The 1% Club host Jim Jefferies on dirty jokes, stand-up dangers and the return of his beloved Bears

Foul-mouthed comedian Jim Jefferies has revealed his surprise at switching gears and becoming a family-friendly game show host after decades in the spotlight.

Jim Jefferies admits that he’s little bit in awe of the team who put together his hit game show, The 1% Club.

Against the odds, they have managed to transform the famously foul-mouthed funnyman into a family-friendly front man, who helped the local adaptation of the UK show of the same become last year’s most popular new entertainment program.

Over the phone from his adopted home in Los Angeles, Jefferies, who has never seen the final episodes because he hates watching himself, says he’s a bit baffled as to how the producers do it.

Jefferies says the tapings, featuring 100 contestants answering brain-busting puzzles until there’s only one left, are a little closer to the edgy and often controversial stand-up routines that have made him a global star, than they are to the snappy but sanitised episodes that air in prime time on Channel 7.

“If you come to the live recording of The 1% Club, I am being pretty filthy,” he says with a laugh. “Sometimes I am on set thinking ‘how are they going to edit this f---ing thing?’.

“That comes down to the editing department and the standards and practices and I’m a big believer that if the network and two lawyers and the advertisers are okay with the joke, then it must be fine.”

Comedian Jim Jefferies loves coming back to Australia to make The 1% Club and see his family. Picture: Jeff Williamson

After years of working the global stand-up circuit, trying his hand at acting and hosting his own comedy talk show (Brad Pitt was his occasional weatherman), Jefferies took to his game show hosting duties right away.

As an avid game show watcher himself, who competed on the ABC’s Vidiot as a teenager and more recently on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune in the US (Celebrity Jeopardy is still on his bucket list), the Sydney-born 47-year-old already knew the format well – and in hindsight wonders why it had taken him so long.

“As a young comic, I don’t think I would have ever thought of being a game show host,” he says. “But I watch a lot of game shows and it dawned on me watching so many that there were people in their 70s and 80s and 90s hosting these things and I needed some type of retirement plan for when I don’t want to travel the world telling jokes all the time. So this might be the answer.”

The skills he has honed from telling jokes for the last two decades, first in tiny pubs and clubs and then graduating to theatres and arenas, have held Jefferies in good stead for his new side-profession, which he basically describes as “crowd work”. It’s his job not just to ask the questions of the very broad demographic aiming to win the game, but also to keep the mood buoyant and the banter light during the long and sometimes technically challenging tapings.

“It’s exactly the same as doing stand-up crowd work except you have to always be relatively nice because they are game show contestants and not audience members you can rip into,” he says. “In a stand-up gig if someone says something you can tell them to f--- off. In a game show you have to say, ‘well that’s interesting – I hope you do well’.”

Australian comedian Jim Jefferies is a longtime game show fan.

An added bonus to doing The 1% Club is that it gives Jefferies an extra reason to return home regularly. While his two sons and comedy work keep him in LA, he also has “some family members who aren’t getting any younger who I want to see as much as possible” in Australia. A third series has already been greenlit for later this year and will use the opportunity to share his latest stand-up show with local audiences. Jefferies says it’s his “edgiest show in years” and, after learning how to deal with cancel culture by mostly ignoring it and being an equal opportunity offender (“if they try to cancel me, I can say ‘which joke are you talking about?’”), he says this one is for the true fans.

“At the moment it’s called the Give Them What They Want tour,” he says. “All these years I have been second-guessing, ‘will this piss people off, will that piss people off, if I say this or talk about this political thing, will that upset people?’

“Now I know what my fans respond to, I know what I do best and so this tour is really a crowd-pleasing group of jokes that I’ve written. It’s all killer, no filler – all bangers.”

And after years of having each side of politics calling him a stooge or a sellout for the other side, Jefferies thinks he’s truly found his people in an ever more divided world.

“I think I appeal to the silent majority – all the people who think ‘f---, all the people on the left are bloody weird’ and ‘f---, all the people are on the right are arseholes’. It’s the people in the middle where you have some subjects you are passionate about in one direction, some you are passionate about in the other direction, subjects that you don’t really give a shit about but if push came to shove you’d have an opinion and some things you have no opinions on.”

While he doesn’t relish the prospect of four more years of either Biden or Trump, he admits that there have been times where he’s been worried about pushing either side too far. He infamously had an audience member leap on to the stage to punch him early in his career in the UK and one of his most famous routines took the mickey out of America’s hopeless gun control laws, but for the most part he’s not concerned about his own safety.

“There have been times when I have been more cautious and on large tours I take security with me and stuff like that,” he admits. “But I try not to think about it – so thanks for mentioning it. Now I won’t sleep for a couple of days. You just have to live your life – you don’t have to worry about all that type of stuff. I look at it this way – how am I a big political or activist target that you’d think ‘oh I’ve got to get that bloke’. If you’re going to get someone, there’s more important people out there than me.”

Jefferies is also excited about the long-dreamt-of return to the National Rugby League of his beloved North Sydney Bears. The team he has passionately supported since childhood were booted out of the league in 1999 but has been floated as a potential expansion club, possibly based out of Perth or the Pacific Islands.

Jefferies, who says his son is probably the only kid in LA rocking Bears merch as pyjamas, says he’d be happy just to see the team run out once again at their former home of North Sydney Oval and is prepared to put his money where his mouth is as an investor or part owner. Just the fact that he’s on a group text with his former club heroes Billy Moore and Greg Florimo blows his mind.

Australian comedian Jim Jefferies on the set of his US comedy talk show.

“What else am I going to spend it on?,” he says of his financial commitment. “The Bears meant so much to me a child. I’m still angry – and not like a little bit – I’m constantly angry at the NRL for taking my team away. It just doesn’t feel like a fair thing. I had posters up in my room and I haven’t really followed the rugby league or paid attention to it in 20 years because of this. Just to see them run out at Bear Park for a couple of games would make it all worthwhile.”

Jefferies says he’s had a brief conversation with his mate Russell Crowe, owner of rival South Sydney, about the ups and downs of team ownership, but adds with a laugh “I don’t think he takes me very seriously”.

“I would just be an investor – I wouldn’t be a full owner,” he says. “I don’t know how much you think I get paid for The 1% Club but it’s not enough to buy a rugby league club. Let’s say I’d like to invest enough that I’d have season tickets given to me.

“Whatever that costs, I want to watch the Bears. If you spoke to 10-year-old Jim Jefferies and said ‘one day, you could be a part owner of the North Sydney Bears, he would have thought his life turned out all right. So, I’m doing it for that guy.”

The 1% Club, Wednesday, 7.30pm, Channel 7

Originally published as The 1% Club host Jim Jefferies on dirty jokes, stand-up dangers and the return of his beloved Bears