Like Will Hay (q.v.) James was born in Stockton, in Portrack Lane. He was a brilliant comedian, whose alcoholic routines greatly influenced Sid Field and Frank Randle. His gruff manner and gambler's clothes were allied to a certain gentleness, even when he was upbraiding his dense stooges Hutton Conyers and Bretton Woods.
James' voice was described by the Guardian as 'Durham clay'. His dialogue was precise but also surreal. An example is when Conyers has been presented with two lions when abroad:

JIMMY: Where do you keep them?
CONYERS: In this box.
JIMMY: I thought I heard a rustling!

Giraffes join the lions in the box. With the elephant, common sense appears to supervene:

CONYERS: I keep the elephant in a cage.
JIMMY: Of course. And where do you keep the cage?
CONYERS: (echoed by Jimmy) In the box! Eli is introduced as a dare-devil parachutist, falling 20,000 feet before pulling the ripcord ten feet above the theatre stalls:

ELI: But what if the parachute doesn't open?
JIMMY: You can jump ten feet can't you?

Jimmy had no great regard for jokes as such and was ahead of his time in being 'a man who said things funnily' rather than a man who said funny things. In this he anticipated Tony Hancock by twenty years. He was probably the only comedian ever to do a complete act off the cuff, without a script. Jimmy appeared three times before the bankruptcy court, in 1936, 1955 and 1963. On the last occasion, he declared in court: 'I have now won the Official Receiver outright.' He is buried in the Oxbridge cemetery in Stockton.