October 2021 and another comedian, Rob Beckett, releases their lockdown project book: A Class Act

The thread throughout Rob’s book is him feeling inferior, because of his class. His story relating to Jimmy (page 212) starts with him saying that “Jimmy has parties at his house” but that working class people have “house parties”.

Jimmy invited him to a Mexican themed Cinco de Mayo party (2016) and, taking the tube there, Rob stopped off at an off licence for 8 cans of Heineken (for himself) and a bottle of Tequila as a present for Jimmy.

He bought what he considered a premium bottle of Jose Cuervo – something for a special occasion. He’d been on TV about 3 times and was excited to be going to the home of someone famous for a party.

The house had security outside and up walked Rob with his blue off licence carrier bag of booze. Going out into the garden he found “about 200 famous people” that included Elton John and, standing with his carrier bag, he felt like a fish out of water.

A waitress took pity on him and asked if he wanted help finding Jimmy and they tracked him down to a room set up as a bar, where he was chatting to Russell Howard and Jonathan Ross. Seeing Rob with his carrier bag the 3 of them “ripped the p*ss out of him”. He makes it clear that it was good natured banter and, if he’d been in the same position, he would have done the same.

He handed Jimmy his gift and then noticed the bar already had about 50 bottles of it…but said he “had the class to thank me and mean it” (and then introduced him to everyone).

He ended up making a feature of the blue bag and said Russell had the cheek to ask for a can of his Heineken.

He goes on to say that “Jimmy has a great skill in making sure an eclectic group of people all gel”. This was the infamous Stephen Hawking party, that every man and his dog seem to have a story about.

He finishes the story by saying he was drinking through his nerves and ended up so p*ssed that he walked straight into a glass patio door and left an outline of his face on it. Like a pigeon had flown into it.

The book’s 2^nd photo section has several of him with his mate, Romesh. Including one of them posing with the people listed on this post – after performing at the Comic Relief Spectacular in 2019.