| 03 August 2009
The filth and the fury
Jim Jeffries’ foulmouthed comedy has fuelled his meteoric rise to top billing at the Fringe, and now he’s discovering that the USA is ready to fall in love with filth too.
Thanks to his near-the-knuckle comedy detailing the often sordid details of his own life, Jim Jeffries has something of a reputation as a bad lad, a man you might hesitate to introduce to your sister. But, while the Australian is the first to fess up to his demons, Jim also plays them down.
“All the things I talk about on stage: the boozing it up or hookers or taking drugs, these aren’t things that I’m proud of but I do find them funny,” he says, speaking by phone from his rented home on Venice Beach, Los Angeles. “In my life, I have been a bad boy and a bad friend and a bad son, but fundamentally, morally, I am not a bad guy.”
It’s a heart-felt plea from the Aussie comic, and you begin to imagine that perhaps he is just misunderstood. And then he goes and ruins it with an in-depth discussion of the different drinking laws which apply to strip clubs in LA.
“You get the topless strip club and you can drink in there or if they go full nude there is no alcohol allowed on the premises,” he explains patiently. “You have to make a decision: do I want to get drunk and see tits or do I want to see everything and stay sober?”
He interrupts his musings to happily announce that he’s just found a flat surface to roll up on. “It’s an illustrated children’s Bible,” he chuckles.
Now at a level in the UK where he is happy to just play a five date greatest hits show at the Festival, Jim is trying his luck in the States. He’s doing well there. The influential cable channel HBO recently broadcast his own, hour-long comedy special. Few non-Americans get their own HBO special and Jim is the first Australian ever to be featured.
While having a few transitional difficulties with the Californian lifestyle (“It’s very health conscious here. There are all these people roller-blading. I’m walking around a little bit hung over and smoking”), Jim has been happily surprised to find that the Americans have taken a shine to him.
“I didn’t think they would like me as much as they do,” he ponders, “but there has been a long history of comics like me here. They have had a lot of story-telling comics. People like Bill Cosby, whose comedy is very different from me in most ways, but for his story-telling. Then you have all the guys like George Carlin and Richard Pryor.
“They did the filth,” he adds admiringly.
Ah yes, the filth. Lots of comics delve into dark places, disturbing subjects and areas of their lives that most people would keep private. What makes Jim’s comedy stand apart is the little glimmer of humanity hidden among his autobiographical tales of penile cancer, sexual abuse and having love eggs jammed up his backside.
“I hate to say this because it sounds really corny but people do use the stage as therapy,” he says. “I don’t know that I consciously do that but I know that I feel a lot better about some of the bad stuff once I’ve chatted about it on stage.
“A couple of years back, when the girl I thought I was going to marry left me for another guy, I was sitting there in misery, crying. My heart was broken. The one thing that gave me any solace was the realisation that I was going to get ten minutes material out of it. It’s like when I got dick cancer. It cheered me up thinking, ‘I’m going to get a good ten out of this.’”
Jim Jeffries is at the Udderbelly, 17-21 July, 8.35pm. Tel 0844 545 8252
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