TV shows in the UK use warm-up comics and Jimmy fulfilled this role on several shows, around 1999-2000.

Other comedians, when talking about when Jimmy first started out, have said that he would be at gigs with a Filofax, making notes, while others were getting hammered. He was known as driven and ambitious and I would imagine that hanging around the TV shows below would have helped him develop into the TV consummate professional that he is today.

Warm ups are not famous enough to get listings on show credits so I’ve had to dig into all kinds of forums to pick up comments from people that remember him being the warm-up.

This post contains everything that I could find about Jimmy starting as warm-up on the 11 O’Clock Show (before moving up to appearing in sketches).

With Lee Mack’s The Sketch Show Jimmy took a similar route. Starting as a warm up on S1 (2001) and then moving on to suppling “additional material” (contributing to the writing).

This old BBC article and Newsshopper mention that he “regularly warms up” for:

• The Frank Skinner Show (see here)
• Baddiel & Skinner Unplanned (see here)
• Alistair McGowan’s Big Impression (see here)
• Al Murray’s Time Gentleman Please (see here)
• The Alan Partridge Show (presumably I’m Alan Partridge?)

In this 3 minute clip, from 2010, a fed-up looking Jimmy is being interviewed on the Loaded LAFTAs red carpet. It’s of interest because he mentions that he used to do warm-up for Frank Skinner.