James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes Read online

  Copyright © 2017 James Acaster

  The right of James Acaster to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain

  by Headline Publishing Group in 2017

  First published as an Ebook in Great Britain

  by Headline Publishing Group in 2017

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements with regard to reproducing copyright material. The author and publisher will be glad to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  Cover photograph © Paul Hansen

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 4720 9

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  Hello

  Towel

  Juggling

  Eureka!

  Jobs

  Assembly

  Humpty Dumpty

  School Band

  Pindrop

  Jam

  Reunion

  Road Sign

  Shortcut

  Fiesta

  Skydive

  Porcelain

  Ice Skating

  Line Dancing

  Karaoke

  Board Games

  Wrestling

  Shame

  W’s

  Déjà Vu

  Didgeridoo

  Festival

  Basingstoke

  Alistair

  Strimmer

  Fell Foot Sound

  Twister

  Mr Eko

  Déjà vu, Déjà vu

  Derailed

  Paris

  Alcatraz

  Wine

  Badminton

  Xmas Tree

  New Year’s Eve

  Fancy Dress

  Cabadged

  Farewell

  Footnotes

  About the Author

  James Acaster has been nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award five times in a row and has appeared on such shows as Mock The Week, Live at the Apollo and Russell Howard’s Stand-Up Central.

  About the Book

  Behind the fame and critical acclaim is a man perpetually getting into trouble. Whether it’s disappointing a skydiving instructor mid-flight, hiding from thugs in a bush wearing a bright red dress, or annoying the Kettering Board Games club, a didgeridoo-playing conspiracy theorist and some bemused Christians, James is always finding new ways to embarrass himself.

  For Charlie, Toby and Freddie. May you stay out of trouble.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  When you’re constantly messing up in life, the support and encouragement of the people around you is the only thing stopping you from giving up on your dreams. The following people have been amazingly supportive and hugely encouraging and I will always be grateful. A massive thank you to:

  Josh Widdicombe, Neil Fearn, Charles Ballard, Richard Roper, Chris Lander, Amy Hopwood, Kate Watson, Georgia Jones, Phil McIntyre, David Acaster, Di Acaster, Stephen Acaster, Ruth Blythe, Amy Acaster, David Blythe, David Trent, Mick Trent, Graeme Wicks, Jake Ashton, Ben Foot, Josie Long, Milton Jones, Matthew Hill, Joe Steinhardt, Kate Foulds, Matt Ayre, Sam Holmes, Nish Kumar, Ed Gamble, Stuart Laws, Paul Bertellotti, Katie Philips, Tom Baxter, Rose Matafeo, Jim Watts, Katie Rock, Tamsyn Payne, Joe Brown, Jack Barry, Lindsay Fenner, Nathaniel Metcalfe, Saurabh Kakkar, Josh Cole, Dan Lucchesi, Marina Veneziale, Reuben Humphries, Jim Hurren, Amanda Redman, Katherine Montgomery, Gary Keller, Ross Chudasama, Chris Hamilton, Rob Deering, Scott Blanks, Katie Cottrell, Cordelia Bradby, Trevor Lock, Alan Mason, Sid Harris, Ed Moore, Brett Goldstein, Joel Dommett, Stuart Goldsmith, Val Brownlee, Billy Brownlee, Alistair, Rybo, The King Fox and Mr Eko.

  Foreword

  by Josh Widdicombe

  When I got a job on Saturday morning radio I mainly saw it as a chance to hang out with people I found funny and call it work. James Acaster was, and remains, the funniest person I know. There was never a grand plan that he would use this platform to tell me the story of his life disaster by disaster, and I have no idea how it evolved into that, but thank God it did, as I didn’t have much else to fill the show with.

  At some point James’s stories became labelled Scrapes and then, I have no idea when, James became labelled the Scrapemaster. This had the added bonus of each week hearing the DJ of the show before mine – a man who clearly had no idea who James was or what his role on the show involved – having to read out what was coming up on my show: ‘Josh has music from Pulp and Arctic Monkeys and will be joined by the Scrapemaster James Acaster.’ The word ‘Scrapemaster’ was articulated with a mixture of confusion and disappointment for what clearly passes for radio entertainment these days.

  At one story a week I presumed James would run dry after a few months but as you can see by the thickness of this book, I was very much mistaken. It was a peak era for James’s scrapes. While he had many from his past (referred to on the show as ‘archive Scrapes’) they were still coming thick and fast in his life at this point. Being there when James told ‘Failing to Tie a Tie’ or ‘Alastair’ on the very week they had happened is the closest I will ever feel to being one of those people in the street watching The Beatles play on the roof of Abbey Road.

  (I should say at this point that it sounds like I got a job on the radio and then just co-opted a funny friend to do the hard work for me for free. This isn’t true, because as part of the deal I bought James ‘a lunch of his choice’ each week after the show. I remain thankful that James shares my love of mid-level high street restaurants and so the show was still viable financially.)

  A lot of people described the Scrapes as like something out of a sitcom. However, I would say most of them are too far fetched for that – if you pitched half of them to a comedy producer they would be thrown out instantly: ‘Holy Mackerel! No audience is going to buy this, it would never happen, this character is too weird!’ But I can understand how all of them happened; whatever James’s actions there is always a logic. I read a book recently that says the perfect sitcom plot should see the character acting logically to help themselves win, but actually making their situation worse with each action. This is the perfect description of James in the Scrapes. At each point I understand why he did what he did but never once does his decision making seem to do anything other than make things much, much worse. I understand and sympathise with every action within the Red Dress story but boy does he get himself into a sticky situation he doesn’t need to be in.

  Once the radio show ended I thought that would be the last I would hear of the Scrapes, apart from occasionally getting James to tell them in social situations, shouting out requests for the hits like I had gone to see the Kings of Leon. So I am delighted they have found a home in this book, a book which tells the tale of James’s life in a way I hadn’t expected. When James used to tell the stories on the radio show they would dot around his life with no real narrative w
eek by week; it was James Acaster’s life but reordered like the scenes in Pulp Fiction. Reading them chronologically it now feels like James has accidentally written his autobiography, the scrapes telling the story of the different stages of his life. Unlucky child, bored teenage drifter, eccentric musician, comedian. What all these periods have in common is that James had a lot of downtime and he didn’t use it wisely. If James had gone to university or got a 9-5 job he wouldn’t have had time to go to a porcelain exhibition or go dress shopping in Andover. It would have been easy to say he was wasting his youth, but it turns out he was sacrificing himself for his art like when George Orwell went to fight in the Spanish Civil war. Only funnier.

  Now James is a successful comedian on our televisions he has less free time, and while I am delighted for him and his success I do worry this means the Scrapes will dry up. Please remember that each time you laugh at him on Mock the Week another Scrape has been averted. Still, maybe that is for the best. How much punishment can one man take? At points in this book James’s life reads like the script for Final Destination – thank God he made it through in one piece.

  Finally, I would also like to take this opportunity to say I was innocent of any involvement in cabadging James and I will be contacting my lawyers.

  Hello

  When I was a baby, I urinated into my own mouth. I don’t remember doing it but my mother told me it happened and she has no reason to lie. As far as I can gather, I was lying on my back naked and somehow managed it. To be honest, I’d rather not go into details. The reason I’m telling you this is so that, straight out the gate, you know who I am and where I came from. This was how my life began and more or less how it continued for many, many years. This book is essentially the tale of a man repeatedly urinating into his own mouth. Pleased to meet you.

  I should first of all point out that I never referred to these events as ‘scrapes’ until 2012 when my friend Josh Widdicombe got his own radio show and would invite me on each week to share a story with the listeners. I believe Josh began referring to them as ‘scrapes’ and it quickly stuck. I just think it’s important that you know that I don’t go around telling people that I get into lots of ‘scrapes’, as being seen as that kind of guy makes me feel uncomfortable.

  I was very lucky to get the opportunity to tell these stories on Josh’s show because I had tried telling them as part of my stand-up in the past and couldn’t make them work. When I started out in comedy I had a very strict rule that everything I said on stage had to be true, and so I would tell these true stories without any embellishments and night after night the audience would still assume I was lying. Instead of getting laughs I’d be met with suspicion, scepticism and, on more than one occasion, silence. And so I started doing less autobiographical stand-up instead, which worked better for me but meant I had nowhere I could put these true stories.

  Going on Josh’s show every week was great because a radio environment is very different to that of a comedy club. It was much more like sitting around talking to my mates and so the stories were given a new lease of life. Obviously there will still be some people reading this book who will be sceptical, but that’s fine, it’s been really cool to finally find a home for all this material.

  The reason why I’m more scrape-prone than most is hard to pin down. But I think the difference between me and someone who stays more or less scrape-free is a couple of seconds. In most of these stories if I’d just taken a couple more seconds to consider my options I would’ve been fine. But instead I went with the first idea that popped into my head and ended up with a mouthful of urine.

  I think it’s best that I start from the earliest scrape I can remember and just carry on from there. The first scrape anyone ever gets themselves into is quite unique, because they’ve never been in this sort of situation before (as far as they can recall) and so everything that happens introduces them to emotions they never knew they had. However, unlike most people, I don’t get any better at dealing with these emotions as my life progresses. If you compare the first story in this book to the final story you’ll see that they essentially happen to exactly the same person, a person who has learned absolutely nothing throughout his entire life. This first story takes place when he is five and as wise as he’s ever going to be.

  Towel

  I didn’t realise this was unusual at the time, but I went to a primary school that didn’t have any hand driers or paper towels so the students had to bring in their own towels every day from home.

  Even after changing to a different primary school that did not have this rule, I still thought there was nothing out of the ordinary about having to bring a towel into school every day until I was in my twenties and, whilst chatting to a group of people at a party, said, ‘Yeah, it’s like when you were a little kid and you used to have to bring your towel into school with you!’ As everyone stared back at me blankly it dawned on me that this might not be the universal experience I once thought it was. But between the ages of five and six I would walk to school carrying a rolled-up towel under my arm and saw nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

  James Acaster on his way to school aged 5

  This is the story of the day I forgot my towel. This is also the story of the first time I ever got in trouble. Let’s face it, the two usually go hand in hand. Anyone who has ever needed a towel but has failed to bring said towel usually ends up in some form of trouble. They’ve opened themselves up to all sorts of issues, probably the kind that concern how wet or dry something or someone is going to be at any given moment during the day. I should point out that I did not get told off for forgetting my towel. I could’ve handled that. Receiving a swift but stern lecture about how I need to remember to bring my towel into school and how I have to learn to be responsible – that would have been fine and may have even made me a better person in the long run. But I didn’t realise I’d forgotten my towel until it was too late.

  I’d been to the toilet, washed my hands properly with soap and warm water, then stepped from the toilets into the cloak room where my towel should have been and realised I’d left it at home. I froze, soapy water dripping from my hands. I had never made a mistake like this before in my entire life. I don’t know if you remember the first time you ever forgot to do something but it feels completely surreal. You’ve got no frame of reference for it, you’ve literally never experienced this level of panic before, and there’s no one around to help you. I was on my own, no adults to turn to for help. I couldn’t walk into the classroom with soapy hands and ask the teacher to help me, I’d be an instant target for bullies – plus I could have got into trouble for dripping soapy water on to the classroom floor and at this point I had an immaculate behaviour record that I didn’t fancy marring just because I couldn’t handle my own business.

  There was one other kid in the cloakroom, whose name was Simon. All I remember about Simon is that he had very straight hair and a very posh voice. That’s it. He was sitting on a bench tying his shoes up.

  Here’s what I could’ve said: ‘Simon, can I borrow your towel?’ Looking back now as a thirty-two-year-old I think that would’ve been my best bet, because if Simon had said yes, I could’ve dried my hands on his towel and then continued with my day. But I didn’t ask Simon if I could borrow his towel. Instead I said, ‘Who in our class do you hate the most?’

  He gave it some consideration then answered, ‘Siobhan.’

  So, as a favour to Simon (I assume), I walked over to Siobhan’s coat, which was hanging up on her coat hook, and proceeded to dry my hands on her coat. Perhaps the reason why I asked Simon who he hated the most was so Simon and I would be in this together, as technically this had now been his idea as well. If I had just dried my hands on the coat of the person I, James Acaster, hated the most then I would be solely to blame, whereas now I had someone I could take down with me if things turned sour.

  And yet I don’t think that was the reason I asked Simon who in our class he hated the most. Because, the truth is, it never o
ccurred to me that I would get caught or get into trouble for this. I had never been in trouble before, the concept of ‘getting caught’ was completely foreign to me. As far as I was concerned, Siobhan’s coat would be dry by the time she came to put it on at the end of the school day and no one would ever know what I’d done, it’d just be a secret between Simon and I. I think the real reason I asked Simon who he hated the most was because I had found myself in a pickle and decided that I had to wipe my hands on a classmate’s coat and since I felt bad about this, I tried to turn this bad deed into a good deed for someone else. And so I asked Simon who he hated the most, then used his enemy’s coat as a towel as a little treat for Simon. Plus I would be wiping my hands on a bad person’s coat (because surely no one would ever hate a good person) and therefore not really being that naughty myself. If you do a bad thing to a bad person then that makes you a good person, doesn’t it? Everybody knows that.

  As five-year-olds go, Siobhan was in fact a very good person. She never did anything wrong to anyone and did not deserve having her coat used as a hand towel by a forgetful classmate. After this incident we actually became friends, and one day when she opened her lunchbox to discover her chocolate bar was missing, we launched a full investigation between the two of us and unearthed the culprit (a boy named Anthony. NOT Simon. Although he was our initial suspect for obvious reasons). If you happened to see us that day, working together like proper detectives, you would never guess that just a few months previously we had been on opposite sides of the fence.

  After wiping my hands on a little girl’s coat, I went about my day and forgot all about what I’d done because, as I said, I had never been in trouble before and so did not think that I would get caught because I simply didn’t know what that even was. I was in a great mood that day because as far as I was concerned, I had solved a problem using my head. Very proud of myself. Very proud, indeed.