Before & Laughter: A Life-Changing Book by Jimmy Carr review

By Alistair Hendrie

For the last twenty years Jimmy Carr has left stand-up audiences stunned and aching for breath by riffing on every one of our taboos. He once performed in front of the Queen – “call me ‘Mr Carr,’” he joked – and reels off around 200 gigs a year. As such, he’s often praised for his work ethic, reliability on stage and flair for dark comedy. Yet we’ve never known who Carr is beyond his ice-cold one-liners and brutal put-downs. Until now. 

Before & Laughter: A Life-Changing Book uncovers a vulnerable side of Carr as he takes us through his dyslexia diagnosis, losing his mother at 25 and waking up suffering panic attacks after his tax evasion scandal in 2012. The book shows Carr as someone who wants to own his mistakes and accept failure as part of growing as a person and learning his craft. 

However, Carr, an avid reader of self-help books, writes as much about the reader as he does about himself. Early on, he states: “I landed from space in a cornfield … That’s me … But who are you? Go ahead, answer.” Taking inspiration from writers such as Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Kahneman, Carr taps into our psychology and asks us which moments we like ourselves best in and what we want from life, as well as telling us how to find our “edge.” According to Carr, “edge” is the niche which we’re passionate about that we can specialise in. Essentially, the thing we can offer which nobody else can do better. 

The themes of self-help in the book are laden with lovely terms such as “cracking codes” and finding “flow,” something which Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has written about at great lengths. The book describes how we all have something we can excel at, and that a lot of the time, we don’t know the kind of “magic” we hold in ourselves. At which point you must ask yourself, is Carr stating that we take our skills for granted? Do we lie dormant because we’ve gotten used to our traits? “You have no idea what you’re capable of because no one does,” he argues. 

The pacing of the book is punchy, sharp, and quick: just like Carr’s stand-up. Chapters are short, and there’s a lot of them – 26 in total. Carr claims he didn’t learn to read or write until he was 11 – perhaps his dyslexia caused him to struggle – so it’s a feat of effort and excellence that he’s written a book at all. One of the most poignant passages comes as he discusses the terror and anxiety he felt at having to read aloud at school. “I hated being asked,” he said, describing it as “obvious to everyone” that he couldn’t read. 

Much of Carr’s development as a reader and writer came from poring through his Collins dictionary during his childhood. Nowadays Carr is such an erudite speaker with a flair for wordplay and imagery. “For me, writing is the job,” he says. “Writing is the gym and performing is the cookie jar. Performing is the reward.” 

The book reveals Carr’s passion for stand-up but also his grief at losing his mother to pancreatic cancer. He lost his “surrogate partner,” as well as relinquishing his “sense of purpose” within his family.” He says stand-up helped him because the persona he wanted to convey had to be bigger than the grief and sorrow he was feeling. Laughter helped, too. Performing soothed him. It’s interesting that Carr’s subjects of jokes – rape, paedophilia and murder to name a few – are so dark. He has seen the bleakest moments that life has to offer, and now finds that the release of serotonin through laughter provides his own form of therapy. 

Another one of Carr’s darkest moments came in 2012, when he was discovered to be using the alleged K2 tax avoidance scheme. Although he realises the error of his ways – he repaid HMRC as quickly as he could – he reveals: “I wake up to a panic attack every morning … around 5am.” The camaraderie and kinship within comedy is evident here as we learn of how James Corden helped Carr through his shame. Carr is unanimous in his regret and apologies, but a lot of readers might think it’s short-sighted that he then writes a section on financial advice. Really, Jimmy? 

Throughout Before & Laughter, Carr never drops his fervour and one more highlight is a rant against career coaches – who are they to tell us what to do anyway? Other elements of the book are a love letter to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and a story of Carr attempting to play matchmaker between Prince Harry and Cheryl Tweedy. At its core it’s a book with heart and soul, and Carr comes across as someone who was born to be a globe-leading stand-up. “The problem with loving doing stand-up is that work is more fun than fun,” he says. “Would I like to perform in front of thousands of laughing people or … or what? I don’t need to hear the other options. I’ll take option one.”