James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes

by James Acaster

  I had been in the shop for a matter of seconds when a small lady emerged from the dresses. She had unruly grey hair and was wearing a dress that looked much nicer than anything in her shop. She was also far from happy when I told her I wanted to buy a plain red dress.

  ‘All the red ones are really high up,’ she said, scowling and pointing to the ceiling. I’m not sure why this was the case and still don’t understand the merits of grouping all of the red dresses together in an impossible to reach place. Red seems like a popular colour to me. Keep the red dresses near the door where people can walk straight in and start looking at them and reserve the deepest darkest corners of the ceiling for polka dot shin pads and tweed hot pants, surely? The shopkeeper disappeared, then returned with a long wooden pole with a metal hook on the end and said, ‘Which one?’ I then had to peer up at the red dress section and point out ones I liked the look of, and then it would take her roughly ten minutes to guide the pole towards the dress, unhook the dress, then bring the dress down safely towards me so I could see it up close and inevitably tell her that it wasn’t what I was looking for. She would then have to try and hang the dress back up again, which took longer than bringing it down in the first place. After I rejected the fifth dress I could tell I was testing her patience. I tried to think of an easier way of doing things. Maybe she could hook the back of my shirt with the long pole and hoist me up into the red dress department so I could browse from the rafters and find the perfect outfit while she swung me from one dress to another? I am aware this is impractical and unrealistic but even this idea seemed to make more sense than the current system she had in place.

  Once I’d noticed that she was getting irritated I did what I always do and I said yes to the very next option regardless of whether I wanted to or not. This resulted in me leaving with a bright red dress complete with huge shoulder pads. You know, the kind of dress that no one would ever wear ever, even if they were a fictional character in a short film. Excellent work, as per.

  Proposed method for retrieving red dresses

  I was so relieved when it was time for the gig to start. I didn’t know any of the other acts but one of them was giving me a lift home. (The promoter always insisted on there being a driver on every bill who could drive people home if needs be. I had already organised a lift with this act via email, days in advance. I tell you this because later in the story he goes back on his word and screws me over massively and I now hate him and want you to hate him too. I say ‘later in the story’ but it’s literally about to happen next.)

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said, when the gig had finished. ‘I don’t feel like going back to London now. I’m kind of shagging this bird in Basingstoke so I’m going there instead.’ I didn’t have time to ask what ‘kind of shagging’ meant, instead I immediately checked the train timetables and, of course, there were no more trains to London from Andover. I asked at the bar if I could stay at the pub overnight but was informed that such a thing was out of the question. The bar staff told me that if this horrific scumbag (possibly not their words) was driving to Basingstoke to kind of shag someone then there were trains to London from Basingstoke until midnight and that he should at least drop me off at Basingstoke train station. And so he begrudgingly drove me to Basingstoke train station and spent the whole journey telling me that the Andover audience were shit because they didn’t laugh at his Heather Mills routine but did laugh at my routine about bubbles. Now, I had not done a routine about bubbles and have never before or since done a routine about bubbles. I have to concede that I am the sort of act who would do a routine about bubbles but that’s not the point; the point is that regardless of whether or not I had done a routine about bubbles that night (I hadn’t) his message was clear – he was brilliant and I was an insult to the art of stand-up comedy. Did I mention that I hate this man?

  Anyway, he dropped me off at the train station at 23:45 and sped off as soon as I had both feet outside of the car. I then looked up and saw that the train station was closed. I tried to get in but all doors were locked. There was no midnight train. There were no more trains until six a.m. I looked in my wallet – no money. I looked at my phone – dead. I looked into my immediate future – bleak. Here are some options that were available to me at the time that have since been pointed out to me by people who are much cleverer than I am:

  1) Go to the police station and tell them what has happened – maybe they’ll help you out;

  2) Go to a nightclub and dance for hours until it shuts;

  3) Go to either of these places and ask to charge your phone there so you can ring your auntie who lives in Basingstoke and will definitely let you sleep at hers.

  Anyway, that night I slept in a bush.

  The amount of time it took me to make this decision was shameful. I had only just established that the station was shut and within a minute I was sitting in a bush right in front of it. It was a big bush, easy to crawl into from the side, and people couldn’t really see you from the street. At the time I was convinced I had lucked out with the quality of this bush as it was perfect for sleeping in. I am now somewhat embarrassed by my initial delight as I should really have been more upset, seeing as I was sleeping in a bush in Basingstoke. My delight soon vanished though as reality set in.

  I thought it’d be easy to fall asleep and that six hours would pass quickly, but I couldn’t fall asleep because I was freezing cold. It had been a very hot day so I hadn’t taken a coat out with me but now it was night time, I was only wearing a T-shirt and jeans and I had a problem on my hands.

  The amount of time it took me to decide to sleep in the bush was an eternity in comparison to the amount of time it took me to decide to wear the red dress. It wasn’t even a decision. I was cold and the dress was warm. I’m no scientist, but if I was I’d be the sort of scientist who sits in a bush while wearing a red dress. Those shoulder pads might not have looked trendy but they were tremendous insulators and I finally felt like the purchase had been a wise one. I made a mental note to start wearing shoulder pads in the winter and not worry about what the old fashion police would say. I became convinced I could make shoulder pads my thing and maybe even bring them back. If I became the shoulder pad guy my whole world could change: I could be a leader, a visionary, people would respect me. These were my thoughts as I sat in a bush wearing a dress, eating brioche and reading a novel (I already had these items in my bag; I did not find them in the bush). I’ll admit the whole thing felt a lot more decadent than I had expected, all things considered. I was eating French baked goods and had reading materials to hand, not to mention the killer dress I was sporting. This guy sleeps rough in style. You could even say I was ‘sleeping smooth’? But you’re right, you’d sound stupid if you said that because it’s a stupid thing to say.

  Even after putting on the red dress I still couldn’t sleep because I was too scared. Drunk people were walking past my bush (and it was now my bush) and most of them sounded angry. The worst example of this was when two men stood right in front of me, unaware that I was sat at their feet, and expressed to one another how it was a real shame that they hadn’t ‘beaten the shit out of someone in ages’. I prayed that they didn’t look down as I was certain that if they saw me it would feel like Christmas for them. And, by the way, I had no idea that bullies talked like this: ‘We haven’t beaten the shit out of someone in ages.’ So openly, so wistful, just saying how lovely it’d be to hurt someone, for no reason other than how nice it felt to physically abuse another human being. It was quite the eye opener and if anyone ever punches me in the future I will try and remember that for them it’s a comforting hobby, an almost romantic pastime, and take some solace in the fact that for one of us at least the whole experience is rather heart-warming. If there’s two of them I’ll console myself by remembering that they are bonding over the smashing in of my face.

  As they debated where the best spot in town was for a good old-fashioned bash-up, I slowly reached for the large plastic bag that the dre
ss had come in and put it over my head so that if they were to look down all they would see was a plastic bag and the dismembered body of a young comedian in a second-hand dress. This is the kind of idea you have at the end of a long day of bad ideas. Go to Andover too early, buy a dress you don’t want, trust a man you’ve never met before, crawl into a bush, put on the dress and put a plastic bag over your head by way of a disguise. I sat there with the bag over my head and stayed as still as possible. Their voices were now muffled; it was just me and my thoughts. And, oh boy, what thoughts they were. I mainly thought about how it was a really good job that I had had a good gig that night because if I hadn’t then the entire day would’ve been awful. I thought about whether or not I should write a routine about bubbles. I thought about what I was doing with my life, how I didn’t go to university and instead chose to pursue my passions and wondered whether that had been a mistake. I thought about what I would do if they did attack and decided it would be better to act crazy rather than to fight back or run away, especially because I had never run in a dress before and might not nail it on the first attempt. I thought about who these men were and hoped that one of them would turn out to be Gary, that way when he tore the bag off of my head to reveal my face he would see that it was I, his loser mate from the bench, and spare me the merciless pounding he was about to deliver; maybe he’d calm down and the two of us could go and sit on a bench for old time’s sake, shouting at people as they walked past. And I thought about how long it would take for me to suffocate in a plastic bag and how I should probably take the bag off my head now. When I removed the bag they had gone, my disguise had worked and now those two hoodlums were no doubt beating ten shades out of some other poor sucker who I’m certain wasn’t even as easy a target as I was.

  I didn’t sleep a wink and ended up catching the six a.m. train (sans dress) and getting home shell-shocked and feeling sick from eating too much brioche (I had consumed a whole wheel of custard brioche because I felt so scared of the Basingstoke hoodlums and when I feel scared I eat sweet things to make me feel safe). To this day I have never been back to Andover and I have never forgiven the comedian who didn’t give me a lift home that night.

  During that first year of stand-up I put myself through a similar experience when I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the first time. I took a twelve-hour coach journey from Northampton to London to Edinburgh (it was the only route available to me at the time) and then I camped for two weeks in a field twenty minutes outside of the festival by bus. Camping at a festival may not sound odd but the Edinburgh Fringe is not that sort of festival. Everyone else was staying in flats and houses, with central heating and showers; only an idiot would camp for two whole weeks in a bowl-shaped field in Scotland. It started raining on day one and did not stop the entire time I was there.

  That first night my tent got completely flooded, the bowl of a field I’d pitched up in becoming a marshland within seconds. Throughout the fortnight I kept on having to buy new towels to lay underneath my sleeping bag which would keep me dry enough for the night at least. I had found a shop that sold towels pretty cheaply so would go there every day and buy a new towel. The shopkeeper would watch me with suspicion as I walked in, picked up yet another towel without even looking at the design and then paid for it with a handful of change I’d managed to scrape together. What is this young man doing with these towels that means they never last longer than twenty-four hours? the shopkeeper would think to herself, and when would be a good time to cut him off? To tell him he’s had enough towels? That his money’s no good here?

  In a way this was karma. Karma for forgetting my towel all those years ago in primary school and wiping my soapy hands on Siobhan’s coat, and now, eighteen years later, my tent had flooded and towels were the only thing that could save me. True karma would’ve been to run out of towels or money before the two weeks were up and be forced to use my coat instead of a towel one night, thus receiving a taste of my own medicine once and for all. But somehow I was spared my just desserts and for that I am truly grateful.

  Alistair

  I was getting a little tired of getting the train from Kettering all the time – arriving in towns way too early, sleeping in bushes, travelling for twelve hours on a coach and camping in the occasional field – so after a year and a half of stand-up, I finally moved to London to at least make the travel side of things a little easier on myself. I love living in London these days but to begin with it took a lot of getting used to.

  Most nights I would be doing stand-up but if I ever had a night off I would be overwhelmed with the options available to me in the big city and after choosing an activity, would often mess it up just enough to make myself wish I’d stayed at home.

  One evening I went to see the fantastic comedian Mike Wozniak performing his solo show in Islington. I arrived at the venue ten minutes late, rushed in the front door to see the tail end of the queue disappearing into the room where the gig was being held, quickly joined the back of it, paid as I passed through the doorway and sat in the far corner on the back row. Moments after I had sat down the show began unexpectedly with a total blackout. Plunged into darkness, the audience sat still, making no sound for maybe thirty seconds. Then we saw a light. It was coming from a torch but moving in large circles in the air, because it was attached to a rope and someone was swinging it round and round above their head. Every so often the torch would illuminate the person’s face on the way past, and oddly they didn’t look much like Mike Wozniak. The torch-swinger then started to deliver a loud and eerie monologue about a lighthouse, describing the isolation of the lighthouse keeper and the perils of being a fisherman in a boat out at sea, depending on the lighthouse for your very life. This was a massive departure for Wozniak, who had seemingly ditched his tightly written stand-up routines in favour of mildly upsetting lighthouse trivia. And then the lights came up. There were three people on stage, none of whom were Mike Wozniak, all of whom were dressed as lighthouse keepers. I then spent an hour watching a play about these three lighthouse keepers who go crazy while cooped up in a lighthouse together and end up turning off the power to the lighthouse causing all the boats to crash into the rocks before they kill themselves. I later learnt that Mike’s show had been cancelled months ago.

  Sometimes I would simply go out for some drinks with friends in order to avoid such unfortunate mix ups but trouble would befall me all the same.

  I am aware that none of the stories in this book make me look remotely good but, fair warning, this one shows me in a particularly bad light.

  I was blasted. I’ve done many things I’m not proud of while blasted. Once when at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, Nish Kumar ate twenty chicken nuggets and everyone made fun of him for it. A couple of days later I got drunk and became convinced that everyone thought Nish was cool for eating twenty chicken nuggets and so I filmed myself also eating twenty chicken nuggets, cussing Nish throughout, fully convinced I had won some sort of competition and was now the best. I completely forgot I’d even done it until I found the video a whole week later, watched it, and immediately felt the urge to exercise.

  But I digress (one of the main reasons I wanted to write this book was so I could use the term ‘but I digress’ at some point and there it is. Do a skydive. Try stand-up comedy. Use the term ‘I digress’ – life goals getting ticked off on the daily, I ain’t never afraid of dying). I had lived in London for a few months and a comedian friend of mine was going through a phase where he made everyone do Jägerbombs whenever we went out, and after one particular night on the town with this stupid idiot I found myself sitting on a London night bus, homeward bound and fully blasted. I was in high spirits, though. I tried talking to the lady next to me about how cool the bus was, but she asked me why I was talking to her and so I turned away to look out the window because I didn’t have an answer to her question. (I still don’t. I’ve thought about it since and on a philosophical level I have no idea why any of us speak to anyone else. I haven’t do
ne it as much since, actually.) Even though this woman clearly hated me I was still incredibly happy, not so much with myself but just with life. I was in a wonderful mood, and I am hardly ever that sort of drunk. Normally I just go real quiet, a little insecure and go home without saying goodbye to anyone, possibly eating upwards of twenty chicken nuggets in the process. I’ve been happy-drunk about three times, including this time on the bus. I honestly think getting drunk is one of the most overrated things we do as human beings and yet I keep doing it.

  Anyway, I was looking out the window thinking about how being drunk is the best thing we do as human beings when ten lads in their early twenties got on wearing ironed shirts and eating chips. None of them sat down. Instead they spread themselves out around the bottom deck of the bus, shouting across to one another. The leader of the pack was called Alistair. I know this because he shouted, ‘What’s that Nick? You wanna suck a dick? Hey everyone, Nick here wants to suck a dick!’

  And Nick replied, ‘Shut up, Alistair.’

  And then I said, as a hilarious joke that I was certain everyone on the bus including these lads would find hysterical, ‘Yeah Alistair, you wanna watch your mouth.’ I am a professional comedian.

  When I said, ‘Yeah Alistair, you wanna watch your mouth,’ all ten of the lads stopped eating their chips and looked at me. There was a pause and then they returned to eating their chips and ‘bantering’. I had emerged unscathed and most people in my position would see that as a narrow escape and quit while they’re ahead. But then again, most people didn’t once sleep in a bush in Basingstoke while wearing a red dress for warmth. My point is, most people are quitters. I had now decided that what would be really funny would be to keep throwing little digs at Alistair after every loud comment he made and to always make sure that the dig included his name. At one point Alistair shouted, ‘There’s too much sauce on my fucking chips,’ and I shouted back, ‘Classic Alistair!’ I was having a lovely time and being drunk was the best thing ever.