With only a week to go before On Jokes is released – who are Jimmy’s co-authors Amanda Baker and Abi Grant?

Abi Grant

Abi started writing comedy at aged 18 (working with her mentor John Cleese) and first got paid for a Rory Bremner joke, for the BBC.

Her sketch writing credits include:

• Hale and Pace
• Spitting Image
• Rowan Atkinson
• Alas Smith and Jones
• Postman Pat
• Thomas the Tank Engine

After Jimmy’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience (where he talked about what they were working on) Joe invited Abi and Amanda to go to The Comedy Mothership in Austin, Texas. They spent a month teaching the comics that were based at the club – see here.

Writing about On Jokes Abi says:

What do you get when a comedy writer, a stand-up and a director write a book? Feelings get hurt, bullshit gets exposed, and guesswork stops. Amanda, Jimmy and Abi, we have a lot in common.

Notably, none of us are sexual abusers (crazy, right? Jimmy must be the only living male comic Amanda and Abi don’t have to defend for anything other than jokes and we’d do that for anyone).

Read more about her: https://abigrant.net/

Amanda Baker

Amanda is a stand-up comedy director (here) and she’s worked with Jimmy for some years. When he worked on his 2021 book, Before and Laughter (here) Amanda gave him feedback on structuring the chapters and then directed him in recording the audio book.

She’s also worked with him on his stage performance technique, something which she teaches in the Corporate world to anyone that needs to do public speaking (here). This feeds through into the courses she runs on stage craft (here).

Writing about working with Jimmy, Amanda says:

Look, I’m not for everyone. I’m meant to be a secret. I’m the behind-the-scenes guy, nobody wants to share me except for *Jimmy. I tend to work via recommendation.

[Footnote: There’s a reason women in comedy like Jimmy, he’s not sleazy and he treats us like equals. Don’t tell him I said that.]

Read more about here: https://amandabakerdirectslive.com/

Image below is from the Amazon Audible recording session and the main On Jokes page is here