James Corden’s leadership advice: trust your colleagues and know when to quit

It’s not often that a midweek fundraising event at a London synagogue attracts audience members from America, France and Malta – as well as Scotland, Leeds, Lancashire and Birmingham.

But this event featured actor, writer and TV host James Corden – co-creator of the BBC’s hit comedy Gavin and Stacey and host for eight years of the American chat show The Late, Late Show, being interviewed by his friend and producer, Ben Winston. As one of the Americans put it, "We love you guys."

Corden, though not Jewish himself, was clearly relaxed to be at South Hampstead Synagogue, telling the 400-strong audience how every Saturday he takes his daughter to buy a bagel, wishing shul goers “Shabbat shalom” on the way. When he lived in Los Angeles he was “warmly embraced” by the local Jewish community, especially after he filmed a segment helping out in a kosher butcher’s shop (a clip proved that kosher shops and their customers are the same worldwide). Asked by Winston if he preferred milk or meat, he shot back with “neither, I’m parev, baby” and the biggest laugh of the night came when, talking about the Gavin and Stacey Christmas specials he paused and offered to explain exactly what Christmas is: “It’s a big deal!”
The theme of the evening was leadership, as it was raising funds for the Lira Winston Fellowships, which provides training and support for future leaders in Jewish education, through PaJeS the umbrella body set up by Lira Winston, Ben’s mother and the wife of Lord Robert Winston. She died in 2021, aged 72.

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Good leadership, said Corden, is “about the trust you have when you have the right people around you. Let them do what they’re great at.” He said he couldn’t have made a success of The Late Late Show without Winston as his executive producer, which enabled him to concentrate on the creative side of the programme, and his greatest achievement was that their close friendship is still intact.
When he first went to America to take over the iconic show from David Letterman, “No one knew who I was, and no one knew what I could do.” This felt at first like a weakness, but he recognised it as a strength, giving him and Winston confidence that their plans for the show would work.