised to hear. It's like, well, they're not surprised to hear it now because people have seen my relationship with my family. And, you know, we I call it I call it a travel log but some people have pointed out it is also almost like a reality television show we're like the posh Kardashians and so people have

been exposed to my family and can see that you know we have an unusual relationship but we are very close but people are always surprised to hear that it was always the case even when I was you know away at boarding school we still had like a really good connection I in fact always say that going to boarding school was probably quite helpful to my relationship with my parents if anyone has seen my father he's he's quite he's better in small doses and I think having that distance from him was probably very healthy, and is why we had such a good relationship. So yeah, there's a lot of things where at the time, I was Oh, God, why are you doing this? And I, I mean, when they sent me to boarding school, I was, I was so upset. I was like, I do not want to go. I'm happy with my friends. I want to stay in in London with them at this school.

And I was really struggling at that school and I wasn't coming out of my shell and I hadn't found you know any of my kind of passions or interests and there was no one cultivating any of them and so they looked at that and thought we need to do something and make a change and they found this school uh in Oxford which I went around and they met lots of teachers and it had a far more kind of like I don't know it had like an eccentric feel it felt like a better fit for me but it was a boarding school and so they took me out of the school that I was struggling in and sent me to that boarding school and I remember being oh my god I was so upset I was like no please like honestly daddy I don't want to go and he said to me at the time he

was like look it's fine if you go then you don't like it you can come back after a term and i promise you if you turn around and you tell me that then you can come out and go back to the school that you're at in london i was like okay well that's you know something that i can hold on to and i remember that really helped get through the first um term away and then i asked him subsequently many years later i was like you know when you said that it really helped he's like i had no intention of doing that even if you had been very upset you were there for the year i'd got you in it had been very hard to get you in there and you were staying whether you liked him or not and i don't know whether that's

him sort of slightly being a nuisance but there may have been some truth to it didn't you around like 11 or something auditioned to be harry potter yeah that's crazy yeah i did a bit of child acting again just because i was sort of adjacent to that world and i saw you know my dad in that industry and my mom and my mom was still acting back then i was so enamored of it so as a kid i did want to do it and you know i had a few uh sort of quite low level um acting jobs as a child with like single lines in tv shows i got dubbed in one because i couldn't deliver the line properly i had one line which was uh it's not a monster, it's a rabbit. And the day just developed a speech impediment.

It's not a monster, it's a rabbit. And when it actually went out, they re-dubbed me. So it was another child's voice coming out of my mouth. So I'd had that job. And then I'd had one other job where I had no lines. I had another job that I got, and I swear this is true, but I can't remember exactly how it happened, but I got and and I swear this is true but I I'd have to I can't remember exactly how it happened but I I got like demoted I got cast in a part where which was like quite a good

speaking role and then like on the day all of a sudden I was it was goodbye Mr Chips with Martin Clunes and all of a sudden I was like at the back of a class and had no lines and I can't for the life of me understand how that happened I mean i was very young at the time maybe i was just so terrible they saw me in the rehearsal and thought nah you're now um out of shot right at the back um and then harry potter yeah so that was around the time that obviously i was doing these little acting roles and then there was this audition for harry potter and they did an open casting at my school they came with a casting director to to kind of audition loads of kids and they were doing it around the country and there was a lot of like uh excitement about this because obviously the book was so popular um and i remember calling my dad and saying they're doing this open casting and i'm

gonna enter myself into it and he was like oh no that's a complete waste of time i was like what do you mean he's like well they never cast anyone at these open castings it'll be some casting directors assistant assistant uh you know it's it's a complete waste of time if you genuinely want to audition for harry potter i will get you in front of the casting director so he drove down to oxford took me out of school for the day got me me down to London, through some connections of his, managed to get me an audition with the casting director of Harry Potter. I went into the casting room and completely tanked the audition because I was not a very good actor as a child, as is proven by the track record up until that point.

I also hadn't read the book because I've just never been a great reader. And I'd read like the first couple of chapters and then got bored. And I didn't have any knowledge of the plot of Harry Potter. And that was exposed in the audition as well. And so it was about as bad as an audition could go. And I came out and I looked and i was like yeah i don't think you need to worry about that one and then the i think the nice heartwarming uh end to this story my dad having been you know outrageous in his behavior and the the nepotism being out of control in the open casting uh they cast emma watson as a whian and she did get cast from just uh entering through the correct channels and not calling up her dad and asking him to get her in front of the casting director and she had that wonderful life-changing opportunity which she earned and that's the way

that it should be but i look at all of that and i go that that phase of your life it doesn't seem like there was a ton of self-belief because you've got your dad your dad sort of chiming in at parts saying subtly saying the odds aren't good son indirectly and then you know the the being sent to the back of the classroom in the acting thing you do subtle knocks yeah does that stay with you as you go into comedy and is that an accurate assessment of how you were feeling at that point yeah I definitely was not very confident at that age and I was quite I was quite odd and eccentric and in the right company and in a safe environment and around my kind of family I think I was a little bit more confident. But at school, I certainly wasn't. I was very awkward, like a very unfortunate looking child as well.

I had huge buck teeth and glasses and like a cowlick. And you see photographs of me from then and you look like a kid that would not have a lot of confidence and then had the like you know the massive braces in my face for for a long period of my childhood and that made you know that there was definitely a lack of confidence because of that and you know the various knockbacks and and then realizing oh I quite like acting and performing and you know for for years I would audition for all of these school plays and I would never get cast in anything and so that didn't help and and also you know I guess wanting my my dad's approval which I always did you know right from the get-go and and definitely not receiving it like that it did it dented my confidence but it also made

me like i don't know i think it gave me a kind of resolve that i would i would one day achieve it and i would make him proud and uh you know because he'd been sort of dismissive oh you don't want to become an actor and you're never going to become an actor that made me want to do it even more and be like oh no no i i really think i can do this um and then with the comedy thing the other aspect is that he was and remains the hardest person to crack ever like he doesn't laugh anything and you know i i i do have that like overriding memory that as a kid like i always was desperate to try and make him laugh and to like crack him. And if I could get him to laugh, like that felt like such an achievement.

And even to this day, you know, like when he comes to do shows or if I'm doing things with him, like he's a really hard, like tough crowd. He's got, as you've seen, like a real, I mean, resting bitch face. I believe is what the kids are calling it and uh yeah if i can even get like a smile from him it transports me back to being you know 12 or 13 years old and having that same thing of i really want to make him laugh has he had any sort of acting qualifications or anything because when i saw him on chatty Man with you, I was thinking, God, he's an unbelievable actor. He's an unbelievable actor.

Like he's, you're right, just steel face. Yeah, yeah. No, he's had no training at all. But I guess just because he does so little and gives away so little, that, I don't know, that almost feels like it's performative. And maybe it is to an extent. But no, he's,'s yeah he's had absolutely no training whatsoever so you go off and you do the you go up to edinburgh you see that that's

a big inspiration for you what happens next how do you go from there to doing shows and climbing up the comedic ladder very very quickly so then i yeah i went to edinburgh with a sketch show with two of my friends from school and we did it um at the pleasance and we did a month in this tiny room that's now a disabled toilet that's how small it was um and there was like you know 10 seats and us performing this sketch show. We had no idea what we were doing. It was all kind of cobbled together sketches that we'd copied from Not the Nine O'Clock News and League of Gentlemen and got terrible reviews. But in the middle of it, I came out and did stand up and I'd never done stand up before. And I thought that stand up was just something that you could do. I'd never done stand-up before and i thought that stand-up was just something that you could do i'd never done a gig i literally just walked out in the middle of this sketch show

and did 10 minutes of stand-up um it was described by one reviewer as jack whitehall appears on stage in the middle of the show and does an impression of what he thinks a stand-up is and that is a pretty fair assessment of what it was but um a guy called Ben Cavey who uh was a producer at the time came to that show and saw me and saw that there was I had some promise or there was something that he recognized in me that he thought you know I had some potential and so I then uh went and met with him when I was down in London. He worked for Tiger Aspect, a great production company who made Mr Bean, Catherine Tate, Benidorm, all of these shows.

And with him, I started developing. He asked me to do tour support for uh horn and cordon uh when james cordon and matt horn were doing their double act around the time of gavin and stacy because he was working on a show with them and he said oh there's this guy who i saw at edinburgh he's really funny he's very new very young uh you're doing these warm-up shows of your sketch show, you should get him to come out and he could do some stand-up before you go on. And so I did support for them and that's how I met James and how I met Matt, who would end up being in my sitcom. And James and Matt were kind of quite instrumental

in me getting my first television gig as well. So they did Big Brother's Big Mouth and they were like the guest hosts on that. And they were meant to do a whole series and they had to pull out. And because they'd seen me do stand up for them as their warm up act, James was very good at kind of, you know, speaking to whoever the person was at Channel 4 and saying, oh, you know, you should get to host this show is jack um and so yeah i ended up doing like live tv hosting big brother's big mouth which was the show that kind of had created russell brand and i was i was 18 or 19 19 i was i was young and very very very inexperienced like my comic persona was you know all over the shop because i hadn't like found my voice yet and i was already on tv i got definitely got catapulted

on television far too quickly like i always say this like you look at like mickey flanagan or john bishop or any of the kind of like really established comedians when they break and they become tv stars they've been doing it for 10 years and they've honed their act and they know exactly who they are and you get like the finished article when i was put on tv i was like still basically an open mic comedian almost i mean i'd done paid gigs but i was still like going on and talking in a mockney accent because I hadn't worked out what like, like that I could be myself on stage. I was so terrified to, to go up onto a standup comedy stage and talk in my voice. Cause I was like, they're all going to hate me. No one's going to

want to like, listen to some public school by waffling on. So I'm going to have to disguise that and I'm going to go on and I'm going to talk like danny dyer and so for the first couple of years of my like stand-up career i'd do that and all these other comedians afterwards they would be like oh yeah well you've got some great stage presence but you just you haven't found your voice yet and i was like oh well could you could you tell me what my voice is and they're like that's not really how it works you need to find your voice and you'll go on a journey i was like just cut the yoda crap like just what is my voice and i'll go on a journey. I was like, just cut the Yoda crap. Like just what is my voice? And I found it so frustrating, but that is a process that you have

to go through as a comedian. You need to find your voice. And my problem was when I was trying to find my voice, I didn't even know who I was as a person back then. I was 18, 19 years old. Like I'm like at that age, like I didn't think you've like formulated who you are. And so I was in this kind of weird like period of flux where I was trying all these different comic personas. I settled on this one that was like basically a kind of like a homage to Russell Brand. It was so inauthentic. It wasn't who I was. But, you know, it gave me a kind of a little bit of a I guess a little bit of an armor that I was hiding behind a kind of character almost and it gave me some confidence and so I was I was I was

in that kind of like period of my um like development when all of a sudden I was doing like live television for the first time and I watch some of the footage back of me from those early days and i want to hide behind the sofa it's so cringe i've got this big shock of like electric hair and wearing this skinny jeans i look like i've just fallen out of the holy arms and i'm talking in a way that just bears no correlation to like who i am it was it was it's very strange. Do you not have imposter syndrome at all? Because you know you come in at 19, 20 years old to an industry full of veterans and people that look like they know what they're doing. Yeah. Just playing a good job of like knowing what they're doing. Do you feel that at that

young age? Yeah, I think I did feel a little bit of that. But yeah, I think I was just probably so ambitious that I went into those dressing rooms. And even though I was kind of in awe of a lot of these people, again, I was just like, well, I really want to kind of prove myself. And every time I had a bad gig you know I'd always my takeaway would be well I need to just like get better then and I will get better and I know I can get better um and I and I yeah I think I had quite a lot of resilience uh I was naive but the naivety probably helped get through some gigs that if I'd been a little bit older, I would have been like, why the hell am I doing this? And also, you know, obviously it, I mean,

it helped very much that I come from a background of privilege and that I was, you know, wasn't having to support a family or pay a mortgage and I could kind of pursue this fool's errand for a bit what's a what's a bad gig you know for for someone like you what does that feel like what does it look like um i think i've had so many bad gigs back in the day it was going and doing 10 minutes in a pub and performing to 20 people you're set up to fail really because it's never going to be a stormer because the environment is not conducive to comedy because you're in a noisy pub fighting against a you know fruit machine and some of the people are on their phones some of the people are sort of half listening to you there's like a tinny microphone terrible sound system uh and you're

going on like 10th on the bill and everyone's a bit drunk and you're never going to kill that gig and then you go out and you do 10 minutes of your material and it like barely raises a titter and then you've got to get on a train and go back to London and be in your own thoughts for two hours like that's pretty soul-crushing but I don't know why I don't know why I like and there were a lot of those at the beginning I think probably because I was like still at that point I was living in Manchester with all of my mates in a student house and having like a great time didn't have many worries in the world because I was 18 19 and I was going off and doing these gigs and sometimes they go well and sometimes I would crash and burn but I don't know it just didn't like I didn't I didn't feel the pressure

that that's what was so amazing about that period of my life is that I just don't remember feeling any pressure and now if I tank a gig or I go out and you know mess up the Brit Awards I do feel the pressure and I do feel the anxiety of it all and I and i didn't have as much professional anxiety back then because i was sort of on a relatively upward trajectory um and you know it all felt so full of possibility i just think i was sort of unburdened by all of the kind of anxieties that i would have now as a comedian and a performer reminds me of my conversation with Lewis Capaldi he told me about singing in pubs in Scotland and like no one was really listening he almost talks about it as if he would prefer to go back and do that now because it because there's no arenas there's no expectations there's no pressure and I actually think he said on the

podcast I think he said like I just want to sing in a pub in Scotland. Your success and his success have meant that that's, you know, that's, I would say it's certainly possible. But even if you were announced as being in a pub, expectation would show up. Yeah, yeah. And I do. And I connected with his documentary in that aspect when I watched it and saw like him articulate some of those elements because that is it is so true and you know you yeah you do a show now and you're putting it on in an arena and like the level of expectation is so much higher and you've got to shift you know a huge amount of tickets there's going to be reviewers there you've got to entertain like a vast crowd if it goes wrong like that's a news event and back then it there was none of that like i die in a pub you know if jack whitehall crashes and burns in the middle of an empty forest does he make a sound

and my forest was a pub in preston does does that make does that make it less fun is there like a i enjoyed it in a really in a way in a way and i still do to an extent when i'm like maybe more so now like when i'm working it through there is like a sadomasochistic thing that quite enjoys like the the tricky gigs and like working out why why it hasn't worked and what i need to do to to get it to work like i do but i mean the pressure now does that make it less fun oh the pressure sorry yes um because you've used the word professional anxieties a few times yeah yeah i mean that element of it does, for sure. And I don't remember feeling that when I was in my kind of early 20s. But all of a sudden, they sort of creep up on you and your, your and your own thoughts a lot more. And constantly like, like, I don't know. just thinking about uh about like i just for me it's like worry that it will all go away and like that's that's always like the the kind of the great the greatest fear is that it's just

going to stop and and i and i've loved doing it but yeah there are there are lots of other added pressures that weren't existent when i started doing it and i i look back on it and uh yeah do kind of like miss that headspace a lot of people can relate to that i that fear of um worrying that it'll all go away even you know people that have climbed the corporate ladder they've gotten to a certain position and i've seen it a lot of times with some of my friends and even in some of my companies where people will say to me that they're just trying to kind of hang on to where they are yeah and when you have that mindset it can it can it seems like it can be quite unenjoyable because there's that constant sort of as you describe anxiety um but also i i'm not sure everyone does their best work when they're kind of hanging on because there's there's not this sort of mental freedom to fully express or to relax or take time off so I'm not

sure if we do our best work it is that is that what you're saying you feel like you're you have a constant worry that everything you've built might someday change and I guess the more important question is where do you know where that's come from in you that i that idea that it could just no i mean i don't know i don't know where it comes from but and and if i don't know and and i don't and it's not like a cancel culture thing of me going oh i'm worried i'm going to say something and then all of a sudden i'm going to get cancelled and then i'm never going to be able to do shows again it doesn't it's not even like linked to that although obviously there is like a small chance that that could happen i don't i don't necessarily feel like uh i push the boundaries in such a way that that feels

likely but yeah i don't know how i've i've allowed that to sort of creep up on me. And I think the key to not allowing that to consume you is to sort of just try to refocus your mind on like what's important. And, you know, ultimately some of the things that are, you know, the concerns that like, build up as professional anxieties, ultimately aren't as important as long as you're doing like, ultimately, as long as I'm still doing stand up and still doing what I love and still getting to, you know, act and perform, it doesn't necessarily matter. You know, how I'm doing that i'm doing what i love and and that should be enough and and

then also just like refocusing my energies on like my work-life balance and focusing on what's important my relationship family those are the things that make me happy and as long as those are working then i think i will feel fulfilled um and so i think it's yeah it's how i like frame that in in my head even from doing this because i'm not a journalist or i didn't go to podcast school or whatever i still sit here and go how the fuck is this still a thing like how how are people still listening to this we admit it i mean jack did productions beforehand but you jack you've never done anything like this before have you you've never done anything like this before have you i've never done anything like this before so it's all a little bit what the

fuck is going on yeah just keep going and hopefully nobody notices us yeah that's like almost the feeling because you almost assume that all of your competitors or other people that are doing it in your space they have some certificate yeah it's like giving them the right yeah yeah and a rule book that we're that we're not privy to yeah um can you relate to any of that that feeling that like yeah i mean there is yeah and there is no kind of like playbook for it is is there like with a career and with you know with all of it so i like the worst thing you can do is start like comparing yourself to other people and like thinking about that too much as well and i mean so so many times i'm just like why don't i just delete all social media from my phone i think i would be such a good thing for my like mental well-being i just haven't quite

brought myself to do it yet but maybe that's something that i should try but it's just like the worrying about stuff that is not worth worrying about it's like i wish i want to get better at that i really want to like work at that what impact does that have on you that i'm not present when i should be present i think that's that's where i feel it is most frustrating in my life is when i'm worrying about fucking nonsense that doesn't need to be consuming me and i'm not present with friends and family and uh people that i need to like give more of myself to what's an example of something that might consume you like a little troll online or like a review or i mean yeah i that can, it can take me out for a couple of days. Like rejection, professional rejection, not getting a part in something, a bad review, things like that. And

then for a couple of days, I'll sort of be spinning out and then, you know, I'll catch myself doing it and be like, Oh i doing i don't need to do that i have more sensitivity i think than i sort of let on i've always sort of built myself as being quite resilient and thick-skinned which i am to a degree but i think there are things and elements where i am a little bit more sensitive and vulnerable than than i uh than i tell people you and me both yeah you and me both and i think obviously in different jobs that i've had i've had to be i've been the ceo of the companies so you you kind of learn to put up a everything's fine yeah but some you can be behind the scenes like spinning out a little bit for a couple of

days based on something when you say spinning out what does that if i'm roxy yeah your wonderful partner yeah what would roxy observe when jack is spinning out that i'm in a sort of weird fugue state because i'm also one of those people that's just like i'm a barrier i don't articulate a lot of uh of these emotions and i and i do and i definitely i don't know whether it's because of my background or my upbringing, but I'm someone that doesn't really want to burden people with them. I feel like as well as a comedian, as a funny person, again, I feel like I'm letting people down if I'm like a Debbie Downer

and talking about stuff that is going gonna you know kill the mood i just i'm don't like conflict i i don't like uh to depress people so i think i sort of i like yeah bury it all put it on a brave face and then um yeah just maybe not quite myself so you probably wouldn't even realize it was going on but i think for rocks it's it's hard because yeah sometimes i'm just like a little bit away with the fairies but that's because i'm having this like internal dialogue is everything gonna be okay oh my god they hate me no no you're gonna be fine and that's all going on and i'm like yeah yeah i'm fine someone said to me once they said the people that care most about the applause which tends to be like performers and comedians stuff also care the most about the booze yeah do you think that's accurate yeah like

it's not possible just to care about one side of that spectrum you can't just care about the applause and then say i don't care i'm invincible yeah yeah back isn't no definitely it's definitely yeah it's definitely feedback and you know like audiences that upset me or online trolls i mean i do consume quite a lot of that if i if i'm brutally honest with myself i'd probably consume more of it than i should um and read it and and again i'm like i think it's fine i think it sort of bounces off me, but maybe it doesn't bounce off me as much. And I'm like, it's all stored away somewhere. You know, it's good. But I don't know. I also like part of me,

and I'm not encouraging people to troll me online. But I'm like, there is a good, it's good to like keep your ego in check as well. I do like, like constructive criticism as well, I think is very useful. And like some feedback, because if you didn't have any of that, and you were just like, you just went on the reaction to the audiences of paid punters that have come to see you. And clearly are like on side and it's like a home gig

because they're, you know, fans of you that have bought a ticket to you. And that was your only like interaction and that was where you kind of garnered what like your relationship with the public was you would think you were just like the messiah it's quite good to be reminded yeah there are some people that find you a bit much and but has their feedback those people those trolls has it made you a better comedian i mean every now and again i get quite a good like you know joke from something that someone said oh okay no i don't think it's made me a better comedian but someone calls it says on twitter that my new hairstyle looks like a Tesco's value Richard Hammond. I'm like, I don't care about that.

Those are quite rare. Normally it's like, why is this posh twat on television every time I turn it on? No, I can't want that. When you bury stuff though, like a seed, it kind of grows. I always think this. And I think it certainly changes us over time, all the things we have buried.

Like even if we don't ever express it or whatever i feel like it kind of just infects our character a little bit yeah that's certainly what's happened to me for sure for sure yeah just over time i think slowly the things i've like buried or ignored they kind of just weigh me down a little bit and you might become a little bit snappier or a little bit you know more impatient or negative about the world or whatever is that the case with you yeah i think for me the main way it affects me is is like it's like a it is ultimately just like a focus thing it's like focusing on it it makes me focus on the wrong things and that's the thing that i struggle with most of my life is my like is work-life balance I think I'm terrible at work-life balance and I always have been because I started when I was 17

and I just didn't stop and so I used to hate going on holidays I was like I don't want to go on a holiday it's a complete waste of time and I remember like calling my agent and my dad from a beach somewhere going I can't wait to get home and i've always had that like weird attitude um to like work and wanting to work work work work work work and and i'm i'm about to have quite a big life event and i think that will what life event jack i'm about to have a baby which i'm like i'm so excited about and also i'm just like the thing that i pray that it does is just completely like shifts my focus and and i'm so excited to have this little being in the world that is more important than anything else i think that's going to be such a healthy thing and i know that's not

necessarily the reason to have a child i probably should have worked through some of these things before the baby arrived but like that's an element of it that for some people might be quite daunting but i'm like i think that's going to be amazing. And I'm really, really excited. And I can't wait to be a dad. And I'm like, it's just, it's just really, really cannot wait to like, sort of step up to the plate and, and try to be the best dad that I can be and have that as my focus. And when I'm focused on that, and I'm thinking about all the other stuff stuff i think it's gonna just be great maybe that's quite a glass half full well yeah it sounds like a conversation that i've been having with myself but also with my partner where i've said to her because she's scared that i'm i might just keep working and i think she asks me once every month she goes are you going to be like this when we have kids together and i'll go no no no'll change yeah when the baby comes yeah i will be different yeah i'll i'll just cancel stuff i'll say no to everything yeah look at your face yeah

no i'm having all of these conversations um yeah but i've always said you you don't know yeah you don't know what will happen none of us have ever experienced that feeling that some of our friends, I'm sure, have explained where your priorities shift upon the arrival of this. Arsenal. Baby Arsenal work. Do you think, I've asked a few people this, because when I meet someone that describes themselves as being a bit of a workaholic,

I wonder whether they are driven or whether they are being dragged which which resonates more with you do you think you're driven or do you think you're being dragged i think i'm driven i think i'm if yeah i'm driven i think it would be quite helpful to be dragged back a bit sometimes i definitely think it would be good because I have this weird career where I act and I write and I do stand-up as well it's very easy to fill my entire diary all the time um and if I look at a like you know a couple of months I'm like I'm not doing anything there you know I was meant to be filming a movie then and it's been delayed now and I've got two months. I was like, well, I need to do stand up and I'm going to write a script and going to produce as well. And I have a production company, so I'm constantly developing things. And I just like, and that all comes from me. That's not people going, oh, Jack, can we, we've got this gap. Can we do this now? It's me going, we can do this now and we can fill this now and we can develop that and I can write this and and I cram so much stuff into you know my schedule uh and I think again like you know professionally it might be better to to take a beat sometimes and

prioritize like taking some time off as well and having a little bit of headspace I mean the pandemic was weirdly a time when we were forced to do that. And I found it very helpful creatively to not be working all the time. And this stand-up tour, I've had longer to prepare for it than I've ever had. And I've had way more kind of headspace and space to like live my life a bit, which is so important when you're creating and you're writing especially when you're trying to you know write personal material you need to live your life you can't be working all the time because then all of your experiences are going to

be professional ones no one wants to go and watch a stand-up comedian tell a load of jokes about what it's like being on set and like anecdotes about like, you know, script reads and whatever. That's not interesting comedy material for anyone. And fame as well, I don't think is necessarily always the best kind of, you know, source of relatable stand up. So I think it's really important as a comedian to have that time to go and like live your life and build up some experiences and and find inspiration as it naturally occurs rather than trying to force it and on a personal level um that that conversation about work-life balance and giving yourself some time and not just cramming everything into the calendar what are

the consequences of you not being balanced as it relates to your personal life that i think yeah i i i seem to sort of that's the perennial mistake that i make is overworking not prioritizing friends and family and and then having to sort of make up for it and i don't want to always be making up for it um and i think i'm quite good at making up for it and uh you know i then put a lot of pressure on myself well i've got to like see all of these people and make sure that i cram in a load of social situations and sneak in a little holiday there and and that and i wish i didn't have that approach because then everything feels rushed and and i'd prefer it not to feel as rushed i'd prefer to yeah just uh but look it's all gonna be fine when the baby comes it's all gonna change

how you feel overnight how are you honestly feeling about about you know roxy's sort of five months um pregnant now how are you honestly feeling about becoming a dad i'm feeling excited it's hard it's a weird one because like sometimes it feels very real and sometimes it's just a sort of abstract concept an idea and it feels very very surreal um and it sort of flips between both of those things on almost like a daily basis uh and sometimes i feel overwhelmed thinking about it other times i'm like i barely engaged with it at all because i'm so distracted with other things and so it's a really weird emotional place to be in right now like this sort of run up to to having a kid and and i've spoken to lots of friends that have been in this

period as well and a lot of them have said that that's quite normal as well that you know again there's sort of no right way to be feeling at any one time um and that you know and what you're thinking about her and and looking after her she's had some like health issues as well and so we've had a bit of a journey to get here and and so there's it's it's quite it's quite a scary period as well like a note i'm just really looking forward to the moment when the baby is born and then i mean i say that like then and then you can relax no it's then stressful for the next like like 18 years and so it doesn't stop then um again like maybe i've just framed it in in quite a positive way uh but yeah i'm i don't know i am i'm i'm excited about being a dad because i never thought that i would get to it this early either i honestly because my dad was you know

50 nearly 50 when he had me he really he was 50 I've made that my math is right yeah he was nearly 50 and so I was like well I'll be an old dad you know I'll you know live my best life and then when I get to 50 then I'll just pop out a couple of kids be great um and honest and always thought that that was the case uh and then ultimately started looking at friends and seeing how happy they were and my sister with her niece and my niece not her niece my sister and my niece and thinking oh you know what maybe i maybe i do want that and and then like began to really like yearn for it and I was lucky that I met Roxy who's the right person and my person and uh we felt like we were both ready and so yeah um it

it's it's I think people will be surprised when they find out that I'm a lot of people were friends and family when I told them I think because they just didn't think that I was necessarily ready for it which again like in my weird mentality just makes me go i'm going to prove you i'm going to show you i'm going to be the best at it so is there a fear because i think if i'm being completely honest with myself and i don't think i've said this before when i think about the prospect of having a child which is again, again, something that I really want to do, and I see myself as having four kids, and I also see myself as hopefully being a really attentive, present father,

there is a little bit of a thing in my head that goes, you don't have any time as it is, Steve. So something's going to have to give, and it's going to be your career in some respect. Like there's going to be some element of reduction in your career. And maybe that's okay. But if i think about it practically i'm already using all 24 hours in the day yeah so where's it going to come from yeah that's definitely i thought that crosses my mind and being realistic about it as well and not it's not something that you can like just like you're not going to want to like just schedule it

in or can do a little bit of family time here and then i'll go and uh do some uh you know tour dates in australia or like i think yeah it's that that's gonna need to be like a significant moment of like change because i'm not going to want to work in the same way that i've worked that's why this like yeah this last year has felt a little bit like i don't know like in in my head i am definitely like mentally prepared for that i was like the baby is coming in september i'm gonna have it's gonna be a massive tour there i'm gonna do a tour and then i'm and then i'm gonna i don't want to having a tour sort of like hanging over me i wanted to do it now and um

weirdly a lot of the comedians that i'm friends with i was like yes i'm doing a tour and then having a baby in september i was like you're gonna regret putting that tour in then you're gonna yeah because then when the baby's like two that's when you don't notice a lot of comedians start getting out on tour because they want to get out the house you look at all of them they do i won't have that excuse the tour will be done and then you'll be at home for two years changing nappies excited about that yes i am and i actually know i'm genuinely happy i'm very excited to do that and to like roll up my steves and get involved and be a hands-on dad and now i'm regretting putting this on camera because she's gonna have that clipped up you remember when you said this to steven upstairs now there's a poonami that needs attending to yeah i was just saying that

for the sake of the podcast and you've got this tour coming up called settle down yeah you're doing a lot of dates in a lot of places yeah how many dates are you doing jack i'm doing i would say at the time of recording maybe 40 50 dates they keep getting added and so it's hard to keep count and i actually in my head mentally it would be quite good to just think of it as being 40 because that sounds quite manageable but it may be a few more now how are you honestly feeling about it give me all the emotions uh weirdly i'm actually kind of excited for it to just start and to just be doing it um the the bit that's a bit of a slog is is the sort of build up to it and the writing of it and

the getting it all ready in time and booking all of the venues and doing the promo and talking through the design and you know it's a whole you know production and it's just and it all has to come through me um it's quite hard to delegate when you're you're building something like that and so i'm really really excited to just be then on the road doing the shows and that's all i have to worry about um and and i remember that i remember this feeling before in the run-up to the show, being like, I'm just desperate for the first one to come about so I can then just actually be doing it. And then when I'm on the road, I love it. I try to not do too long of a tour in terms of like,

a lot of comics will go out for like six months or a year and I find, I i mean in a quite brutal way just after a while i just begin to hate the sound of my own voice and get bored of the material and i don't know i i like doing it in quite kind of condensed burst and uh you know then like keeping some kind of like momentum going and doing a couple of shows having a day off and a couple more shows and and i love it i i honestly it's like i've had a long period away from it uh you know four years is the biggest gap i've had between tours and i i'm just i'm excited to be doing it again and they're like i was talking to i can't remember who it was but i was talking

to an actor a successful actor this is about the appeal of stand-up and how you never really get that moment no matter how big of a movie you make like you might go to a premiere and it gets a great reaction and and that's amazing and you have good reviews and it does great at the box office or whatever but like that thrill of the live experience i think it's why so many actors want to be musicians and end up in bands and whatnot so they can have that like experience and like that thing of like going out in front of a huge crowd and and like having that live experience and connection with them is like the best thing in the world and it's so hard to replicate that anywhere else what's what's influenced this this show in terms of the jokes

in terms of the humor in terms of your style what what are the key influences or the differences from previous tours well it's called i called it settle down because it is sort of about this period of my life where i am settling down becoming a little bit more of an adult a lot of my comedy before and my previous tours it's all about being the sort of man child and that's kind of like i guess you know on stage i'm this sort of foppish man baby and telling stories of drunken hijinks and putting my foot in it and generally just being a bit of a sort of clown. And, and this, this show has an element of that and an element of me being self aware enough to be like, this is definitely the like, the last show where I can be telling those stories. And maybe this is the last moment of my life where I can lean into that. And you know, that was the

sort of feckless misadventure that was my 20s. And now I've entered into my 30s. I've got a mortgage and a girlfriend and a dog and a baby on the way and i am now you're gonna be forced to settle down whether i like it or not and so it's about this like like this transitional moment of my life and you know talking about the anxieties and the fears of that and like oh my god have i got everything out my system and um you know i i don't know i so it's it's it's a lot about that i got everything out i just don't want to and i i's a lot about that have I got everything out of my system I just don't want to

and I'm not having a pop at him but like maybe I haven't and then but I don't know I was gonna say

I'll be like I'll be like you know a great dad until the kid's 18 and then I'll be in what my 50s

so I could just I'll go like if i haven't got it all out my system maybe that that's what happens the kid turns 18 and i'll go from like gary lineker to wayne lineker like that and i'll have this other period when i'm in my 50s and 60s and i'm going out and clubbing in Ibiza. People see you on stage and I always find this really interesting about comedians because I watch these comedians. I've watched you for many, many years of my life. Jimmy Carr, Russell Howard, etc.

And then when I meet these people, they surprise me. Obviously, because they're not, in Jimmy Carr's case, telling like filthy one-liners when they got here although when jimmy carr did arrive the team texted me and said jimmy carr's just walked in and cracked a joke about riding someone's mom downstairs so i thought oh god here we go but then when he came up here a completely different person very thoughtful person incredibly thoughtful

person um what do you think people would be if people really be, if people really knew you, if people really knew the Jack that Roxy, real life um and i think i'm relatively close to the the person that you see on television or the person that you watch on stage obviously that's like a heightened version of myself and i think the reality is the thing that people will find most surprising is that sometimes i'm quite a quiet person. I'm quite introspective. I can be a little bit shy in some social situations. I think people would be surprised at that. But then I'm also so conscious, I was like, oh, I don't want that to ever come across as me being rude or aloof.

And yeah, I get a little bit of kind of social anxiety as well. I think I definitely drink as like a crutch because I find it so much easier in certain situations that are overwhelming to have a drink. And I find I maybe lean on that a little bit too much. Um, so I think all of those aspects aren't necessarily things that you would look at me and think oh he's gonna have all of that going on but i'm also i'm aware of it so i always feel like i don't want to be a disappointment in real life as well to people especially you know fans or whatever if i meet people and they have an expectation of me i always feel the need to kind of you know not not let them down i think

that's why i've always said it's like so much easier if you're jack d or even my dad it's like his persona is sort of grumpy deadpan that's very easy to maintain in real life mine is this is like over enthusiastic yeah clown and i'm like oh that is that's quite a lot to to maintain all of the time and especially if you're having a bad day or you're tired or you know you to have that spark um in your day-to-day life can be quite tiring when you when you look back on what got you to where you are now you're at the top table in your game when you look back at the components that got you here what are those components if your son or daughter was asking you for those components um i would say important elements that i have i i do think i always say this to comed, I do think you have to build a resilience

and, you know, the ability to kind of learn from your mistakes and your missteps and take on board criticism and use it to get better. That's definitely an important aspect. I think recognising people uh that's definitely an important aspect i think recognizing people that could be good collaborators could be uh helpful i've been very lucky that i've had a lot of really really great people around me

um that guy mentioned ben cavey i've worked with him for nearly 15 years my writing partner freddy i've had some really good agents uh my dad who's been amazing and has always kind of helped advise me and and and finding those those kind of people that you can sort of work with and put around you and people as well that will challenge you and people that will call you out if needs be. I think if you surround yourself with the wrong people, that's a very surefire way of heading off in the wrong direction. And I feel very lucky that I've got good people around me and have always been able to find good people to put around me and build good relationships with people that are important.

Ultimately, that's having a good judge of character as well. I think that's a really important, um, aspect. Um, your work ethic is clearly one of them. Yeah.

I think work ethic is good to have for sure. Um, although I feel, yeah, now maybe we can just tone it down a little bit work ethic is good for the kind of takeoff but then maybe there's there's a different speed that you can cruise find once you're able and yeah cruising yeah what else though because we haven't really talked about the creative brilliance in terms of what you're doing is ultimately art at the end of the day. And there's got to be something that's separating your art form from others.

Is it in the process? Is it in just a natural thing? Is it a muscle you've built over time? When I think about the content you've crafted to go on tour with, why are you smirking? I can't call it art i can't and i know technically it is but it's always such a hard one with comedy because i'm like i'm thinking of some

of the routines and i'm just like steven i've got a punch line about wanking off a tramp behind a wheelie bin i mean that's not hot but But if we're in America right now, I'd be like, yeah. We're British. And I'm like, oh no. No, but there is, I insist. There is a, it's a talent and it's an art. And it's one that I can come near.

When I look at it, I look at it with such awe because not only are you, because it feels to me like there's such a clear success or failure with every line you deliver. Whereas in every other game, even this podcast, some things might be interesting, some things might not be. But there's no instant feedback on every line that I deliver. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So I think it's incredibly high stakes art.

And something that I could never, ever, I shouldn't say never, ever do. I could do it, but I wouldn't do it anywhere near 1% of what you could do it. So when you think about why you're so good at it, have you been able to diagnose that? People hate these questions because they have to say nice things about themselves. No, yeah, I mean, you're right.

You can't, you can't like coast it with standupup because it is it is it is pretty brutal that is for sure and uh you do get immediate feedback on every single joke that you put out into the world uh but i don't know why why i am any more successful at it than anyone else. I don't know. I mean, I don't know whether I'm like the, if I look at my faults, I'm going straight back to my faults, but I don't think I'm like the greatest writer.

I think I'm a good writer and I can come up with like good jokes and good routines. I think I'm a better, I'm better at um performing it i i don't know i think that's something that i've learned like i can really sell a joke uh which is maybe sometimes to my detriment because you know i could could write better routines if it weren't and but i don't need to i don't know that makes it sound like i'm lazy because i'm but i but i don't i i'm really like working the material as much as i can to try and make it as good as it possibly can be um i can i've got good really good delivery

basically i think i'm very good at delivering uh jokes do you doubt yourself? yes I read a quote I think that answer made that a bunch of people some of my material can occasionally be a bit ropey but I can bloody well sell it I read a quote Sky News I am still sort of dogged by

a slight sense of imposter syndrome and the feeling that at any point someone's going to come and tap me on the shoulder and tell me that I need to get on a plane and go home. Yes, that's it. Back to telling inappropriate jokes in a pub to 30 people. Yeah. Constantly.

I feel like that, especially with the acting, because again, with acting it like even more so because again i didn't go to drama school i don't know what i'm doing and i've been afforded the amazing opportunity of being able to be in some great shows and some big movies now and again like i've tasted that in the same way that when i had that experience of stand-up i was like oh my god this is amazing and i love this and uh now it's gonna be really hard if i can't do that anymore and but how do you be happy then if there's that constant i don't know i wish again why could could someone tell me no that's not how it works it's like the voice thing again i'm like please could you just say

what's the answer um but that but i always find i do this as well by the way in any kind of like um deep dive interview and you're a wonderful interviewer because you know you are able to get your uh interviewees to open up more than they normally would and i feel like i have done that today but whenever i do that i then and it normally happens in print and it's why i stopped doing print interviews i don't really do any print interviews because i'd read them back and i was like oh my god i sound so depressing it's just like self-flagellation for three pages and i just feel like i read it back and I'm like, is that a reflection of who I am as a person?

Because I don't think I'm as depressing as I sometimes come across when I'm talking about myself. I think, I don't know, I don't know why. But when I, you know, I don't know why that is the case yeah in print interviews i mean the reason i try and avoid print interviews as much as i can as well is because you get a really narrow perspective and it's and what i love about podcasting you're a podcaster as well as you get it all yes so you can see all of the yeah all of the color and the whole picture so you can see and that's what i love about this especially the way we do it here because we do it we these podcasts last a long time as you can tell yeah um and

there's really no editing at all so it is what it is exactly and i think actually if you heard our interaction written down verbatim in print you would probably read it back and go jack's quite a sad man yeah but then if you watched and listened to us then maybe you would ascertain that it's not all doom and gloom I'm just I get a little bit morose when I'm being introspective I think it's really important that particularly the point that even someone in your position has those insecurities about losing their position the self-doubt all of those things that everyone has every day and in all of their jobs and really like the reason why i start this podcast actually i've come to like learn why we do this podcast

it goes back to the word you said at the very start which was about connection yeah you said at the start when you're most authentic when you're most open people feel connected yeah what you also do for them in those moments is you liberate them from thinking that they're inadequate and broken yeah so by you saying it you've just liberated a ton of people from thinking that those thoughts that they've been having make them actually an imposter that's why we call it a syndrome because it's actually just a perception we have which is usually like flawed in some way as it relates to acting though you are you got a movie coming up robots yeah yeah that's coming out this summer um which uh was a movie yeah we shot that a couple of couple of years ago actually been waiting a while for it to go through the editorial process which is another

element that i find so frustrating with films is that you film it and then it takes years for it to come out and uh you've forgotten you've even done it but i i yeah that that was a again like a great experience really fantastic people to work with writer director that i really got on with and shailene who's a fantastic actress who's having you know a blast working with her and that's again like that's that's one of those things where i'm like that that was a moment i was really happy i really enjoyed the whole process was working with very good people very nice people it was very happy set very creative environment and uh yeah like that was one of those moments where i was like i'm i'm very professionally content your father do you um do you think he's proud of you now clearly from the origin of your story

that he was a big sort of figure in your life that you tried to impress and please yeah definitely i think you know he is proud of me and he's expressed that and and continues to express it my um and my mom as well like they're so sweet um i'm so happy that they've you know had this kind of second wind in their lives as well maybe with my dad's it's a third or fourth wind i don't know but yeah they still come to my shows and you know call me afterwards and say nice things and watch me on tv and if it's something good they'll text me and you know that means a lot still um you still try to impress him yeah i think so i think so because when i do something that he doesn't think is good enough which you know does happen from time to time he will let me know he's very honest and he's one of the few

people that will like really cut through everything and just like be very honest with me um i mean the other thing that we haven't sort of touched upon, and again, is something that's very present in my mind with all of this in terms of having a baby, in terms of, you know, trying to achieve as much as I can in my career is that I want to do all of it with him around. And obviously, I know that that's why i said i wasn't gonna do this on this and i mean i'm where i'm now getting emotional i um i wanted to have a baby because i wanted him to be around and to know my child and to spend time with my kid uh i've seen how amazing he is with my niece he's the most loving person ever and so i want him to have a relationship with my kid and then yeah i want to do all of these things and um you know have success in my career that i can share with him and he can see these things and and enjoy them and if the you know yeah i i i love having him there for all of that and uh so yeah i do still think a lot about impressing him and uh

his approval still means a hell of a lot to me it's such a beautiful thing you know it's such a beautiful thing yeah i admire that closeness you have with your father so much and even when i see you like doing you know gigs and stuff together and doing like you know you did did the Netflix thing with him. It's such a special thing. I feel I'm so lucky as well that I've had the opportunity to do it. And, you know, it's never lost on me. The amazing thing about doing that show as well is having people that come up to me and they say, you know, like I watched it with my dad.

And, you know, I have, you know, a really good relationship with my dad and you know i have you know a really good relationship with my dad and we watch your show and then we went away and we did a trip together and it was one of the i'm so happy that we did it and uh you know or and or the flip side of that is yeah i have people that you know maybe lost a parent and uh have watched the show and and really connected to it because it's reminded them of the relationship that they had with their father when they were around. And I think, you know, I know how lucky I am to have had that experience with him

and continue to have experiences with him and to work with him. And it never feels like work when I'm doing experiences with him and to work with him and and it never feels like work when i'm doing stuff with him it honestly you know it's i mean partly because of the the shooting hours that he insists upon and the hour-long break for lunch uh with a wine present wherever we are whatever you know the situation is you know but just hanging out with him it just feels like that's it's it can never feel like work because it's it's it's my dad and and yeah i i cherish like hanging out with him so much there's so much banter when you guys are together on the screen

but i i wondered you know from hearing what you've said about him today like does he does he truly know what he means to you and the impact he's had on your life i think so but i think mainly from hearing me talk about it when he's not there because i don't think i necessarily would ever articulate these feelings to him just because that's not like the nature of our relationship the reality is a lot of the time when we're talking we're talking about you know we talk about work stuff quite a bit we talk about football we'll talk about current affairs things like that but we don't really talk about our emotions and never really have um but i think he knows it and i think i think he's yeah i think he's very very

very aware of it um and i'm glad that he is as well i'm glad that he knows how much he means to me because um i don't think i would necessarily be able to say it to him if he were sat in front of me a lot of people can relate to that yeah for some reason it's bizarre isn't it yeah i don't know i i yeah i and i i look at him and i'm like oh what will i from will take from him when i become a dad and you know i think he's uh he's surprisingly he is more affectionate though than people think like because that's obviously not an aspect of him that you ever see on any of the netflix shows

or on his podcast or or whatever but like i don't know just yeah what watching how he is with my niece and and knowing what he was like when we were like very little, it's like, I, yeah, I want to be like that. And he, he took a decision in his life as well. You know, he had a very successful career and was a producer and an agent. And then he really did, he, he did wind it all down and stop when we were kids and spent, I mean, i know again we went to boarding school so we were away for for for a period of of our youth but he did you know spend a lot of time with us and he was very like present in our lives and and wasn't as consumed with work uh and and i think that was a good a good decision of his and so I think that's why I'm aware that it's even more important like to make sure that I address that work-life balance thing when my child comes along because I do want to have enough time to like you know be an attentive and present

parent I think about this a lot with with my dad i've talked about it quite often on this show that the last thing i want to have is is is almost like regrets of words unspoken when my dad's my dad's 70 odd years old now and um we've not had the closest relationship over the years and i've also struggled like i've i took him to the world cup and stuff but we never really talk yeah yeah you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah and i find it took him to the world cup and stuff but we never really talk yeah yeah you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah and i find it much easier to say things to him maybe on on this podcast or on text maybe yeah but to say it's such a strange thing that with my partner i can be open and expressive but with my dad it's like yeah you know and i worry if i'm being honest about the regrets of the words

unsaid yeah so there'll be times where it won't be father's day or other days and maybe his birthday where i'll just try and express it yeah you have do you write it down do you write it down but it's it's hard isn't it it's where if someone doesn't receive it how you want it to be received as well it can it can make it very difficult yeah and there are you know especially like men of that generation it's just very because it must have been so different with his father and so and yeah it's just it's just not a way of communication that we're as used to. So I do think that's why sometimes it can be a real struggle to say some of those things

because if you said them to anyone else, then you know that they would garner an illicit, a kind of emotional response that you would be... What would be welcoming. Yeah, welcoming. Yeah, and it's hard when it's not like that. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for and i have such a bad issue reading handwriting okay what do you place

oh what do you pledge to do this year to live life fully while you still make a difference that's so hard what have I pledged to do I'm going to be more present and attentive with the people that I love and I cherish and hold close to me they're going to clip Roxy's going to clip that.

She's going to play every time. I'm going to change some nappies as well. I've pledged to that. I will change a nappy. Okay. It's already gone down to just being a singular nappy, but I will do a nappy. That will happen.

Well, Jack, thank you. Thank you so much for your time today. I'm incredibly excited for your tour. I'm actually coming with my team. sounds a little bit amazing dodgy but i'm i will be attending your tour with my team um i believe we're going to the london show and i'm very very excited because i've been a big fan of yours for a very very very long time um and your particular style of um comedy and performance i think is what makes you exceptional at what you do, but also a very necessary voice in comedy, because you, I just think where we are in the world with public

discourse and polarization, if there was ever a time for comedy, it is now. And so it's so lovely that with everything going on with the macro economic backdrop and all these things, we have great comedians out there, adding a little bit of joy to people's lives. And that's really what you do through your work from my observation. If anybody wants to come to the Settle Down tour, tickets are on sale now on the internet, wherever you get them.

He's doing fucking shit tons of dates. So I hope to see some of you at the London show in particular, because I'll be there. But yeah, thank you, Jack. It's been amazing. Thank you very much. It was lovely to chat. Yeah yeah thanks so much for having me on Bye.