James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes Read online

  ‘This isn’t real money is it?’ I double checked, pretty sure that Eureka! weren’t actually going to pay us all twenty pounds each for real. He looked surprised.

  ‘Why yes it is!’ he said. ‘That’s your pay for the day! It’s real all right! Good work, little buddy!’

  I hesitated for a second. Then, and this moment still makes me cringe as an adult, with him watching me, I jumped, twirled in mid-air and shouted in a high-pitched voice, ‘Eureka!’

  Then I skipped out of the room, got into the lift with my family and practically danced as the lift moved down through the floors, imagining how great that new cymbal was going to sound on my drum kit. We reached the ground floor and I strutted out of the lift ahead of everyone else, straight on up to the Eureka! cash machine, where I put my payslip in the slot and then out came . . . Eureka! money. A note with goddamn Archimedes’ idiot face on the front and the stupid number ‘20’ written next to him in a bullshit childish font. As an adult it occurs to me that you may be able to spend that money in the Eureka! gift shop, perhaps to purchase stationery or maybe even a T-shirt. There were fun science-y toys on sale too; maybe I could’ve bought one of those. But I’ll never know because I immediately tore the money up, threw my lunchbox in the bin and sulked in the car all the way home. And with that, my lesson about how it feels to have a day job was well and truly learnt.

  Jobs

  Maybe it’s because of Eureka! that I’ve never truly excelled in the workplace. Before comedy I had many different jobs. My first was at Kettering’s own theme park, Wicksteed Park, home of the Pinfari roller coaster. If you ever meet someone from Kettering who describes Kettering as a ‘shit hole’, remember that the shit hole they’re talking about has a roller coaster in it, so maybe it’s not as bad as they’re making out. At Wicksteed, my job was to sell food and drinks, mainly ice cream and ice blasts, from an outlet called The Oak Tree (the natural home of all things ice).

  On my first day there my co-worker, Cetin, who was giving me the tour said, ‘This is the hot drinks machine. You can make tea, coffee, hot chocolate, but if the hot chocolate runs out, you’ve got to change the bag of hot chocolate powder in the machine, and once, yeah, I opened a new bag of hot chocolate powder and a cloud of hot chocolate powder poofed up in my face and later on that day I sneezed and it tasted like hot chocolate.’

  I knew in that moment that I couldn’t work in The Oak Tree. He was a lovely man, but if that was his best anecdote since working at the park then I was terrified, terrified to my very core. I didn’t want to end up telling people what my sneezes tasted like, even if they did taste like hot chocolate. Oh, and by the way, it didn’t taste like hot chocolate did it? It tasted like chocolate. Nothing tastes like hot chocolate. Something can taste like chocolate but not hot chocolate. Hot chocolate is not a flavour. It’s a temperature that a flavour can be served at but it’s not its own flavour. Hot chocolate tastes like chocolate, the only thing that makes it taste like hot chocolate is the fact that it’s hot, so unless Cetin did a hot sneeze then his sneeze tasted like normal chocolate. These were the thoughts that went through my head during my very first shift.

  After Wicksteed I taught the drums in a music shop. I had so many students, of which about three ever actually practised the drums outside of their lessons. One child, a seven-year-old who was also called James, would turn up every week with a new excuse as to why he hadn’t practised. One week he told me, ‘I wasn’t able to play the drums this week because I’ve really been getting into writing down car number plates.’ It was hard to be angry with him. Whether he’s telling the truth or lying, what a brilliant mind. I hope he was being honest and that he really did spend a week walking the streets making a note of any car number plate that tickled his fancy. I never found out if he was only writing down the number plates of cars he thought looked suspicious or the number plates of cars he thought looked cool and therefore might want to buy one day when he’s an adult. There’s every chance he was just writing down every single car number plate for no reason other than to do it, like a train spotter but with cars. Maybe he’d take them home and read them and find hidden messages in them like in A Beautiful Mind. With any luck one of the hidden messages would’ve been, ‘Stop writing down car number plates and do some effing drum practice, mate.’

  After drum teaching I worked in a pub kitchen for three years. It was a family pub and I think it’s best I don’t say the name of it, but it was also in Kettering. It was the kind of kitchen where many pranks took place, great hilarious pranks such as pulling people’s trousers down, throwing jacket potatoes at people’s nuts, throwing steak knives at people’s feet, putting the metal tongs on the grill until they heat up then hanging them up again and asking someone to flip one of the steaks over with them, putting Tabasco on someone’s straw in their glass of water, getting someone’s personal belongings from the changing rooms then wrapping them in cling film then putting them in a bucket of haddocks in water so that by the end of the shift they smell like rank fish. Oh the laughs we had.

  Sometimes pranks would go awry. One afternoon when the pub was pretty quiet, only fifteen or so customers scattered around eating food, the manager was talking to one of the chefs out in the main dining area. She was saying how impressed she had been with his attitude since working at the pub, how well he had done and that if he kept going the way he’s going, a promotion might be in order. At this point a wacky waiter decided to prank the chef. He had assessed the situation and decided that since none of the customers were looking over in their direction it was fine to pull the chef’s trousers down. And that’s exactly what he did. In front of the manager. Also, the chef wasn’t wearing any pants that day. So he was now naked from the waist down and, I’m told, had quite the dong. Obviously, this was extremely embarrassing for the chef who immediately saw red, turned round and started beating up the waiter in front of the customers, dong still fully on display and swinging around all over the shop, with the waiter fully crying while the beating was taking place. Neither employee was fired.1

  It was a joyous place to work and yet I still decided to leave. As I said, I had been there for three years, and on my final day a waitress was also leaving. She had been there for just over six months and left with armfuls of presents and cards from the waiting staff and bar staff, people she now considered to be her friends. There were so many presents, in fact, that they had to help her lift them all into the car. The kitchen staff I worked with favoured a slightly different approach when it came to goodbyes. When my shift ended at eleven p.m. I walked to my car and saw that they had covered it in dessert sauce and haddock water. There was caramel and chocolate sauce all over the car – they had even put the sauce under the door handles, making it impossible to get into the car and access my cleaning products (this touch was genius, to be fair). An entire bucket of haddock-y juices had been dumped on the roof, coating the body of the car and getting into the air vents, meaning the inside of the car would never stop smelling of fish ever again. Obviously I went back inside and got the names of the perpetrators from the bar staff. One of them didn’t answer his phone and the other was furious when I asked him to come back and clean the car.

  He reluctantly returned, and while scrubbing the bonnet he moaned at me, ‘I mean, what makes you think I want to be cleaning your car at eleven thirty at night?’ to which I replied, ‘What made you think that I want to be cleaning my car at eleven thirty at night?’ Maybe I had misread the entire situation and this had been a gesture of love all along? ‘It’s James’s last day, we all know what he’s into, little treat – late night car wash! Don’t forget he can’t get enough dessert sauce and he loves retching every time he breathes in so do not skimp on the haddock! Farewell, Acaster, good luck in all your future endeavours!’

  I have since learned an extra detail about this event that makes me understand why the guy who came back was so angry. There were actually three people who dessert-bombed my car that night. The third one was an actual
friend of mine who also worked in the kitchen and had somehow got out of being named by the staff at the bar. It’s understandable that the person who ended up cleaning the car with me would be angry because really the worst of the bunch was this so-called friend of mine; he was the one who truly betrayed me after all. In fact, the friend in question still doesn’t know that I know as we’ve never talked about it. So, just in case he’s reading this – fuck you, Olly.

  Assembly

  I seem to have leapt straight from primary school to part-time employment, which is poor form on my part. To do so would be to miss out secondary school, the most embarrassing years of anybody’s life. Secondary school is a minefield of humiliation and your first year there is particularly tricky. A single event during that first year can shape how your classmates view you for the next five. It can mould who you are as a human being, especially if it takes place in front of literally everybody else in your entire school year at exactly the same time.

  Every Monday a different year seven form group would put on an assembly for the rest of the year sevens. Most of the time the assemblies were about a serious subject and were informative and you’d just switch off for the whole thing while kids took it in turns to read facts from pieces of paper. Then one Monday, one form group changed assemblies for ever. Mr Martin’s class knocked it out the park; they pulled out all the stops and put on their very own version of Shooting Stars. That was it: they didn’t try and teach us anything, they just wrote an amazingly funny assembly. To this day it’s probably the greatest live performance I have ever seen.

  Two kids called Danny and Craig played Vic and Bob and were flat out hilarious – at one point they did a joke about Mr Martin’s pubes and got away with it. Another kid nailed it as George Doors, they had the Dove from Above; a nerdy kid called Matthew played the Geek of the Week and danced sideways across the stage while the rest of his class sang ‘Geek of the Week’ and he totally owned it to the point where everyone in our year respected him and I’m pretty sure no one ever gave him any grief for being a geek ever again. For the rest of the day all I did was think about how funny that assembly had been and how much I wished my class had done something like that. The good news was that next Monday it was my class’s turn to do the assembly and we were all in agreement: we had to do something as funny as Shooting Stars.

  We did struggle to think of something radically different to be honest. We knew it was really funny that they had recreated a TV show in their assembly and we all wanted to do the same, but we couldn’t agree on a specific show to send up so we compromised and decided that our assembly would consist of one of us playing somebody watching TV and flicking through the channels and the rest of us would act out all the different shows. Ambitious but potentially a good idea. So we divided into groups of four with each group assigned a TV show which they were to write a sketch about.

  My group were given EastEnders. I personally have never seen EastEnders. Still to this day I’ve never seen it. Back then I’d never seen it AND I was eleven, so wasn’t as good at guessing what EastEnders might be like as I am now. All I knew was that Mr Martin’s class were funny so we better be funny. I asked the other kids in my group what was going on in EastEnders right now.

  ‘Ian Beale is obsessed with the environment and being green,’ said Joseph. ‘The Mitchell brothers are beating people up,’ said Luke.

  I nodded and began to write. I had to make this good, I couldn’t have another Cub Scout Circus Show or Woodcutter and the Christmas Dove on my hands. This had to be so funny that everyone would forget all about Shooting Stars. I did what I should’ve done when I learned to juggle and I followed my instincts. As I read it back to myself I knew this would be even funnier than actual EastEnders itself. And I had written it in five minutes flat. Three minutes longer than it took me to learn to juggle. Because if you want a job done well you’ve got to put the time in.

  Monday rolled around and it was time for the big assembly. The rest of our year were sat on the floor, cross legged, waiting to watch what we’d come up with; some of the kids were still reminiscing about how incredible Shooting Stars had been the week before. The kids who put on the Shooting Stars assembly were sitting in the audience too, looking like bona fide celebs, lapping up the praise. Well, enjoy it while it lasts, because now it’s our turn to shine.

  One of my classmates walked out onstage, sat on a chair and pretended to flick through TV channels with a remote control. Each time they pressed a button, a different kid would rush out and say a couple of words, imitating something from a TV show (this was just to establish the premise, no big laughs just yet) and then we moved on to some longer sketches. To be honest, I can’t remember what any of the other kids’ sketches were, what shows they were sending up, who was in them – nothing. All I was focused on was how much we were about to melt people’s minds with the EastEnders sketch that I had written all by myself, without any help from anyone else. Just me.

  All I know is the sketch before us ended and that was our cue to begin.

  Luke and Leavan walked on to the stage as the Mitchell Brothers, talking to each other like tough guys. The audience were silent, taking in all the info while we set the scene for them. Then, from the other side of the stage, I entered, playing the role of Ian Beale, wearing a big green padded coat. As we crossed paths the Mitchells threw a chocolate bar wrapper on the floor. I stopped in my tracks, staring at the litter in disgust.

  ‘Oi!’ I shouted. ‘Are you going to pick that up?’

  ‘No,’ said Phil Mitchell.

  ‘Pick it up!’ I retorted.

  ‘What you gonna do about it?’ said Grant Mitchell.

  ‘Nothing!’ I boomed. ‘But . . .’ and then I ran offstage.

  The room was silent for about thirty seconds and then . . . I returned! Running full pelt back on to the stage, having taken my big green coat off and tied it around my neck like a cape, ‘. . . Eco Man will!’ I shouted to utter silence.

  Then, with my hands on my hips, I continued, ‘You messed with Eco Man and his sidekick – The Bin Bag!’ Then my friend Joe ran onstage wearing a bin bag (we had cut a hole in the bottom of the bin bag and put it over his head like a poncho).

  The Bin Bag made a high-pitched noise that sounded like, ‘Meep Moop!’ Also to silence.

  What followed was a ten-minute-long comedy fight where Eco Man and The Bin Bag beat up the Mitchell Brothers and every time I punched someone I would shout ‘Eco Man!’ really fast while The Bin Bag ran around, constantly making Pingu-type noises. This entire fight sequence also played to silence. The sketch ended with the Mitchell Brothers in a pile on the floor, me with my foot up on their lifeless bodies, The Bin Bag doing a victory dance next to me, to pure and perfect silence.

  The Bin Bag

  Every single person in the school year had watched the entire sketch without making a peep. They hadn’t laughed or, to be fair, heckled; they just stared at us, trying to figure out what they’d just seen. Because (and I only realised this once we were onstage performing the sketch for the first time), we hadn’t established that the programme we were sending up was EastEnders. At no point did we tell the audience that this was meant to be EastEnders. We didn’t use the EastEnders theme music at the start of the sketch and we didn’t say any of the characters’ names at any point, so no one knew we were Ian Beale and the Mitchell Brothers; as far as our audience were concerned they had just seen us perform a note perfect version of an obscure show called ‘Eco Man’ that actually existed.

  After the performance one of the girls who’d been in the audience asked me where they could watch the original TV show. I told them we were doing EastEnders and I was playing Ian Beale and finally I achieved the laughter I had been so very hungry for while on stage. She told some other girls and they found it equally hysterical. I was pretty sure they weren’t laughing for the right reasons and the reasons they were laughing for were probably bad, but at this point I’d take anything. For about six months after tha
t those girls would call me Ian Beale (or his alter ego, Eco Man) in the corridor whenever they walked past. And yeah it was pretty mean of them but I’ll say this – Mr Martin’s class never got ‘Shooting Stars’ yelled at them on the way to their maths lesson. So maybe I could console myself with that? At least my work was standing the test of time. Come to think of it, it’s not like Matthew had been able to follow up his Cub Scout Circus Show juggling act – he’d been a flash in the pan! Little did I know that I was about to experience a hit of my own and I’d soon discover that being a big success wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  Humpty Dumpty

  Only a few weeks later during a music lesson, my class were split into groups of five or six, sent to different rooms and told to choose any genre of music, then take a nursery rhyme and perform it in our chosen genre. My friends and I proceeded to joke around and not do any work and then when we were told we only had two minutes left we quickly threw something together. I was unaware at the time that what we had thrown together was both the best and worst thing I had ever had a hand in (this is probably still the case even now).

  The nursery rhyme we chose was ‘Humpty Dumpty’, the instruments we chose were our voices. We were the only group in the class to go completely a cappella. We watched as the other groups performed their nursery rhymes for the class and the standard was high. A reggae version of ‘Little Bo Peep’ was very well received and a hip-hop ‘Grand Old Duke of York’ set people’s hearts on fire. We were the final group to perform (some would call us the headliners but I don’t like to say that as it sounds like boasting but yes we were technically the headliners). My four friends (three of whom were the same friends from the ill-fated Eco Man sketch) stood behind me in a line, shoulder to shoulder, and began to sway from side to side while reciting ‘Humpty Dumpty’ slowly and sadly in a depressing monotone.