James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes

by James Acaster

  Shortcut

  Back when I was in secondary school I would often walk from my house to my friend George’s house and cut through the school grounds to get there. Even on the weekends or after school hours it was easy to make this shortcut. I would leave my parents’ house, walk to the school, continue through the main entrance, cut diagonally across the playground and then across the big playing field, walk through the gap in the hedge and then I’d be on the street adjacent to George’s. It shaved about half an hour off the journey. Great shortcut.

  When I left school I carried on doing this. This was the late nineties, early 00s and there was nothing to stop anyone who wanted to from walking on to school property whenever they wanted. Plus the staff at my school liked it when old students returned to say hello and I would often combine the shortcut with a quick catch-up with one of my old teachers. Great shortcut. Then I didn’t do it for a few months because I’d learned to drive (more on that later).

  I left school at seventeen and went to college in Northampton to take a BTEC Music course. While at the college I had met a group of musicians and joined a band called The New Hardcore Skiffle Movement (this band would later go on to be known as Three Line Whip). All was well.

  And then one fine day when I was nineteen-ish, I decided to pay a visit to my buddy George, and since it was such a beautiful day I thought it’d be nice to do the old walk again. As I approached the school I noticed that there was a very high fence surrounding the building. That’s new, I thought to myself, but the main entrance to the school was still wide open and so I walked in as always. It was one o’clock so I knew all the students would be in their lessons and I could cut across in peace. But as soon as my feet touched the playground tarmac, an alarm went off. Not in my head, I mean a literal alarm, really loud and ringing throughout the entire school. Had my school installed a security system whereby if someone from outside steps on to school property it triggers an alarm? I hoped not, as I was sure they would all feel very silly when they realised it was me, James Acaster, the best student that ever attended this fine institution and not some sinister stranger one would usually need to sound an alarm for. But I soon learnt that it wasn’t an alarm, it was the lunch bell.

  It turned out that lunchtime (which should always be at midday) had been pushed back a whole hour since my day and so within seconds the playground was flooded with secondary school kids. The kids were running round, playing games, and looking at the unfamiliar adult who shouldn’t be there and was standing, bemused, in the middle of their tennis court. At that moment a dinner lady walked up to me. I hadn’t met her before so she must’ve been new and therefore perhaps wasn’t coming over to chat about old times.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘No thanks,’ I replied coolly, ‘I’m just cutting through.’

  She looked puzzled. ‘Well you can’t do that.’

  This was news to me as I’d been doing just that for years and no one had minded. But as soon as she said, ‘You can’t do that,’ it sort of made instant sense and sounded beyond reasonable.

  ‘You’re going to have to leave,’ she said, which also sounded totally fair. I had no problem with leaving as that had been my plan all along. When you’re taking a shortcut through somewhere, your only plan is to leave that place; I was never going to hang around for a while.

  ‘Will do,’ I said and began to continue on my way.

  ‘No, back the way you came,’ she said sternly.

  ‘But the distance is the same,’ I pleaded. ‘Can’t I just carry on this way?’

  Her patience was wearing thin. ‘If you want to go that way and continue to be on school premises you’ll have to sign in,’ she stated, and pointed towards the reception area. And so in my stubbornness I decided that signing in was exactly what I’d do.

  The main reason I chose to sign in was because I felt like I was beginning to look like a suspicious character and I wanted to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was anything but a suspicious character. One thing a suspicious character would never do is sign in, and so by signing in I was demonstrating how much the opposite of suspicious I was. I walked into the reception area and up to the reception desk where a receptionist was dealing with someone else. There was a sign-in sheet on a clipboard on the desk so I started to fill it out.

  ‘Name’ was easy enough (James Acaster). ‘Reason For Visit’ was easy too (cutting through). But ‘Time In’ and ‘Time Out’ kind of threw me as I would be leaving straight away so those times would both technically be the same and I wasn’t sure if you were allowed to put the same time for ‘Time In’ and ‘Time Out’. As I stared at the sheet the receptionist asked if I needed a hand and so, like an idiot, I explained my problem to her.

  ‘I’m just cutting through the school on my way to George’s house and so I’m a little unsure if it’s OK to just put the same time for “Time In” and “Time Out”.’

  She looked at me the way most people look at someone who’s just said something offensively ludicrous and then took the clipboard away from me. ‘You’re cutting through?’

  ‘Yes, I’m on my way to George’s house but I’m not sure if I should just put the same time for “Time In” and “Time Out”, you see.’

  Her expression didn’t change. ‘We’re a school, not a public footpath.’

  ‘Yeah but I used to go here, it’s fine, it’s fine! I’m James Acaster, it’s fine!’

  It wasn’t fine. She put the clipboard behind the desk and walked to the door. ‘I’m getting the deputy head.’

  She left the room and I sat down in the waiting area. I had been back in school for five seconds and I was already in trouble with the deputy head. I sat there waiting for Mr Barley to turn up so I could finally explain myself to someone who knew me and knew I wasn’t a bad egg. Mr Barley liked me, always had. I worked very hard in his maths classes and he helped me pass my maths GCSE. Yeah, me and Old Barley would sort all this out. Once Barley arrived we’d have a ruddy good catch-up; he’d probably get me to recreate the Eco Man sketch right there in the reception area, and perhaps a rendition of ‘La La La Humpty’ for old time’s sake. This receptionist was going to look like quite the fool once Barley arrived and told her she was currently delaying the drummer and founding member of Pindrop.

  As you’ve probably guessed, Mr Barley had retired and instead I got some other guy I’d never met before. He was tall and well built. I mean, he looked tough, bald-headed and angry that this little punk was trying to cut through his school. I tried to explain to him that I used to go to the school, that there must be plenty of teachers in the staffroom who could vouch for me, but he wasn’t having any of it – I had to leave. I agreed that leaving was a good idea but again asked if I could just continue the way I was going. This man was very angry and getting angrier by the second. He told me I would leave the school the way I came and that he didn’t want to hear another word about it. Even though he was turning a furious shade of red I was still eerily relaxed about the whole thing. The reason I was still so relaxed is because I had tried to cut through the school during mufti day and the deputy head was now bollocking me while wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. You can’t take anyone seriously when they’re dressed for a day of chilling on the beach. He should’ve been holding a pina colada and rubbing sun tan lotion all over his bald head while telling me off.

  But even so, I did as I was told and left the premises. I may not have succeeded at breaking any rules since I left school but it was nice to know that back on my old stomping ground I was once again considered a troublesome rebel.

  Fiesta

  As I mentioned in the previous story, I had now learnt to drive. The only reason I had ‘chosen’ to walk to George’s house that day was because eight days after I passed my driving test, I had written off my parents’ Ford Fiesta and didn’t drive for a while after that. Before I tell this story it’s important that you know that no one was hurt. Also, this is the first of three stories in this boo
k (a trilogy, yes) where I write off a car. Because I have written off three cars.

  Ok, cool, here we go.

  I was eighteen and had gone out to meet some friends for the night. We met up in a pub but none of us drank any alcohol because we were all driving and we were good boys (you are correct in assuming it was the same boys I stole the road sign with).

  When you’re eighteen and you’ve just passed your driving test and you’re driving home on your own late at night, you tend to feel pretty carefree. And maybe drive a little bit faster than you should. And maybe go round a corner where there’s mud on the road and lose control of the car.

  The car skidded and span, everything moved way too fast for me to even figure out what was happening or what I should do to stop it carrying on. I hadn’t been taught how to deal with this during my lessons, I had only been taught how to prevent it from happening in the first place, but seeing as I had chosen to ignore that advice the moment I got my driver’s licence, I was now in a spot of bother.

  The car came off the road and over quite a high grass verge; this caused the car to bounce up and down clumsily. At one point the car bounced sideways into a hedge then back on to the verge then back into the hedge then back on to the verge then back into a hedge and then on to the verge. I felt like I was inside a pinball machine. The final time the car hit the grass verge it landed on the two wheels on the right hand side and then balanced on those two wheels at a precarious angle. I knew that if the car fell on its roof something bad could happen because the car was small, it wasn’t moving fast enough to roll and instead it would just slam into the ground. I sat and waited, my head touching the ceiling, while the car gently rocked, making up its mind which way to fall, and then eventually landed on all four wheels again.

  I then said out loud, ‘Shit, I’ve just crashed the car.’ That’s what I like to do when something scary happens and I’m on my own, I just confirm it with myself and swear at the start so I never forget that I am a badass.

  Even though I had openly acknowledged the fact I had definitely crashed the car, I still tried to drive away. If you’ve ever crashed a car you’ll know that you don’t want to accept it, running immediately into the arms of denial. I thought maybe I could drive home and my parents would never need to know what happened. To my utter relief the car started and I drove off. And then the car stalled two seconds later and lay dead and unmoving in the middle of the road. I tried to start it again but it showed no sign of life. I tried to turn the lights on – also nothing. And then I saw the headlights of another car coming towards me, fast. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw another set of headlights approaching even faster from behind. Then both cars reached me at the exact same time, saw my car at the very last second, swerved around me and ended up hitting each other.

  Once again I feel like I should point out, everyone was fine.

  In the short-term anyway.

  I may have gone a little off the rails for about six months . . .

  Skydive

  After writing off my parents’ Fiesta I had myself a midlife crisis (yes at eighteen). I was terrified I wasn’t doing enough with my life and that one day there was even a chance I would be dead. I had not seen the film The Bucket List, it hadn’t even been released at the time, but I decided there were a few things I simply had to experience before death and so made a list of those things (what I’m saying is, I came up with the idea for The Bucket List before it even came out). There were three things on the list that I managed to achieve. One was to try stand-up comedy, which I initially put off out of fear. Another was to do volunteer work which was much easier as I knew someone who worked at the Kettering Volunteer Bureau (obviously I always referred to this as ‘The Bureau’ so I could feel like a cool FBI guy whenever I went in there). They sent me to paint an elderly woman’s kitchen – something I actually had no experience of, and so I did what is commonly referred to as a hideous job. Her kitchen somehow looked worse than it did before I painted it, getting progressively worse the more work I did on it. Quite remarkable.

  After making a sweet old lady’s kitchen look unbearably ugly I was asked by The Bureau if there was anything they could do for me in return. Because I felt guilty about the kitchen I tried to think of the one thing on my do-before-I-die list that they wouldn’t be able to help me with so I said I’d like to try stand-up comedy. To my relief they said they didn’t really do that sort of stuff and sent me on my way.

  Then two days later they rang me saying that a guy had come into The Bureau asking for help setting up a stand-up comedy workshop in Kettering and so they had put my name down to attend since they already knew I was keen. There was one workshop a week for nine weeks and three of us attended. Our teacher would always be drinking a pack of beers and he never strictly taught us anything, but I think that was actually a good thing. Every week he’d just make us get up one by one and do ten minutes of new material to the other three people in the room and then he’d either say, ‘That was funny’ or ‘That was shit’. I honestly think that this is the best way to help someone get started in stand-up – no instruction, no tips, just make them start. Put them in a position where they’re forced to figure it out by themselves and at the end of it all put them on stage and make them do a gig.

  The guy who ran the workshop was called Jim Watts and on the night of our first gig he told us we were setting ourselves apart from 99.9 per cent of the population just by getting on stage, so it didn’t matter how it went. I still remind myself of this fact every time I’ve just been unfunny on stage. That first gig was in a local pub in Kettering. It was fun and went better than I expected but I didn’t consider moving into it as a career because Three Line Whip was still going strong and I was going to be an extremely influential musician/genius. So for the next couple of years I would do a comedy gig once every four months just because I enjoyed it.

  One of the other goals on the I’m-going-to-die list was to do a skydive.

  I saw a poster advertising the chance to do a charity skydive and it felt perfect. I would get to fulfill a life goal while raising money for something, thus making myself feel like a good person in the process. The charity was Age Concern, quite fitting when you consider I was currently fretting over my own mortality. If anyone was concerned about ageing it was James Acaster, so in a way I was raising money for myself – win-win. Having said that, if I was truly concerned about the aged I’d probably have taken more care when painting their kitchens. It turns out it’s actually not easy to get people to donate to Age Concern because the name doesn’t sound urgent enough. Very few charities reel people in by playing on their concern. I would tell people I was collecting for Age Concern and they would look baffled and ask, ‘Well, what’s wrong with them? Why the concern?’ to which I would answer, ‘They’re old.’ If it was called Age Crisis I’d have raised some big bucks in next to no time. There is a world of difference between crisis and concern, that’s all I’m saying. Anyway it’s a great charity; please give what you can.

  Once I had raised enough money I assumed doing the actual skydive would be fairly simple. However, I had a bunch of jumps cancelled for various reasons:

  Jump One – too cloudy. We got all the way up to 12,000 feet in the plane and then just flew back down again and went home. You would think they’d be able to tell how cloudy it is from the ground; I still don’t know why we had to go all the way up there in the plane to figure out that there were clouds in the sky.

  Rescheduled Jump – too cloudy. Couldn’t we just jump through the clouds though, really? It’s not like we’re going to hit any clouds on the way down, guys!! It was safe enough to fly up here so surely it’s safe enough to jump down again!!

  Rescheduled Rescheduled Jump – another skydiver messed up his landing and slipped a disc in his back and so no one else could jump that day because he was lying in the landing zone waiting for the ambulance in agony. He messed up his landing because it was too cloudy and he couldn’t see where he was going (I�
��m guessing).

  So when I arrived at the airfield to do the rescheduled rescheduled rescheduled jump I was extremely laid-back, because as far as I was concerned I would once again end up not jumping out of a plane that day. I skipped the safety course (I’d done it three times and knew it back to front), absolutely destroyed a child at big Jenga in the waiting room, watched an episode of Friends and then, two hours later, they called my name along with a bunch of other people and we got into the plane. I talked to everyone on the plane like I hadn’t a care in the world, knowing that something would once again get in the way and stop me from doing the jump. But on this particular day nothing got in the way at all and so I ended up jumping out of a plane without having prepared myself for jumping out of a plane. I wasn’t prepared mentally, emotionally or physically, and so it ended up feeling like I had been unexpectedly pushed out of a plane for real.

  Just so I don’t put you off entirely I should mention that the free fall element of skydiving is incredible and I loved it. Before the parachute opened and after I had accepted the fact that I was about to die, it was an experience like no other and that alone made the whole thing worth it. To my surprise, my skydiving instructor loved the experience even more than I did, he was whooping and shrieking in a way that led me to believe this was his first time too and maybe they had accidentally attached two newbies together and pushed us out of the plane without realising, and meanwhile two professional instructors were attached to one another, free-falling in silence and each wondering why the other wasn’t more excited.

  ‘Woooooooo! Yeah! How do you like free fall, James?!?!?!,’ he screamed in my ear.