In the year 2000 Jimmy had worked, in TV, on Meet Ricky Gervais (here) and The 11 O’Clock Show (here) and also made a number of radio appearances.

Something about him must have impressed someone as, sometime in 2001, a pilot was made for The Jimmy Carr Show. A chat show of his own.

As background, his TV career had really started to ramp up (during 2001) with appearances on E4 / C4 in Liquid News, Jimmy Carr’s World of Corporate Videos, Show Me The Funny / Drunk Review etc. (see here).

Back to the pilot – it had a jazz house band and Dorian Ford was the “MD and pianist” (see here). It was made by Ealing Studios, which was another location linked to Jimmy’s early career as stand-up nights were often ran there (see here).

Ealing, btw, was established in 1902 and there’s a great overview of its history, with images from around the lots and recent refurbishment, here. For any film / TV buffs that site also have given similar treatments to the other studios from around London.

Unfortunately, I’ve lost the link to the 2020 Instagram post, below, so I can’t get back to name the guy that worked on this pilot (presumably on the set design, from what I remember). Instagram search is next to useless now.

The reference to “short lived Production Company” suggest that Ealing were, for a time, trying to develop their own new shows and then reverted to just being the studio sets for other Production Companies to film in. There’s some background on how Production Companies function here.

The mention of The Inbetweeners kind of brings us full circle as a 3^rd movie has just been announced (here). The shows / movies were written by Iain Morris (here, who had an XFM show with Jimmy in 2001) and Damon Beesley (here, who worked on Jimmy’s DVD releases, amongst other things).

Jimmy’s career path is always like “6 degrees of separation” with him working with the same people / places repeatedly. I would say this is a 2 way thing – with him being someone that is supportive of his friends (involving them in his many projects) and, in return, his professionalism on set (here) means that he’s at the top of the list when someone else wants a host / presenter.

As the guy, below, said:

He’s marmite to some but I’ve always had a lot of time for him

That’s from someone that, in 2020, had worked repeatedly with him for 20 years.

When you look at how much TV Jimmy has made (here) – this massive output didn’t just happen by accident.

PS – just goes to show how many pilots get made, that never make it into production – see Jimmy’s list here. Back in 2001 I would imagine him being hugely excited, to be making a pilot as a TV show host, followed by the disappointing phone call afterwards…