I've got one fucking life and this is it! It was not pre-ordained that I was going to be a successful comedian during the world and being on TV. I just, I knew what I wanted to do and then I pursued it. I was so broken I was so stripped of serotonin.
It went from being on the cover of the paper to going, you know, this is morally wrong. I was having panic attacks. It's fucking terrifying because you think, is this my forever now? And when you're depressed, it's the appetite for life.
It's just gone. What's the thing that you're good at that you could get better at, that you could be better than you last year? That's the key thing, because take that thing, if you can find out what that is for you, and then apply some hard work and time, that's your luck. Be happy.
It's a powerful thing to aspire to. You know, when you're on a plane and it's going down and the oxygen masks come, you have to grab your mask first or you're no good for anyone else. You being happy makes the people around you happier, better for your friends, better for your family, better for the world. You're a great thinker, an expert on the topic of happiness.
Someone that writes in his brand new book about finding and pursuing your purpose. Jimmy Carr has typically been known for his very comedic one-liners. What he shares today, it's deep. It's profound.
And when you find out that he was a Cambridge graduate, it kind of makes sense, because Jimmy is a very, very smart man, not just book smarts. He's life smart. This podcast today is one of my favorite of all time because it has everything, not just those profound truths that I know, I know, will change your life, but also a very remarkable, compelling, vulnerable personal story. One that starts with his mum and his dad.
One that starts with dyslexia and feeling rejected at a very young age. One that journeys through being cancelled, controversy, panic attacks, depression, and ultimately finding himself. He says it himself. This is the Jimmy Carr you don't know.
But I'll tell you this. This is the Jimmy Carr you should. So without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is the Diaries of CEO. I hope nobody's listening.
But if you are, then please keep this yourself. It's so funny because every time I do this podcast, I always try and think of a new place to start, but having read your story and having read the stories of my guests before they arrive, I always end up starting in the same place. I was just trying to think of a new way to come into it, but I'm going to go for it. So your childhood, Jimmy, very, very pivotal.
And I was reading throughout your childhood about these really, really pivotal moments, pivotal moments of changing school and family and mum and dad, take me to the most important context from your childhood. I suppose, I mean, listen, it's when you remember stuff, we're all unreliable narrators when we look back on our lives. And I think the gift of lockdown was that memory and speed are inversely proportion. But when you slow down in life, you remember more.
And it's a great time for recalibration and thinking, well, what happened? So the things that I recently became a father, so you're thinking about childhood again in this new way and thinking, well, what are the things you would want for your child? What would you want to give them? And also, what were those key moments where you get to decide who you are?
And I think that the key bits in my childhood were the moments where you become aware you are a story you tell yourself. So I moved schools when I was 16 and I was kind of not a tear away, but I was in trouble and I was messing around and I was with a fairly rough crew. And I switched schools and told a different story, not to be Machiavellian. You just arrived at the new school and went, well, I guess maybe no one knows me here.
I could just be whoever I want to be. And you become aware of how not consciously, but even at that early age, aware that you're not a noun, you're a verb. You're a doing thing and you can do things differently and you can do better. And then so that lesson, obviously, that you then forget that.
And you don't make good on that again for a while. So I was in my mid-20s when the next big kind of sea change of going, well, I'm going to leave a job working for someone and go on an adventure. And it was, I mean, for me, that kind of mid-20s thing was it's not childhood, but it feels like even at 25, I was in an archetypical way, still a child, because I was living my life for someone else. I hadn't really taken the reins yet.
I hadn't really made a decision until I was in my mid-20s. So it felt like to me, I was like a big kid when I was 25. And then suddenly at 26, yo-ho-ho, a pirate's life for me. I just, I fucked off and joined the circus.
I became a comedian and started leading my own life. In a way, I think, part of the reason for the book is I think a lot of people aspire to that. A lot of people want to find their purpose and they want to pursue it. And, you know, it's very sad.
A lot of people don't get to do either. And when you change school at 16 years old and you talk about, you were able to kind of shed this identity, that school and environment and the teachers that have given you. Well, I think you've got baggage, haven't you? Even when you're 16, you've got baggage, you go to sixth form and you're, oh, you're the terra-way kid, you're going to do like that.
You're going to do this well in your exams. It's a, your past indicates where your future's going to go. And it doesn't have to be that way. At some stage, you just have to, you cut those apron strings or you cut with the past and go, no, I could be academic.
You know, I'm a very dyslexic and I didn't really learn to read and write times about maybe 10 or 11 with any level of proficiency. And then I managed to get myself to Cambridge. And part of that is like a force of will. You should write, I mean, I'll do that.
I'll figure out how to do it. I'll figure out what the code is. And often I think it's that thing of like, the thing that comics do incredibly well. I talk about like the superpowers of comedians, what comedians do brilliantly.
Is they're great at pattern recognition. And that strikes me as like the most important thing. It's like, what's the most important thing? I don't know, it's the most important thing.