The comedian reveals how his battle with meningitis left him ‘close to death’.

Jimmy Carr has revealed that he was “close to death” after being diagnosed with meningitis as a child. The 51-year-old comedian, speaking on the Where There’s A Will, There’s A Wake podcast with Kathy Burke, recalled being treated in a hospital in Limerick, Ireland, when he was just a toddler.

Carr shared that he was three years old when he contracted the disease, and doctors told his family that he “nearly didn’t make it.” His first memory, according to him, was undergoing a lumbar puncture in the hospital, where he humorously used the phrase “you’ve got to be cruel to be kind” in a child’s voice, a line his mother later found funny.

Reflecting on his experience, Carr said, “I always appreciated that thing of life,” as he was often told how close he had come to death. He also shared that meningitis, an infection of the brain’s protective membranes, is a particularly serious condition, which, if left untreated, can lead to life-threatening sepsis and permanent damage to the brain or nerves.

In a more light-hearted discussion, Carr talked about his ideal way to die, saying he would like his passing to be a funny story. He joked about wanting to die while swimming with sharks in South Africa after forgoing a shark cage. He described a near-miss encounter with a reef shark during a trip to Key West, where he humorously outswam his friend to escape the shark, only to later learn it was harmless. Carr concluded that being “torn apart by sharks” would make for a great story.