Before & Laughter: The hilarious guide to changing your life Paperback – 12 May 2022

Couldn’t put this down. This was a great read with humor and life tips.

Jimmy Carr is a very funny comedian who I’ve seen live a couple of times. In this fun book, Jimmy Carr tells a few stories of his life, but intersperses it with all the self-help advice and wisdom he’s learnt along the way. And on the audiobook, Jimmy Carr delivers it similar in style to his comedy show. It’s very rapid, the stories are short but funny (with the one exception of the one about his mum) and the lessons that he’s learnt along the way. Unlike other self-help books that I have read in the past, he doesn’t waffle, he just gives one piece of self-help advice after another with a bit of explanation why his advice might work. To be honest they’re so rapid, it was sometimes difficult to reflect on them all and you might be too busy laughing. But they were the kind of advice I tend to follow and give myself all the time.- Don’t worry if you can’t recall all the advice in the book, he has a greatest hits selection at the end of the book. And Jimmy seems like a really nice guy who really focuses on being kind to others also. Other bits of advice that I like included the following.- Be kind - where you can, especially on social media.- When you're in your 20s all you ever do is think about what other people think about you, but when you're in your 40s you don't really care what they think about you and when you're in your 60s they don't you realise all along they weren't even thinking about you at all apparently attributed to Winston Churchill. So don’t worry too much about what others are thinking.- When you have enough of the things that you really need, you need to appreciate it. There are so many millionaires with all the money in the world, and yet all they’re looking for is the urge to find some more. So don’t think more money is going to help you.- We mess up more times than we succeed but if we don't learn from the failures that we make we haven't learnt anything at all but in the failures that we make that's where we learn.- Reality is an illusion and feelings aren’t facts but the thing that messes is that the most facts that we don't learn from these ideas most of what happens to us isn't something that is 10% of what happens to us is the problem but 90% is how we respond to the problem and that’s what really matters.- Every life will contain sadness and grief but it’s the price we pay for love and laughter so we need to accept some pain to experience life, love, lessons and laughter.- Reality is an illusion and feelings aren't facts but the thing that messes with us is that we assume they are. Or as Samuel Clemens stated: “Get your facts first . . . Then you can distort them as you please.”- Here are three tips for when you are feeling depressed, courtesy of the great documentary filmmaker Ken Burns: Remember this won’t last. Get help from others. Be kind to yourself.- Fake it – pretending to be a better person than being a bad person or indistinguishable to the casual observer. Pretend to be happy and after a little while you might just be happy.- Ask yourself “what do I want?“ Ask yourself that question all day every day.- Comparison is only useful if you keep it about you. Don’t compare yourself to others.- The secret to happiness: expectations exceeded, do more and expect less.- Luck is your talent and hard work plus time. You have to work at being lucky.- Having an idea is not the same as doing things. Being creative is all about the execution. Life is doing things, so go do things.- Eat less and move more.- You see the world as you perceive, filter and create in your brain, not as it is. So, if you don’t like it, you just have to change yourself and the way you're looking at the world. It’s easy to fool yourself - both in a good way and a bad way. The distress or anxiety about a situation that can cause us grief; it's probably only 10% of what happens to us is an actual problem, the other 90% is how we respond to the problem. That is what truly matters.- The great thing about the audiobook is that Jimmy Carr is telling you jokes along with every really important snippet of self-help advice. And I really enjoyed the story where he went to a Royal Variety Show and another about meeting Bruce Springsteen that is really funny.

A great read, kept me engaged which is rare these days. I’ve been looking for a while for a book that was going to inspire me to read more - this was it. I was more interested in his philosophy on life than the life of a comic and I want more of his views on life. Philosophy with profanities - what’s not to love!

Bought this for my wife who loves it, I can hear her laughing out loud from the next room, genuinely a funny book, trust me if you like him just get it..

Not as funny or instructive as it would appear.

I like Jimmy Carr, I even met him once, but I'm not a superfan or anything. So I had no particular expectations going into this book. And it was bloody brilliant. I loved it.Disclaimer: my favourite books are biographies and self-help books and this is both so I am probably the exact target audience. However, because I'm really into personal development, I very rarely come across anything refreshing or new these days. And this was all of those things.Jimmy tells a story really well, drops in the odd hilarious comment and has some 'genuinely useful' things to say about life.The not so appreciative reviews on here are probably just a case of the book ending up in the hands of the incorrect audience, which isn't surprising when at a quick glance this book looks like any old comedian autobiography.If you're not interested in self-development material at all, and you're looking for pure biography with some laughs, this is not the book for you. Do not buy. However, if you're open to some life insights, interested in the inner workings of the comedy scene and would like to read about the life and times of Jimmy Carr, add it to your basket now.

Jimmy Carr provides a very interesting insight into his love of comedy and what drives him to work hard at getting better at it. As it turns out, our Jimmy is quite ambitious. The book is full of quotes from other successful people from all walks of like which provide perspective and motivation. Overall the book is thought provoking, entertaining and funny. The writing style is a little unusual and all of the "americanisms" are quite irritating, almost as if it had been written specifically for American readers however, despite this it was a good read with lots of salient, proven techniques and advice for anyone that is serious about wanting to be a success.

The funniest and most enjoyable "self-help" book ever - barely feels like one while you read, because quite often it has as many jokes per minute as a stand-up show, and despite talking about his own story, the narrative voice is so energising and encouraging.People have different tastes, but I think that everyone should *try* reading this. It's a very different Jimmy to the one most people recognise from TV. I was alerted to this through a couple of podcasts he featured on in 2021. If you like the first few pages, you might just love the rest. Delivers on every level.