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

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Currently appearing as one of the judges on the BBC One talent show I Can See Your Voice, Carr is set to resume his stand-up tour, Terribly Funny, at the Palace Theatre in London on June 15. The joke that cancels me is out there already. It is on YouTube somewhere and it is perfectly acceptable until one day it isn’t.’

Rather disarmingly, he stresses repeatedly throughout his book that anyone could have done this, and that he had no supernatural talent for comedy. “Or any talent at all,” he says. “I’d never written a joke before I was 25. And now I’m good at writing jokes. It’s a learnable skill. And I learned that skill.” If you are in the North America, look out for US/Canadian flag icons on popular product listings for direct links. Carr worked as a marketing executive for Shell, a job he hated, before a "quarter-life crisis" at 25 led to him study psychotherapy and begin doing stand-up. An intensely dedicated open spot, for two years he performed for more than 300 nights a year, two years running. Well, there had been pictures of me pushing a pram in the pictures,” he says. “What did people think was in that? Old CDs?”As for drugs, “I’ve tried everything once, but I’m not a drug person,” he says. “I’ve met people who are funnier after a couple of pints. But I’ve never once in my life met someone and gone: ‘Oh, he’s a bit quiet, but you’ve got to meet him after he’s had some cocaine.’” Jimmy Carr has slammed cancel culture in a new documentary, calling it the modern equivalent of book burning. Jimmy was asked whether there were jokes he wrote 15 years ago that he would no longer perform, or whether the threat of cancel culture had changed the way he writes comedy during the programme. Surely he must have allowed himself a wry smile during Cameron’s recent lobbying scandal with Greensill? “No, I don’t wish him any ill at all,” he says, before adding some advice that could come straight from his own book. “I think it’s that thing of letting go. If you’re bitter and angry, it’s best to let go.”

Pledging to reveal how Carr has managed to "thrive as a comedian but also as a human being", the stand-up's first book for 14 years focuses on his pursuit of happiness, how he obsessed about and researched the subject when he decided to make huge changes in his life. Jimmy Carr appears alongside Richard Bacon on Cancelled (Picture: Tom Jenner / Hardcash Production) Carr opens up admirably in the book about his mental health, his problem drinking and the grief he experienced when his mother died in 2001, just as his comedy career was beginning. “I found the book incredibly cathartic to write,” he says. “Especially about my mother. There’s that lovely phrase, that you die twice – once when you die, and again the last time someone says your name. So I loved that thing of being able to talk about my mum.” I think if you have a friend that’s tetraplegic you have to be quite chatty, because obviously the typing takes him so long,” he says, in a remark that feels like one of his jokes, but isn’t. “We’d do shots together sometimes too. His care team said tequila would be too much so he’d be on the Cointreau.”Jimmy Carr has written his autobiography in the form of a self-help book, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal. He says the uproar was far worse than anything he has faced over offensive jokes. Even the then prime minister, David Cameron, got involved. It’s not the first time that comedian Jimmy has spoken about cancel culture. The 49-year-old funnyman previously admitted the thought of getting cancelled doesn’t faze him one bit. Perhaps this unusual devotion to his mum (“I suppose a therapist would tell you I was ‘enmeshed’”) is why he found himself still a virgin at 26, although he says the situation never bothered him. “It’s, like, not everyone’s doing that at the same time. But if you’re watching Euphoria on TV as a 16-year-old you’re going to think, ‘What the f**k? I’ve never had a threesome – what’s going on?’” He laughs. “Is this making me sound like an incel elder? I did have opportunities, but I was bad at reading the signs, and I would friend-zone people. A lot of girls I was very, very close to growing up, we had incredibly intimate relationships, but we didn’t have a physical relationship, and it was lovely…”