The Tim Ferriss Show - #428: Jim Jefferies on Comedy, Life Lessons, and the Magic of Filling Out Customs Forms

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

#428: Jim Jefferies on Comedy, Life Lessons, and the Magic of Filling Out Customs Forms | Brought to you by Laird Superfood and “5-Bullet Friday." More on both below.“The rise is always better than the peak.” — Jim JefferiesSydney native Jim Jefferies (@jimjefferies) is one of the most popular and respected comedians of his generation, entertaining audiences across the globe with his provocative, belief-challenging, and thought-provoking comedy. He created and starred in the sitcom Legit and the Comedy Central late-night show The Jim Jefferies Show. Jim was honored as Stand-Up Comedian of the Year at the Just for Laughs Festival in summer 2019. At the end of 2019, he embarked on his new tour Oblivious, performing all around Europe and North America. He is currently working with NBC on a multi-camera pilot that he will star in from writer-producer Suzanne Martin, Sean Hayes and Todd Milliner’s Hazy Mills Productions, and Universal TV.Jim’s new podcast I Don’t Know About That will debut on Tuesday, May 5th, and his ninth stand-up special will be released later this year on Netflix.Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Laird Superfood. Founded by big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton and volleyball champion Gabby Reece, Laird Superfood promises to deliver high-impact fuel to help you get through your busiest days. Laird Superfood offers a line of plant-based products designed to optimize your daily rituals, from sunrise to sunset.My favorite two products are their Turmeric Superfood Creamer and Unsweetened Superfood Creamer. I put one of them in practically everything. Both can really optimize your daily coffee or tea ritual, and a $10 bag will last you a long time. For a limited time, Laird Superfood is offering you guys 20% off your order when you use code TIM at checkout. Check out lairdsuperfood.com/tim to see my favorite products and learn more.This episode is also brought to you by “5-Bullet Friday,” my very own email newsletter, which every Friday features five bullet points of cool things I’ve found that week, including apps, books, documentaries, gadgets, albums, articles, TV shows, new hacks or tricks, and—of course—all sorts of weird stuff I’ve dug up from around the world. It’s free, it’s always going to be free, and you can subscribe now at tim.blog/friday.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests.For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

optimal minimal at this altitude i can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking can i ask you a personal question now would have seen a perfect time i'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton this episode is brought to you by layeredaird Superfood. I love this company. I love their products. I just got a huge box delivered yesterday for a re-up because I always keep it in stock. And many of you have asked me about intermittent fasting, so I'll touch on that in a second. Founded by big wave surfer Laird Hamilton, I mean, really one of the kings of big wave surfing and volleyball champion Gabby Reese, Laird Superfood promises to deliver high impact

fuel to help you get through your busiest days. And I can speak from experience having worked out with both Laird and Gabby. These are people you want to emulate. They're just incredible physical specimens and their combination of performance and longevity is unlike perhaps anything I've ever seen elsewhere. Laird's Superfood offers a line of plant-based products designed to optimize your daily rituals from sunrise to sunset. My favorite two products that I put in just about everything are their Turmeric Superfood Creamer and the Unsweetened Superfood Creamer. And a $10 bag of either of these will last you a really long time. So the bang for the buck is incredible. Both can really optimize your daily coffee or tea ritual. I really put them in any warm beverage that I make for myself.

And that's where the intermittent fasting comes in. So I'm going to skip meals. I really like to use some of either the Unsweetened or the turmeric superfood creamer. They are packed with, among other things, a full range of MCTs, that's medium-chain triglycerides, to help keep you and your brain going from a.m. to p.m., so that's part one. They're also packed with real ingredients like organic extra virgin coconut oil, coconut milk, and aquaman. And they come in all sorts of flavors, including cacao. And as I mentioned, turmeric, you just have to stir them. You don't really need any instrument for that. You can just do it with a spoon. You could power froth if you have a little frother or blend otherwise into your cup of coffee, for instance, for a nourishing and

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you guys, my listeners, 20% off of your order when you use code TIM at checkout. Check out lairdsuperfood.com, that's L-A-I-R-D, lairdsuperfood.com slash Tim to see my favorite products and learn more. Again, that's lairdsuperfood.com slash Tim and use code Tim for 20% off of your order. One more time. Take a look. I use this stuff all the time and I recommend trying it out. lairdsuperfood.com slash Tim promo code Tim. This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers. And it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week,

which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time, because after all, the podcast, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free. It's always going to be free. And you can learn more at Tim.blog forward slash Friday. That's Tim.blog forward slash Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with. And little known

fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out.

If the spirit moves you. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support

for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world

with millions of subscribers. And it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time, because after all, the podcast, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite

things I do every week. It's free, it's always going to be free. And you can learn more at Tim.blog forward slash Friday. That's Tim.blog forward slash Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with. And little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers.

So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show where it's my job to interview people who are the best at what they do, or certainly world class performers. And my guest today is Sydney native. We're going to talk about Sydney, Jim Jeffries. Jim is one of the most popular and respected comedians of his generation, entertaining audiences, including yours truly, around the globe with his provocative, belief-challenging, and thought-provoking comedy.

I would underscore the thought-provoking. He created and starred in the sitcom Legit and the Comedy Central late-night show, The Jim Jeffries Show. Jim was honored as Stand-Up Comedian of the Year at the Just for Laughs Festival in summer 2019. At the end of 2019, he embarked on his new tour, Oblivious, touring all around Europe and North America. He is currently working with NBC on a multi-camera pilot, which he will star in from writer-producer Suzanne Martin, Sean Hayes, and Todd Milliner's Hazy Mills and Universal TV. His new podcast, I Don't Know About That, debuts on Tuesday, May 5th. You should check it out. And his ninth, Count Them Nine, that's incredible, stand-up special, will be released later this year on Netflix.

You can find him on all the socials, at Jim Jeffries. That's J-E-F-F-E-R-I-E-S. And jimjeffries.com. Jim, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Tim. Tim Farris, that's a very good Australian name. I'm sure you get that a lot, right? I do. I do, actually.

You know, like the guitarist from In Excess. You obviously know that, right? That's exactly right. Yeah. I have a Tim Farris story. Let's hear it. I was performing at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney and Tim Farris came backstage at my gig and I was like a kid from Australia, very excited to meet the guitarist from In Excess and I think he wrote most of the songs as well, you know. And when I saw him,

he just had like his finger had fallen off. Like it'd been like, I think it was a boating accident or something. His finger had been ripped off. And I was like, wow. So he goes, yeah, that's the end of In Excess. I can't really play guitar anymore because I can't, you know, play the chords because I don't have this finger anymore. And I went, that's a shame. And so, you know, I said to him, I said,

so it turns out your finger was more vital than Michael Hutchins because, you know, In Excess I I had three new singers and they kept going. But you lose Tim Ferriss' finger and they can't play anymore. Well, that is the first separate Tim Ferriss anecdote that has ever happened in 400 plus episodes. So I'm thrilled. You know, I've had that name pop up before, the comparison, but I've never heard an actual story. So that's. He's a very nice man.

It was the Farris brothers. They all went to the, there was my school, and then there was the school next to us, and we had a rivalry with them. And our school was like, ah, we beat you in rugby. And they're like, we had in excess. And we were like, ah, you win. Yeah, that's a, like the most famous person to

come from my school i think is me you know what i mean like we haven't got a great track record so hello to all the people at sunives high in sydney that's where i went but uh yeah we had me i think a couple of people who got like bronze in the olympics and some relief picture for the angels back in the 90s well let's let's talk about about Sydney. I have actually spent a fair amount of time there. I rented an apartment with a friend in Woolloomooloo. Wow, that's a bit of money. That's where the prime minister lives. Well, you know, it was his idea.

Although I will tell you the drawback, and you can probably tell me what these birds are. You have the most beautiful white birds that make the most god-awful sounds imaginable. Oh, Australian women. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're talking about. Good looking, but the accent's fucking horrendous. Yeah, yeah. No, I've met them in me day. Oh, yeah, I'm enjoying that. Keep doing it. Oh, yeah, that feels good. Yeah, no, no. The worst accent for sex in the world is the Australian female.

But what bird are you talking about? There's some protected bird. I want to say maybe it's a macaw. It's this white bird. It has this plume on its head and it sounds like- Oh, it's a galah. Oh, no, a cockatoo. Cockatoo. Cockatoo, yes.

Yeah, a cockatoo. Okay, I'll tell you this. My father has- Okay, my father's like- He's like this guy that- He at one with animals for whatever reason. And he has this like a veranda. He opens up the doors and each day these two rainbow lorikeets come and visit my father and they fly in the window and they just sit on his shoulders. Now, cockatoos look very exotic here in America, but they're everywhere in Australia.

They're not endangered at all. They're all, my dad thinks they're a pest, right? And he goes, there's a cockatoo that bothers those two rainbow lorikeets. So my father keeps a slingshot and some rocks by the side of his chair and he shoots the cockatoos and they come over. And my friend, my American friend who co-hosts my podcast with me, Forrest was there and he goes, does it kill him? He goes, oh, no, it just gives him a bit of a scare. You know, if it hit one of them in the eye. Why were you in Sydney for so long? Were you just backpacking?

I was there because one of my best friends was actually a Kiwi, was living in Sydney at the time, and he invited me to head over. And separately, the Australian edition of my first book was launching in sydney and they wanted me to show up for a handful of media gigs and this that and the other thing and so i combined everything together and stayed for two two and a half weeks it probably only took me two two and a half minutes to get my pale scalp annihilated by your ozone-free sun. It's intense. People don't know that.

There's two holes in the ozone layer, and one's over, I think, the North Pole, I think, or it might be the South, and the other hole's over Australia. And Australia, when you watch like, okay, so when you watch the weather here in America, it'll go, and the temperature's going to be this, the humidity's going to be this, and there's some winds coming in from over here. But you never get the daily UV rating. Where in Australia, they go, and it's 100% UV today. And it's like 100% is like normal thing. So it's like, you don't even really think about skin cancer that much in America. Like, you know

it happens and you have to be wary of it. And if you have a mole, you get it checked and all that type of stuff. But skin cancer, if it's not number one, it's very close to the number one cancer in Australia. And so we had a slogan when I was a kid called slip, slop, slap. And it was slip on a shirt, slap on sunscreen and slap on a hat. And that's what you have to do if you want to go outdoors. And now the kids today in Australia, if you're at school, they have a policy called no hat, no play. You can't go out of the classroom if you're not wearing a hat and the hat will have like one of those things down the back. So it covers your neck as well. It's a good look. Well, if you go to Bondi, maybe not Bondi, I'm not sure where the best surfing beaches are, but if you go to some of these beaches, I was astonished because I saw all the surfers look like they were getting ready for an Antarctic expedition.

I mean, they had the ear flaps, the neck flaps. They had enough zinc on their face to make them look like snowmen. We always had like fluorescent zinc on our noses as kids in the 80s and now they still just put the white stuff but that was how you sort of showed how uh your personality whether you had pink or green or fluoro yellow or whatever like that but it's i like to look at like bondi beach and just watch the british people who have never seen sun just like and you know they've been there for a week going go on there lay out enjoy yourself they're all just getting burnt the fuck yeah that's what i love watching the british get burnt in australia well i suppose bondi if i remember correctly because my my friend used to be a lifeguard actually and he was saying you could just sit at a cafe and you could watch

i suppose on one hand the brits just get turned into rotisserie chicken. And then you could see tourists from, he said in particular from China, just get swept out to sea because they weren't prepared for the currents. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mind you, when I was a kid, that happened to me a few times. When you swim out a bit far and then you start drifting off and you're like, ah, fuck, I'm going to die. I did that thing where I waved and then like someone has to come out in a little boat and come and get you. And you're like, sorry about

that. I swam a bit far, you know. So, to this day, I don't go far out in the ocean, you know. When did you feel confident in comedy as your direction? Actually, before we get to that, let's bookmark that question. I just want to say something before i forget and not to get all sentimental this early on our first date but i owe you a debt of gratitude because your comedy has helped me get through some really dark periods and that might sound funny because your comedy itself can be dark at points but putting that aside uh i've really enjoyed your comedy over the years And it's been not just entertaining But really helpful to me at points So thank you for that

Oh, no problem That's a very sweet thing of you to say And so to comedy and direction When did you feel confident that that was your... I wanted to be a comedian from the age of about 13, 14, you know, and then I did it two times, three times when I was 17 and one time I did it and it went really well and it was the Comedy Store in Sydney and you have to go down there and they put your name in a hat and they pull your name out

and I had five minutes and it was just all about being in school or whatever. I can't even remember what I talked about. And then they said, oh, you're not 18, are you? And I was like, no. And they go, you have to come back with a parent. And so I hadn't told my parents and my parents as well. I hadn't even told them that I went into the city. Like I wasn't allowed to go into the city. You know, I lived out in the suburbs and I told them I went to a mate's house or something. So I traveled into the city. And so next on me, dad had to come with me. And I remember it was like bucketing down with rain. And I went out there and I got back on and the only other people in

the audience, because it was raining, were the other comedians waiting to go on. And there was the full range of people who were getting good at it, people who were never going to get good at it and people who were there first going. People had been trying for years. Anyway, I couldn't have had a worse gig. I couldn't have died worse than that. And I got in the car with my dad afterwards and my dad said, he goes, oh, you're a good kid and you've got a lot of good qualities

but this isn't for you. And my heart sank. And then I went and did it one more time just to see, because that first time went so well. And then I did it again and I died again. And I went, all right, this isn't for me. And then I didn't go up again until I was 20. I didn't do it.

Yeah, I waited another three years. I used to think it was more than that, but I was in college and I used to run my own comedy night. And I remember there was a, there was a, I was in Perth when I started doing that. So a lot of people think I'm from Perth because of this, because I really started doing comedy in Perth. But, um, I, I, I, I, the way that a lot of people get stage time is what you do is you find a venue, put your own shows on, you book your own comedians and that way you can MC and you can get better by, you know, because I couldn't get gigs so I thought I'd run my own gig. And there was this area in Perth called Claremont

and Claremont had a serial killer at the time. The Claremont. Had the Claremont killer, right? So what happened? I don't think they ever caught him. I don't know. Maybe they did catch him. I don't know.

But when I was there, the guy called the Claremont killer. And what happened was with the Claremont killer, all the bars that were normally, this was a big party area of Perth, they were all, no one was going out because all the girls who got killed, the last thing that happened for them, they left the nightclub and got into a taxi or went looking for a taxi. And then they were never seen again. So that nightlife there just died. So there was all these like bars that were just empty. And so I went into one like, oh, can I have a gig? And they were just

happy to have anyone in the building. And I used to get like 15 people, me mates, to come along to these shows. And it was like a really popular bar. But on a Friday night, I could have a gig there because of The Killer. So, you know, silver lining to what happened there. And when you, if we go back to 17, you tried it three times. Maybe this isn't for me. What in your head was plan B or the alternative? Well, there's a weird thing that sort of, I think there's a, you know,

for people who really know about me, and it's not many people, but there's a bit of a myth about me being an opera singer, which is vaguely true, right? What happened was when I was 17, I was in a school musical and then I was doing all right and then someone said, oh, you should get some singing lessons and blah, blah, blah. And so I got some singing lessons with this guy called Richard Gill who has since passed and he was one of the main conductors

for the Sydney Opera and he got me a part in the chorus of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman and I had to sing in German. I was like 17 and I just sang. I just bought a CD of this opera and I just mimicked it, you know, and I wasn't that great a singer but after that I got into WAPA which is the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts and I studied musical theatre and then I studied opera in the next year and so I was a professional opera singer for a few weeks of my life but it was never a full-blown thing but I did this course it was the same course that Hugh Jackman did and it was like it never a full-blown thing, but I did this course. It was the same course that Hugh Jackman did, and it was a full scholarship ride.

And I remember because I didn't have the marks in school to get into anything academic in university, and I don't believe I had the marks to actually get into this course, but they never checked for my high school certificate. And I just went in and did a dance and singing audition and stuff, and I always still wanted to be a comic, but because I thought the comedy wouldn't work out, I still wanted to be an entertainer and a performer.

So I thought, oh, this is another thing I can do. And it was also, I think for my mother at that stage, that was something that she was far happier to brag about, that I was studying music in a prestigious college or something like that. But on maybe my second year into the course, there was a comedian called Gary Hu, who was like this guy who'd been on Australian TV. I'm still, I still know Gary to this day. He's a very nice man.

And he'd come over to do a gig in Perth and I was his opening act. And we had a few drinks afterwards. We got along. I think he liked me more as a person than he liked me as a comic, but he said, do you want to come and do these mining town gigs? And I thought, oh, that's too good an opportunity. So I quit university and I went out to places like Kalgoorlie and these little gold mining towns and I performed in these bars

just to like Australian cowboys pretty much, like guys in cowboy hats that live out in the land and they work in the mines and all that type of stuff. These towns had so many men working out there and so few women that in the bars in these towns, the bartender would be a female and they'd ship them in and they'd call them skimpies and a skimpy and she would just be topless. Now, this wasn't a strip bar. This was just a normal bar. All the

bars have topless bartenders in all these little country towns. And the reason for that is if you take away the topless girl behind the bar, it's a gay bar. It's just men. So they had to go, no, no, no, we're not gay because they all dress like cowboys, just all this thing. No, we're not gay. There's a pair of tits over there, so we're all right, you know. And so I did these gigs and I thought and I hadn't told my parents that I'd quit university.

I thought, I'll just keep doing this until I can be a full-time comic. And then I think it's basically the storyline of the movie Punchline that Tom Hanks character who said, he said, oh no, I'm going to be a doctor. I'm going to be a doctor. And then he said, he'd tell his parents once he's a professional comic. But then I just quit uni. I went back to Sydney to my parents and said, oh, I'm going to give stand-up comedy a go. And then I think I moved to England. I moved to England then. I know the day I moved to England because I was packing my suitcase at about 10 o'clock at night and I was all excited. It was going to be my first time traveling overseas. I'd never been – I know I tell a lie.

I'd been to America once when I was 14, but it was my first time traveling overseas by myself without family members, yeah? And I was going on my big adventure by myself. I was getting on a plane, and I was packing my bags, and the Twin Towers fell down. And that's how I can remember the date that I left for Britain, the next day, yeah. Now, you leaving to Britain,

I had read, trying to do homework for this conversation, that you'd commented somewhere that there were lots of funny comics in Australia, some people funnier than you, but you had more ambition than some of them and you ended up going to the UK. You ended up then going to the US. Is that a misquote? I mean, you can't believe everything you read on the internet. I think that's true, but maybe more ambition is the wrong way to say it. I think I was in a place in my life where I was young enough and had less connections

that I could get up and do that. I didn't have a girlfriend. I didn't have kids. And I started pretty early in life at comedy. And a lot of people don't start till they're 30 or they're late 20s or whatever like that. And then they have roots, you know, and I didn't have anything holding me back. So there were comics in Australia who were better than me. And, um, but I feel like maybe they couldn't get up and go, but also, also when I say ambition, it's, it, there's a difficult thing with Australian comedy because doing live work in Australia is very difficult because you don't have the population to sell tickets. People watch comedy in Australia, but they only go out and see the big acts when they come to town. So the comedy

clubs for the most part are empty. And Melbourne has one comedy club. Sydney, I think has two. Perth has one. This isn't enough to sustain an industry, a ground roots industry anyway. And so everybody's sort of like, when you've made in Australia, you're the breakfast radio guy if you can get that job and that job in Australia pays really, really well and so everyone's trying to get those jobs. So I think a lot of people who were good comics maybe had because no one was really full-time, maybe had a good day job. I didn't have a good day job.

I was selling mobile phones during the day when I was a comic in Australia. So I fucking wasn't worried about leaving that at all. That was, I was one of the worst employees a company had ever had. And I worked for a place called Stratford Car Radios. And I was just, if there was a way to get out of working, I had found it. There was stairwells that I hid under and I did things that seemed like to get out of work that were more work than actually doing work.

I had to sell car stereos and mobile phones and it was, you know, I still to this day, if I was to sell a car stereo, I wouldn't know, I don't know how much amplifiers you need to run a subwoofer. And I sold them for years. And I have no idea. When I was at college, I worked for this guy. And I used to just point at things and guess and go,

look at the size of it and go, that'd do it. You know, one time I totaled a guy's white van, like just totaled it just in a stereo fitting, which is very, what happened was this guy, this white van driver, a guy that, you know, works, a plumber or whatever the fuck he was, you know, and he came in and he goes oh I want some speakers and a cd player and I was like all right and I knew which were good cd players which I got him like a sony cd player and I said oh this has enough amps in it that you can run some six by nine speakers and I go you just put them in the back here that's a good size speaker a six by nine and that'll be good and then and then goes, I can only get it today.

And all the fitters were full. And so I said, uh, I went down, there was a, there was a 16 year old apprentice working down there. And I said, mate, this is an easy job. Just, just put the stereo in there. And then I don't know how to fucking do it. I said, and you run the wires along this door panel down here and then just whack those speakers in the side there, just into the side wall, and that'll work, right? Now, you're meant to take the panels off, cut the holes in, put the speakers in, put the panels back on. But this young fella just got the saw out and he just started cutting

and it got a bit stiff. Anyway, he cut out one of the support beams that support the roof of the car and the roof of the car just slanted down, you know, about 45 degrees, just sunk into the thing. And this guy came back to get his car and I just went, I go, well, the good news is the stereo sounds great. And then just having to, I was never felt more terrified in my life than having to walk this bloke down just to show him

that we demolished his car in about an hour and a half. What happened? Well, we, the company had insurance for such occasions. I'm sure, I'm sure we just bought him a new van. There was no way to fix it. You can't put a new support. It's not a panel beating job. We basically cut the roof off his car, you know? So I assume he got a new van out of it. So he probably did pretty good, you know? There was a couple of things like that. I saw a bloke get knocked out changing over. I saw a guy, they're the new BMWs and the European cars had different coloured wires and stuff like that

and he was trying to test the fucking, the land and the positive and the negative and the earth and all that type of stuff and he's got his test out and he's laying in the front seat of the car and he touched the wrong wire and it was the wire for the airbag and the airbag exploded into his head and he was knocked out. And there was just fucking white dust in a bag. Anyway, look, I'm not saying anything that's too bad. That company's gone bust now.

They don't exist anymore. So they can't get angry at me for saying anything. Probably because of fucking me. How did you make the decision to go to the UK? Why the UK as opposed to somewhere else? Is that a usual kind of lily pad for a lot of promising talent from Australia? Well, the UK has more comedy clubs per capita than anywhere in the world, far beating America.

And also, it's just a great place to do comedy because it's so compact. And I remember before I moved here to America, I used to bitch and moan about, oh, I've got to drive to Manchester, 200-mile drive, you know what I mean? And I used to be like, oh, better get a hotel room and stay the night and all that type of stuff. In America, I'm on planes and flying and driving. You know, there's an old saying that Americans think 100 years is old

and British people think 100 miles is far, right? And I think that sort of sums it up, right? But also, if you're under 27 and you're from the Commonwealth, and the people from Canada can do this as well, you can get, and I think it's one year now, but back then you can get a two-year work visa where you're allowed to go out and work. Now you're only meant to do menial jobs. You're meant to be bartenders and whatever. You're not allowed to further your career, you know? So if you walk into any bar in London, it's filled with Australian and New Zealand bartenders,

you know? And so I had to do comedy on the sly, cash in hand until one of the management companies would give me a work permit. But I never became a British citizen or anything. And so I had to do comedy on the sly, cash in hand until one of the management companies would give me a work permit. But I never became a British citizen or anything. I stayed there for 10 years and my visas would only ever last until my gigs ran out. No one booked you more than three months in advance. So every three months, I went into a panic like, all right, I guess it's all over now. This is the end of the career.

You're going back to Australia. And then I got another one and then I got another one and I just kept on staying. I had a girlfriend there for a bit that I thought I'd marry and thank fuck that didn't work out. You know, I look back on it now. She was a nice enough girl but that never happened. And, you know, I just kept going.

And so what would happen is there was very few American comics in Britain. I feel like it's different now. I feel like the world of comedy is a lot more close it was it was much more segregated where everyone was you know but all the canadians and australians and uh new zealanders all hung out together and we all lived in these houses with like eight comics and it was good it was probably i would argue the happiest time in my life i think that would be the happy and i was broke as fuck but you know the the the rise is always better than the peak man well let's let's talk about that for a second so what was it about the rise that you think or just that situation that

contributed to feeling feeling happy during that period of time well it was it about the rise that you think or just that situation that contributed to feeling feeling happy during that period of time well it was it was the optimism and also also you were in it with a group of you know people who you all started out with and you were all supporting each other and it you know the the the british scene in my mind is less competitive than the American scene. And I attribute that to, in America, you play a comedy club and the comedy clubs decide who's getting paid what. And so there's a real, you're worth this much, you're worth this much, you're worth this much, right?

And so you'll have a headliner who might be being paid $10,000 for that show. And you'll have a support actor who's literally getting 40 bucks, and that's still going on, right? And so there is a little bit of like when you're the person earning the 10,000, like, oh, don't worry, guys, I'll get the drinks, you know what I mean? There's a bit of that. But you go down to, I don't know what it is now,

but you go down to the Comedy Store in London in the early 2000s, 200 pounds a gig for everybody. And you might do two shows there a night, 200 pounds would say like 300 American bucks or thereabouts. And that was a good income that you could live off. And each comic was getting the same price. So you didn't feel like, well, why are they getting this? And I'm not getting this. And if you got famous, you got out of the comedy clubs and you went and did theaters. You never were famous and in comedy clubs, you know? And so over, they never, the comedy clubs might just have your name written out the front, but they don't have

posters around the club going next week, David Spade, next week, Kevin Nealon or whatever, you know what I mean? They don't have that. So people just went to comedy because they wanted to go see comedy and the club might have a reputation for having the best acts or what have you. And another club might be, have a reputation for having worse acts or maybe they pay less or whatever, you know? But so, so the fact that no one was sort of getting paid more than anybody else and we're all sort of in the same boat. It didn't breed jealousy or competitiveness like it does over here. And also in America there seems to be, in Britain there's

so few TV opportunities. You know, you might go on a panel show or something like that, but comics getting offered sitcom deals isn't really a thing, you know, because there's not that many sitcoms. There's just not enough channels to do that, you know. And in America, it's like that guy got a development doing what? Where the fuck did this person get it, you know? So that I think breeds more jealousy and maybe less kindred spirits

than the British one. I think I still have more friends in comedy in the UK than I do in England, in America. But coming to say that when I moved to America, I was already sort of established and I was older and I sort of just keep to myself, to be honest. I like when I'm not doing comedy to just not think about comedy. And when I was younger, all I did was think about comedy

and what do I do? Jokes, jokes, jokes, jokes, jokes. And now I just sort of try not to watch anybody and try to keep to myself and try to be a good dad and all that type of stuff. And I think that just comes with age. When did you first feel in, say, the UK that you were successful? And that's relative, right? So it could have been a small win. It could have been a big win, but when did you feel, holy shit, like I think I'm on my way. This could be a thing. Well, there's several different stages to that. Now the first stage is I didn't have a day job anymore. So I stopped working in the bars and I, you know, I was

working in pubs and stuff when I first got there. I stopped working in bars and then comedy was my full-time job and that was maybe the best feeling I've had of anything ever, I think. That was the best one was when this is my job. When you got to the airport and you had to write down occupation in the form and I got to write stand-up comedian, that felt – I still fucking get a little buzz out of doing that, man. I write stand-up comedian. I still fucking get a little buzz out of doing that, man. I still stand-up comedian. And then the next sort of step, what happened was in Britain, in my opinion, if you weren't doing the Edinburgh Festival, you weren't really trying. And the

Edinburgh Festival, unlike Montreal or what have you, or some of the other ones around the world where you're invited to these festivals you're not invited to Edinburgh you just decide if you want to do it and then you go up there and do it and if people show up well that's good for you but it's a real it's a real litmus test on whether people like you or not because you went from being in the clubs to you you're getting reviewed by 15 or 20 publications. Now, some of these publications are just pissy little student rags that are around for the three weeks of the festival. And some of them are the Scotsman and the Telegraph and big, you know, independent and proper newspapers. And so you'd go up to Edinburgh. And so I did

one Edinburgh festival and in a 50 seaterater and I averaged 30 tickets a night and I thought that's pretty good. And then the next year I went up and I had 120-seater and I sold that out. And then afterwards, so then my management put me into little community centres around the UK to just do solo shows, you know, and little 200-seat community theatres in these small little villages, little towns and villages

in between the towns, you know. What happened was, so I was about to do my first tour and then, you know, 2006 and I got punched in the head and this is before things went viral or this is before really YouTube is what YouTube was. And then this thing was on everywhere, me getting punched in the head. Yeah, you mentioned Manchester earlier. It was a Manchester comedy store, right? It was a Manchester comedy store.

And so this little tour I was meant to be doing sold out, and, you know, I've always said that, you know, a lot of people go, oh, that was lucky. It was, but you still have to be able to back it up, you know, because a lot of opportunities happen to a lot of people. It's whether you're ready to pounce on it, you know. And so that was sort of a bigger moment, you know. And then going off, every time you got to a new festival, you know,

I remember feeling really big the first time someone paid for an aeroplane ticket for me. I thought, that's something. I'm travelling and I went and did some gigs in Asia and then I went to Montreal and I was like, and it was just sitting in an economy, but I remember thinking, fuck, you know, I'm seeing the world for free. And that seemed like a big deal to me because when I was growing up,

my parents saw the world and they, you know, for two years they travelled and I was always sort of envious of that and thought, I'll never be able to do that. I'll never, you know. And then when I got to do it and stay in nice hotels and all that type of stuff, that felt like a real, real achievement, you know. And then everything since then hasn't really felt like anything, to be honest.

Nothing, American success or anything's just sort of felt like, now I'm of the opinion that it'll all go away one day, it'll all end or it won't be what it is now. And you've got to be happy without it, you know? If you're not happy with it, you won't be happy without it. So that's why I'm saying the rise was better than the thing. Now it's like, oh, when's this going to end? And then when, when, when you, when you're younger, you're like, the sky's the limit. And now it's like, oh, I don't need to go up any higher. I've seen enough. I've seen enough of this guy. What keeps you going these days, right?

I would agree that the sort of chasing the summit is in a lot of ways more fun than getting up there and being like, Jesus Christ. Okay, now what? Well, now it's less about success and more about making good work, you know, doing like, like it's also, it's also things now it's like, so I'm doing a multicam sitcom now. And if you asked me even a year ago, if I'd ever do a multicam sitcom, I think no one would ever put me in a multicam sitcom.

And then when I got asked it, some of the, some of the fan base were calling me a sellout and all that type of stuff because I'm doing a multicam. And it's like, you know what, fuck you, man. It's like I watched Seinfeld. I watch Friends. I watch Cheers. I watch all these things.

I love those shows. There's a rumor about these shows that, oh, but they have a laugh track. They don't have a laugh track. It's a fucking studio audience. People are actually laughing. That's real laughter, you know, but it seemed to be a bit cheap or something. But, you know, I think now is challenging myself is what you want to do, you know? So I'm not a good actor. Sometimes I get better at it the more I do it, you know what

I mean? I'd like to get good at acting. I think that would be a thing that would be, you know, I would never have the audacity to call myself an actor. I say stand-up comedian slash actor and I always think I should take that bit off the actor bit. That's not a real thing. But, you know, because I know real actors. I've got some friends who are proper actors and they're a complete class difference from what I can do. Every job, like in Legit, I played myself.

I'm going to play myself in this sitcom. It's like I'm not really an actor as such as someone who just reads the lines as myself. Well, let's talk about, you mentioned getting better at acting let's talk about comedy for a second flashback to edinburgh so for people who want a picture edinburgh is this extremely picturesque town it's a beautiful city it's beautiful you've got the the coffee shops where jk rowling wrote the uh the sorcerer's Apprentice. Oh, I didn't know that. Is she from Edinburgh? There you go.

She wrote a number of the books there, I think at the Elephant Room. And then like Beautiful Fudge kind of looks like Hogwarts. You can see all these buildings. What happens, just since I don't know anything about the festival, if it's not invite only, what happens if too many comics show up? Or is it just so intimidating that that doesn't happen

and do you just kind of walk into town like uh with a a stick and a satchel over your shoulder there's there's just unlimited rooms there's just unlimited they they go to the universe they use every single classroom they'll find any like they'll find a closet and go this is a four-seat room there's the half of these rooms are complete and out of fire hazards. They shouldn't be allowed. And it's in the middle of summer and people are sweltering. There's people fainting in your audience. And then the biggest room is 1,000 seats, which is McEwan Hall,

but then they do things like they put tents up. So there's a lot of sort of park areas and they just whack tents up everywhere and people perform in these tents. And what happens is these venues will start operating at nine in the morning and they'll be running at four in the morning, right? Wow. And each hour is someone's act. And so you know when like my first show I got like an 11 o'clock

PM spot, which isn't a great spot. You want that sort of six to nine sort of area. And then like as you get more popular, they go, oh, you've got the eight o'clock spot. And you're like, ooh, the eight o'clock spot. You know what I mean? So that like I heard something, 2,000 shows are up at the festival. That's incredible.

And it's not just stand-up comedy. Stand-up comedy for whatever, is the bit that people, it's known for, but it's an arts festival. So there's a lot of like, there's a lot of cool things. Like during the day, there's a lot of shows that you can see that you can take your kids to, some puppetry or some type of clowning type thing. A lot of stand-up comics who are more family friendly,

they might do their adult show at night and they'll do a kid's show during the day, you know, which is a cool thing. And look, I never could. I was always hung over and sleep until 5 p.m. and then I'd crawl out and do my show. I used to gain like 20 pounds at that festival, you know, and then work it all.

Just beer weight, just horrible fat, you know. Anyway, but for me, it's a magical place, more than any other festival because it was just everybody up there was creative and it was people that wanted to do their things. Comics were experimenting. They couldn't do it in comedy clubs. There was things that I was doing. I did a story that was 30, 40 minutes long, um, 40 minutes long about taking

my friend with muscular dystrophy to a brothel. And the thing about that is I'd never done a set in a comedy club that was more than 20 minutes. So I, I, I couldn't have done that routine if not for the Edinburgh festival, even if I wanted to, you know. There was, but the thing is, I think the average loss is 5,000 pounds. It's your own money and the promoters are making money and there's posters everywhere, right? And then you've got to pay for the posters. Then you've got to pay for people to fly for you all day

or you've got to fly for yourself. And so if you break even on that festival, if you come out like going, yeah, zero, you really crushed it. You really crushed it. And so it's a gamble. But the thing is you get reviewers, you get media. So there's things like, what's her name? Fleabag.

You know, Phoebe Waller. Phoebe Waller. She just wrote the last James Bond movie and she had a TV she won an Emmy for yeah she won an Emmy for a TV show Fleabag okay I'll try to find her we'll put it in the show notes

anyway like her show Phoebe Waller Bridge is that the one? Phoebe Waller Bridge, like her show. Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Is that the one? Phoebe Waller-Bridge, right? So her show was just a show at the Edinburgh Festival that some BBC executive saw and went, make it into a TV show. And then all of a sudden you got a TV show,

then she's got an American TV, and now she's fucking writing James Bond. And that magic doesn't happen out of a comedy club. It just doesn't, you know. And so, you know, like the Edinburgh Festival gave us Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, you know. They won one of the first awards and all these great sketch groups that, you know, I don't think Monty Python ever did it, but maybe they did.

I don't know. I'm a huge Python guy you are yeah i had i had john cleese came over my house for dinner and i was just fanboying out the whole time and it was the fucking best man it was the i'm friends with his daughter and they were going to come and see one of my shows they were going to come and see one of my shows and then because this is the early stages of quarantine before everyone was quarantined but we were canceling live things it was like first week and so my show was canceled and he was going to come and i said oh we'll just come over for dinner and then i just was like fucking john cleese is in my house man that was

that was one of the great thrills of my life if for people who don't have and this is true i think of a lot of younger people who might be listening to this from the u.s if who don't have and this is true i think of a lot of younger people who might be listening to this from the u.s if they don't have exposure to monty python where would you suggest they start well it's very easy at the moment because uh i think netflix has all of it yeah oh yeah netflix has all of it i think the easiest the most palatable thing to okay so the best movies the life of brian but maybe if you just want to have something that's like easy, palatable, and I think they think it's their worst film, I'd watch The Meaning of Life first because it's small sketches

and it's easy to watch. I'm not a big Holly Grail or Jabberwocky fan. I like The Life of Brian, but The Flying Circus Show is as good as anything and all of those are on Netflix and they're ready to watch. You know, all the sketches are good. They're all good. It's just like the classic ones like The Dead Parrot and all that type of stuff, they're not even the best ones.

They're just the most easy to quote, I think. Yeah. They're not even the best ones. Well, let's talk about your brothel visit with your friend with muscular dystrophy. Sure. All right. So Edinburgh Festival, it's a big opportunity.

How do you work on that material? Like what did you do to get that ready? That's a big set. Well, that routine pretty much has the story. You have stories that are partly true and stories that you embellish and stories that you add on things and you know but that story is very very close to 100 true very close and um what happened there was i had my friend his brother wanted to get a blow job and we sorted it out and then and then you know this the story happened and then I remember when that

happened I was actually at the Melbourne Comedy Festival which I've only done once I went into the bar the comedian's bar in Melbourne and I literally walked in I saw a couple of friends of mine and I said have I got a story for you and I remember I started telling it by the time I was halfway through the story there was maybe 11 people standing around in this bar and people saying, turn the music down. And I was talking about this brothel visit. And I remember thinking, wow, this is keeping comedians attention. And I think I probably told that story to like in pubs and to friends for about a year. And before it just became a, just a standard bit of a comedy for me. And then from that, the TV show legit is from, you know, the TV, my TV,

my at an FX TV show, which was completely based on that story. And it was a one-off that was just the pilot episode was taking someone to a brothel, like with muscular dystrophy to a brothel. And then when we did the show afterwards, we did another 26 episodes. And the thing that was weird was then you have a character with muscular dystrophy that you have to write into each episode. And I thought, oh God, I only really need this guy for one. But then that became became that became the sweetness of the show that became the sweet thing but but it was hard sometimes you'd write a funny scene or something funny would happen in your life and you'd think oh i gotta put that in the show and then you go and i have to work in a guy in a wheelchair how do you and i apologize i'm not a comic so i don't

even know the proper vocabulary. We have some mutual friends like Whitney Cummings and Brian Callen and these guys who will have much more pointed questions. But for lack of a better way to ask, how do you workshop some of your more, I was going to say intricate, but just longer pieces, for instance. And I know you get asked about this all the time, but if we look at the gun control or gun-related pieces that you've done, I mean, those are like long theatrical pieces. Well, I have an interesting story on how I wrote Gun Control. Let's hear it.

That routine, I think that probably is the routine I'm most proud about. I think it's the most sort of thought-provoking or original or whatever thing that I did was that gun control routine that I think is most memorable. And sadly, the routine always gets new legs after there's a shooting or something like that. So it's not the way you want to get known, you know. But that routine, now I have to stipulate when I say this, okay, with Americans, I understand that

many of you like guns and I'm not anti you. I don't think you're wrong. I do think you're wrong, but, but I grew up in a society without guns and I have had a different life experience from you. And so this is just my point of view. It doesn't mean that my point of view is right and your point of view is wrong. It's just, this is my way of thinking on the matter. So I have a guy and I'm happy to call this man a friend who does not agree with me in any way. And this guy's more Republican than I'm. I'm more moderate. I think people think I'm a big lefty, but And this guy's more Republican than I'm. I'm more moderate. I think people think I'm a big lefty, but I'm a bit more moderate than I think people would realize. But, and it's John Ratzenberg from Cheers. No, no kidding. Cliff, Cliff Clavin from Cheers.

And Cliff Clavin was on my TV show, Legit. And, uh, I was, I was with him when Sandy Hook happened and we were on set and he said to me, Jimmy, if only these teachers had guns, we wouldn't have these problems. And I went, you're fucking kidding. You want teachers to have guns? And we argued and debated for a few days on this matter. It was never mean or nasty or anything like that. It was just I couldn't believe that Americans thought this way about guns. I'd already,

before that, I already, I always knew you liked guns, but when I heard these arguments and I was saying to other people, I think this guy at work, you wouldn't believe what he said. It's fucking crazy. And then I started finding out that other people who are friends of mine agreed with him as well. And then other, and I thought,, man, maybe I'm not in the minority, but this is a very common belief they all have. And so then you start thinking maybe I'm wrong or maybe I'm whatever. And so I just wanted to give not a scientific or a statistic-based argument on the guns.

I just wanted to give my point of view and just looking at it rationally type of argument, you know? So that routine was written through arguments with other people. It was just conversations with other people. It wasn't written by me going, oh, and I wonder what the statistic is on this. And I wonder what that is and reading and researching. It was me just arguing with friends until I got all my arguments down and I was like, all right, this is what I'm coming in with, this is what I'm coming in with. And very often stand-up comedy is just you having a one-sided argument

and no one being able to respond, which is a wonderful thing. They all respond in the end. They all write something at the end on the internet and try to get you or they come up to you. And in that moment on stage, your argument is gospel and no one can say any different. It doesn't mean it's right. It doesn't mean it's right.

And as you're having these arguments, are you refining all this in your head, just catching it in a net or do you have a little black book you pull out of your pocket when something comes up? How do you capture it? I don't write jokes down, and I really should because I lose track of punchlines and stuff like that, and other lines can seep in.

You can get – I should write things down, but I never fucking write things down. I do most of me writing on stage. You have a kernel of a thought and you wait till you're doing a gig where you're really cooking and the audience really likes you and you think, I can get away with anything right now. And then you do your bit. And if it doesn't work, you go straight back into a bit that you know really well, it's very solid. And so that's how I do it on stage. And a lot of people in LA, they'll invite you to do a gig

and they'll say, hey, come down to my room and try out, it's a good place to try out new stuff. And it's like, are you fucking out of your mind? I'm going to come down and do 10 minutes and try out new stuff. In LA where someone important might be. I wedge the joke in Kansas in my two hour show in the middle of, you know, when you're doing two hours on stage, I try to work in two new minutes each time, three new minutes. And then that three minutes becomes five minutes. And then at the end of a year, you've got a new show. That's why I always find it weird that you're expected to have a new tour written when really these tours are, if you see me a year and a half apart, it'll be a new show.

But if you see me, even if it's a different tour and it's a month apart, it's not going to be that much different because everything's just evolving and moving and turning. And then the specials come out and once the special comes out you never say those jokes again and when and when you try out those new two or three minutes if it really works or it partially works do you just make a mental note do you go back and watch the video or listen to tape yeah i don't tape me that i i normally i'm normally so focused on those two three minutes that i know that you know i know I know what I'm going to do. But the two or three minutes, sometimes that works better than the stuff that's killer,

even though it's not as good a joke, because for whatever reason, the audience can see that you're excited by that joke and they can see the sparkle behind your eye. And there's that little bit of magic that happens because you're so excited. And you can excited by that joke and they can see the sparkle behind your eye and there's that little bit of magic that happens because you're so excited. And you can't fake that and you can't act excited about a joke you've told a hundred times. You can't. You can perform it well.

You can perform it really well. You can put everything into it and make it great, but you can never have that magic where you're grinning through it because you're like, ah, this is so good. You know what I mean? And so because doing a new bit of stand-up that's the most enjoyable bit of the whole show for the for the performer at least it is for me life of brian so let's let's come back to that if you don't mind what is it about life of brian that makes it so good in your mind well it's the perfect movie the thing about it is there's plenty of quotable sort of sketches

in there and stuff like that. It's mocking religion, which I love, but it's also not mocking religion in a direct way. It's like the Christians can get upset and go, this is sacrilege and that type of stuff. No, they don't tease Jesus at all. You know what I mean? They have the beginning, the meek, they will inherit this and inherit that, but they don't really get into Jesus. We're talking about Brian. If you want to say that

this is about Jesus, that's your fucking problem. You know, there's a lot of people going around acting like they were the prophets who got crucified back in the day. And if you want to say that we can't talk about them, that seems a bit ridiculous. So it's a lovely little loophole where you can poke fun at people and still, you know, and also that stuff about the, what did the Romans ever do for us? The aqueduct, the this, the that. It's just, it's very, very funny. Are there any other comics who were really formative for you or people you have uh formative or people you've looked at and just said to yourself i don't know how they do what they do right because i guess

those are two kind of two separate things i suppose george carlin um when i started watching him i thought that was that that he was pretty amazing. And I get a little bit Carlin-esque on a joke here and there and I got to watch myself because I'd love to have been that man. He seems like the perfect comedian to me. I would say there was a guy called Anthony Morgan as well when I was growing up in Australia who was very influential on me growing up and I don't know what he does these days and I haven't seen him since but he was a big deal for me and Eddie Murphy's Delirious was a pivotal moment in my childhood. It was the first time I saw someone who wasn't Australian doing stand-up comedy. Got to understand in Australia we only had four TV

channels. We had no comedy specials. I didn't know Richard Pryor was a comedian. I thought he was an actor, right? We had no stand-up specials. We had no HBO that didn't exist. We didn't even have American TV. I couldn't see who was doing well on Carson. That didn't exist. Those clips never got to us. We had our own late night shows with our own comics on them and you'd see them for a few minutes and that was all you really saw of them. And then Delirious was the first cinematic release standup special. So it was in the video store. And I remember watching it and I couldn't get over that this guy was doing standup comedy for an

hour. That blew my mind. I thought that standup was doing stand-up comedy for an hour. That blew my mind. I thought that stand-up comedy was only in a medium of five minutes. That's what everyone did. Then you couldn't watch someone afterwards. And I remember, like, I wasn't good looking. I wasn't good at sports. I wasn't anything, you know, that was deemed to be cool.

You know, I couldn't play on a guitar. I couldn't, you know. And just to see someone who was doing something that I believed I had the innate talent to be able to do and he was cool. You know what I mean? I'd never seen, like, because comedy before that, before Eddie Murphy for me, I didn't, it was, we're goofy, we're goofy people. And I still to this day don't particularly care if, my mother always used to go, they laugh,

those kids at school are laughing at you, not with you. And I just didn't care as long as I was getting the laughs because I still knew I was doing it to get laughs. It didn't matter to me where they came from. And so just to see someone who was cool and he was, you know, I was doing it to get laughs. It didn't matter to me where they came from. And so just to see someone who was cool and he was, you know, like let's be honest, I wear a fucking leather jacket on all my specials because fucking Eddie Murphy wore those leather jumpsuits.

There's one of my specials I wear without a T-shirt. I just wanted to just once have a leather. And I've never done that in my personal life or anything. And just before I walked out on stage I went fuck it I'm taking the t-shirt off I'm gonna be like Eddie Murphy and just just just wear a leather jacket on bare skin I fucking that jacket stinks to this day do you think you'll still be in LA or is LA home base for you in 10 years time? LA is home and I don't believe that, you know, I got a kid and I would like to have another child sometime.

So I think when you have children, I think that's your moving's done. You know what I mean? I think maybe I could retire in Hawaii or something like that, depending if my kid fucking goes off and works in New York or whatever. What's the point of me staying in LA? Maybe I could go off to Santa Barbara and buy a place and go for fucking walks or whatever the fuck people do when they're old. But, you know, you could be in a lot worse places than L.A.

Nothing wrong with it. I really get a bit home proud of L.A. and I don't like when people bag on it. When people just go, oh, L.A., oh, you must hate it there. And they're like, oh, the traffic, the traffic. Where I live doesn't have traffic because your place is shit. L.A.'s got traffic because people want to fucking live here. That's why there's traffic because your place is shit la's got traffic la's got traffic because people want to fucking live here that's why there's traffic because people want to be here and it's

good the food's good and the women are pretty and shit you know what i mean like why would you you know what i mean why would you want to fucking the restaurants are nice like there's there's places other places that are nice as well but there's just what my argument is there's places, other places that are nice as well, but there's just, what my argument is, there's nothing wrong with LA. Well, LA is also, I mean, this took me a while to figure out, and obviously there are many people who spent more time there, but I lived in Northern California for almost 20 years and spent a lot of time in Southern California, is that LA to me strikes me like as if it's a dozen different cities all within the umbrella of LA, right? So you can really kind of pick your pocket depending on where you want to be and the personalities are very different

yeah I agree with that as well it's like it's like when I moved to LA all I knew of LA was two things there was the Hollywood which was the ritzy looking lights and all that type of stuff and then there was Compton and they're the only two things that I had seen on TV. You know what I mean? And so I used to think, I used to believe I couldn't walk the streets in LA because a blood or a crip would come and shoot me or something. You know what I mean? Like there'd be a drive-by or something.

It's fucking, or I'd be inly hills and it would just be girls with long legs with dogs in handbags and i thought that was all there was and it turns out it turns out there's also the valley what do you think uh and uh and i won't keep you too much longer but uh and we're definitely going to talk about the podcast, but what has helped you to have longevity in comedy? Because it seems like you have some longevity. Yeah. I think it's producing a lot of specials. I think bringing out the specials constantly sort of keep you going.

The specials never, I never like do a special and then it's like, wow, you're more popular now or anything like that. But it just keeps your fan base going. And I think you've got to give a product, you know. You've got to keep touring. You've got to, you know, if you keep your eye off the ball, then I'm not a big believer in that I'm in competition with anybody else. I just think if I just keep on producing good quality stuff, I'll always have a fan base,

whether it be small or large or whatever, there'll be somebody somewhere that wants to pay to watch me tell jokes, you know? So, but as I said, if, if it all ends tomorrow and I, I, I just become like an old fellow who sits around showing my kid pictures like, one time I played the tennis arena in Melbourne. You know what I mean? I think I'm all right with that too. I don't know. I don't know what the secret to being a successful comic is. I really couldn't tell you. If I could tell you, I'd go manage comedians and stop doing it myself. When you think back to the filling in of the customs form with stand-up comedian and the high that that gave you when you first did it not that it would be the same magnitude of high it could be but like what what gives you that type of high now or in the last handful of years or

what are you hoping to do that would give you that type of that type of hit i think if i was in a dramatic movie that would be something that's something that right now i can't foresee ever happening so that would be one thing that would surprise me if that happened because i've there's that's not on the horizon no one's ever asked or asked if i'm interested or anything like that. So if that happened, that would be something that would shock me if that happened. And, you know, I don't, I don't suspect it will happen, but if that happened, it would shock me. But, you know, it might sound corny. The thing I get the most joy out of is probably being a dad. I really like

being a dad. I think, I think I'm more proud of, of when I do that well than when I do comedy well. What do you, how do you know when you're being a good dad? That's the thing, man. That's the thing. You don't know. You keep, you know, it's, I know my son really loves me and that's cool. Yeah, I know that. And then you do things where, just little things, you know,

you teach some kids to ride a bike and you're like, yeah, I did it. Because, you know, as a parent, I don't know how to like, my son's still having problems doing his shoelaces and I feel like I've let him down a bit there. He's getting a bit old. He's getting a bit old and he should be able to do it and i feel like hey i dropped the ball i dropped the ball on that one is he 18 19 i mean how's he no he's he's seven he's seven okay all right just checking he's seven but i i've read that he should have

been able to do it by the time he was six and he's hopeless at it you know he gives it a go and then i go but because i keep buying him fucking shoes with velcro on them you know what have been able to do it by the time he was six and he's hopeless at it. You know, he gives it a go. And then I go, because I keep buying him fucking shoes with Velcro on them. You know what I mean? So I feel like that's lazy parenting where I've stuffed up a little bit, you know, but I think, you know, you take them on a good holiday or you work hard and you get them into a good school and you do all those type of things and I feel like, all right, otherwise, what's all this for if you're not going to give the next generation a better life than you had? Yeah.

Yeah, thinking about kids for the first time really for me in the last 18 months or so. So I have a newfound interest in talking to people who are parents. But I don't want to belabor that. I don't want to belabor that. I don't want to turn this into a therapy session too quickly. So let's talk about the new podcast. I don't know about that. Why this show?

Why? Well, I think, and no offense to you, I think there's enough shows where people are interviewing people. You know what I mean? I agree. I agree. I agree with that. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, you talk about what there definitely is,

there's far too many comedians interviewing comedians. Like it seems like a very weird thing now that we all go on each other's podcasts and we talk about how we get started and how to write a joke and all that type of stuff. And then I just sort of, I thought like it was like how do things work or the more you know and all that type of stuff. And then I just sort of thought like it was like how do things work or the more you know and all those type of podcasts where they talk about stuff. Those are the ones that I sort of was interested in where I was like

I started listening to less comedy podcasts and more podcasts where I could learn something. And then those crime ones, everyone likes those so much because they have something they learn about. Now, this also goes back to my father is a very difficult man to argue with, because if you prove him wrong and like, he'll say, oh, this happened, that happened. And yeah, bloody this and that. And then you go, well, dad, that's not actually true. You know, like, because in 1948, the government did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You say that. And you give him facts. And then my father just goes, well, I don't know about that. And that's not conceding. That's just going, oh, maybe you're right. I doubt it. You know what I mean? So I thought what the podcast is is what will happen is each podcast will have a specialist on

somebody who knows a lot about a subject whether they've written a book or they've done a TED talk on it or whatever the fuck and they'll come on and I won't know who they are or what they do and then they have to say that their uh topic of. And then I will say everything that I think I know about that thing, right? Because you remember before the internet, when you had a guy in a bar who you used to think was the smartest person ever, and then the internet came out and you could just Google things and it turned out he was completely full of shit, right? I'm going to be that guy, right? And then at the end,

the guy, the person, the specialist will tell me what I got right, what I got wrong, what misinformation I had, what is a common bit of misinformation on the thing. And then we'll all learn together about these specialist topics and we'll keep it funny and we'll keep it light and then at the end of the thing you'll know about a topic i love it what are some of the topics on the on the slate um we've well see i don't know i don't know that's right that's right so what have you recorded so far just to if you can give people a sort of a preview or maybe you don't want to i'm i can i think i can we name a couple alex or yeah we did uh we did the war on drugs and we've done earthquakes we've done like four or five of these but that's a couple we did earthquakes and the war on drugs and so i think i'm just making

and now i know shit loads about earthquakes and the war on drugs i know a lot of stuff now but before i didn't know much oh i love the format i mean i i do i do agree with you i think there's a overabundance of interview style formats and who knows i may end up looking at the photos reminiscing on the old days and i'd be okay with that too uh at some point if that if i if i if you're one of the bigger ones tim i think you'll be just fine yeah i think you'll be just fine. Yeah, I think it'll be fine. But there might be a time to take Old Yeller behind the shed

and put him to rest. But, well, I love your comedy. I think you're a smart guy. It's very, very thought-provoking, as I mentioned at the very beginning. The new podcast is I Don't Know About That, which is debuting Tuesday, May 5th. And I'm sure people can find more about it on jimjeffries.com.

You can be found on Twitter, Instagram, at jimjeffries. Is there anything else you'd like to share or anywhere else that people can find out? No, man. No, no. Just subscribe to the new podcast. All my gigs are canceled because I have no shows to promote, but hopefully after this quarantine's all over, I'll be coming to a city near you.

Thanks for having me, Tim. Oh, my pleasure. And I will, for everybody listening, link to, I don't know about that, link to some of the episodes we mentioned, the Manchester head punching incident, a couple of the clips and bits, the Manchester head-punching incident, a couple of the clips and bits, as well as the TV shows, everything in the show notes, as usual, at tim.blog forward slash podcast. And, Jim, thank you so much for the time.

I really appreciate it. I appreciate it, mate. Thank you. Bye-bye. And to everybody listening, until next time, thanks for tuning in. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me?

Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends,

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