Born in Perth, Western Australia, Jim Jefferies trained as an opera singer before turning to stand-up. He has appeared in festivals across the world as well as TV stand-up shows. In 2007, he was punched on stage at the Manchester Comedy Store, and the video of the incident became a worldwide hit o the internet.
He supported Dennis Leary at the new York comedy festival the same year; and the following year landed a pilot sitcom with Paramount Comedy. He was nominated for best headliner in the 2008 Chortle awards.
He was born Jeffries but had to add an 'e' to hs surname to avoid confusion with an American performer of the same name.
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'It looked like an emu eating a coconut...’
Jim Jefferies tells of the agony of passing a kidney stone
Jim Jefferies has revealed how he performed a stand-up show despite being doped up on morphine to combat an agonising kidney stone.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night, the comic told of how he went to hospital after feeling a sharp pain the morning after a successful show in the town of Kingston, Canada.
He said: ‘Because it's a small town, everyone in the emergency ward was at the gig the night before. So they're like, "Hey, Jim, that was a really great show last night, can I have a photo?" But I’m in a lot of pain.’
Even the doctor who saw him was at the gig. She told him it sounded like his appendix had burst and sent him for an MRI, but not before giving him the first of several shots of morphine.
‘By the way,’ he added - and gave a chef’s kiss to the memory of the opioid. ‘All these years, I've been knocking smack addicts. [Now] I understand that life choice completely. What a wonderful drug morphine is.’
After the scan medics realised his appendix hadn't burst, but he had a 6mm kidney stone that was passing down to his bladder – just 1mm shy of what would require surgery to remove.
Jefferies explained: ‘The doctor came up and she said "I had I've had four children and two kidney stones and the kidney stones were smaller than yours. And the kidney stones were worse than childbirth."
‘My wife doesn't like this bit of the story. You're not allowed to say I did something worse than childbirth.’
He said that while he was spaced out on the morphine he had a call with his manager - ‘who might as well be called Colonel Parker’ – about the night’s gig, due to start in two hours’ time, a three-hour drive away in Ottowa.
Jefferies said: ‘You know, that bit with Elvis at the beginning of the movie, "it doesn't matter what you got to do, but that kid's got to get back on that stage".’
‘And the doctors on the phone like this, "I can give him some drugs to be that will help him stand up".’
So he did the gig. He told Kimmel he had no memory of the show, but later learned that his usual 90-minute set had expanded to two-and-a-half hours.’
By this point the kidney stone made its way to his bladder, which gave him about 14 hours of respite before it made its final agonising journey through the urethra – which happened on the nine hours of travelling home to Los Angeles.
‘I was screaming so much I shut myself into the aeroplane toilets,’ he said of the flight home. I just sat there and just screamed behind the little door until eventually I could get out. Now I’m screaming through the airport.
‘Now it started making its way down. It looked like an emu eating a coconut...’
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Jim Jefferies has revealed how he performed a stand-up show despite being doped up on morphine to combat an agonising kidney stone.
