JIM JEFFERIES

JIM JEFFERIES SEES HIMSELF AS AN AVERAGE GUY WHO WORKED HARD FOR WHAT HE’S GOT. He’s got a lot more than most: a worldwide fan base and seven hour-long standup specials, as well as two TV pilots in the pipeline. Yet somehow, it hasn’t gone to his head.

“See, there are two ways you can sort of get anointed as a great comic — I’m not saying I’m a great comic. I mean a famous comic,” the Australian comedian, who’s doing two headlining shows at JFL42 in Toronto on September 24, explains. “You can do what I did and you can play all the festivals and you can grind it out. The other way is an executive from a TV network just points at you and goes ‘I like that guy.’ I was never going to get pointed at, being a filthy comic. Being just a standard white guy — we’re a dime a dozen.”

Given that he’s been doing standup for over a decade, and he’s writing material at the rate of an hour-and-a-half per year, you’d think Jefferies wouldn’t have to fight for respect anymore. “‘He gets away with it cuz of the accent!’ is what I get a lot, but the biggest show I ever did in my career was in Perth [Australia], and they don’t fall for my accent. They’ve got the same fucking one, don’t they!”

Now Jefferies is enjoying settling down with a son, though not in a white-picketfence way. “I’ve watched every episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I know a bizarre amount of drag queens now. And it’s weird because one of the guys that drives my tour bus in America drove the drag queen show before me, and I used to just sit there and hear all the stories so I could go tell my girlfriend, because I knew what a big fan she was.”

Complacency hasn’t set in but a sense of satisfaction has. “The thing where I thought I made it was when I paid my house off.” Jefferies smiles. “I thought, ‘Alright, jokes paid for this.’”