James Acaster

James William Acaster (; born 9 January 1985) is an English comedian, presenter, podcaster, actor and musician. As well as the stand-up specials Repertoire and Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999, he is known for co-hosting the food podcast Off Menu and the panel show Hypothetical. Acaster makes use of fictional characters within his stand-up comedy, which is characterised by frequent callback jokes, offbeat observational comedy and overarching stories. He has won five Chortle Awards, a Just for Laughs Award and International Comedy Festival Awards at Melbourne and New Zealand.

After playing the drums for local bands in Kettering, Acaster began pursuing stand-up comedy as a career in 2008. He was a support act for Josie Long in 2010. Acaster drew acclaim for his shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where he was nominated for Best Comedy Show a record-breaking five times. In 2017, he toured three of his Fringe performances as The Trelogy while writing a fourth to accompany the set; this led to the four-part Netflix special Repertoire (2018). His following tour Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 (2019) won a Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award. He began touring Hecklers Welcome in 2022, and it was released as a special on HBO Max in 2024.

Acaster appeared as a contestant on British television panel show Taskmaster (2018) and co-hosted Hypothetical (2019–2022) with Josh Widdicombe. He also hosts the food podcast Off Menu (2018–present) with the comedian Ed Gamble. Acaster's first book, Classic Scrapes (2017), was developed from a recurring segment on Widdicombe's XFM radio show in which he shared anecdotes of personal mishaps. His second book, Perfect Sound Whatever (2019), is about his mental health issues in 2017 that led to him collecting a large number of albums released in 2016. His third book, Guide to Quitting Social Media (2022), is a parody of the self-help genre. All three books have been Sunday Times bestsellers. The music collective Temps was formed by Acaster and released its debut album, Party Gator Purgatory, in May 2023. He also appears in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire as the character Lars Pinfield.

Early life James William Acaster At high school, he participated in the drama club, turning each performance into comedy.

Between the ages of 17 and 22, While a drummer, Acaster had a number of jobs, including working in Wicksteed Park.

A car crash at the age of 18 led him to fixate on the idea of death, so Acaster created a bucket list: items included skydiving and stand-up comedy. He would complete them while working 12 hours per week in a kitchen.

Stand-up comedy 2008–11: Early career After Acaster suffered another band splitting up, he decided to take a break from music, believing it to be an industry where hard work did not guarantee success. Without strong qualifications or a full-time job, Acaster pursued stand-up as a career. For Josie Long's 2010 tour, the support acts were Acaster and The Pictish Trail. Most of the Welsh leg of the tour was cancelled following a car accident with Acaster at the wheel, which served as the inspiration for The Pictish Trail's single "Dead Connection" (2016). In 2011, Acaster toured as Milton Jones' support act. In his early stand-up, he invited the audience onstage to participate and asked them to provide suggestions for him to incorporate into the show. Beth Kahn, in Broadway Baby, gave it three stars, praising the responses to hecklers and physical comedy but critiquing his listless manner and mundane topics. Brian Logan made similar observations in a two-star review for The Guardian.

Acaster's 2012 Edinburgh show was called Prompt. Subjects included comparisons of bread, a Kettering Town F.C. chant, outwitting telemarketers and cows' weather predictions. Giving it three stars, Veronica Lee of The Arts Desk praised the show as well-structured and whimsical, with frequent use of callback, but said that some tropes "feel simply mechanical".

Acaster wrote about one routine for The Guardian: a real-life story about a man cheating on his partner and saying, "you wouldn't bring an apple to an orchard, would you?" He wanted to oppose the glorification of affairs in stand-up comedy. He focused first on the phrase, as his style was to "get caught up in the little details", and then incorporated outrage, despite most of his material being understated. The Independents Julian Hall found that the routine had a style similar to Stewart Lee or Richard Herring, but was one of the "least promising" in the set.

Acaster returned to Edinburgh in 2013 with the show Lawnmower. He wore Marks & Spencer clothing resembling a school uniform. Mark Monahan, reviewing for The Daily Telegraph, also gave four stars for a "new vitality and unpredictability" that improved on Prompt. A critic for The Herald had a lukewarm response to Acaster's "deadpan delivery and awkward physical comedy" in a three-star review. The Guardians James Kettle reviewed him as a "quiet, unassuming" comedian "adept at mixing inspired whimsy with straighter observational material".

While in Edinburgh, Acaster participated in The Wrestling, where a professional wrestler faces a comedian. One stunt involves a metal tray appearing to slam into the comedian's face. In two different years, Acaster forgot to raise his hands to block, so the tray genuinely hit him in the face.

2014–2018: Repertoire

Acaster's next three Edinburgh shows—Recognise (2014), Represent (2015) and Reset (2016)—formed a trilogy in a shared universe. Recap was added to the sequence in 2017. Acaster assumes a fictional background for each routine, themed around the law: his character works as an undercover cop, serves on a jury, leads a honey-based scam and is put into witness protection. Acaster's corduroy outfits and the background draping are colour co-ordinated: green is used in Recognise, red in Represent, mustard yellow in Reset and all three colours in Recap.

The first three shows toured separately, with Acaster writing throughout each year and performing weekly. The overarching narrative was often the first part to be written. Resets honey routine was conceived as a short story for radio. The show is inspired by Rogue One, a film that depicts previously known events from the Star Wars universe, and fan theories that each Pixar film is set in the same universe. Represent was nominated for a Chortle Award. Another four-star review—by Bruce Dessau in Evening Standard—found Represent to be Acaster's "most conceptually ambitious set yet", with "copious scope for laughs" and "absolute precision" to delivery, including pauses. Rupert Hawksley of The Daily Telegraph praised Reset as Acaster's best show to date, with "sharp punch-lines and meticulously crafted flourishes", albeit a slightly forced ending wherein Acaster delivers a rant to an audience member that is actually about himself.

With Repertoire, Acaster became the first British comic to have multiple stand-up routines released on Netflix. In 2021, it was streamed 840,000 times in the UK, third-most on Netflix for a British comedy special. It received positive reception upon release. Chortles Steve Bennett praised Recap as continuing Acaster's "uniquely offbeat" material, "precision of focus", nested twists within routines and gradually unfolding narrative. IndieWires Steve Greene compared it to theatre, lauding its "finely calibrated" jokes with twists—such as putting the punchline before the setup—but writing that some jokes go on too long. Clint Gage reviewed in IGN that Acaster "blends visual aids... inoffensively" in the "fantastically absurd journey" of the series. The show toured in 2018 and 2019. A recorded performance was released in 2019 on DICE, temporarily, and 2021 on Vimeo; the latter is accompanied by Make a New Tomorrow, material cut from the special.

The special received critical acclaim, winning Acaster a Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award and a Chortle Award. Five-star reviews praised Acaster's precise wording, absurdism, unexpected punchlines and narrative structure. A clip from the special of Acaster commenting on "edgy" comedians who attack transgender people went viral. However, he did not say he had 'quit'.

2022–present: Hecklers Welcome In 2022, after performing occasional shows in the UK, Acaster announced a US tour: Hecklers Welcome. He has performed the show in Scandinavia and Canada.

The Daily Telegraph gave it five stars, calling it "one of the funniest and most brilliantly constructed shows of the year". It won a 2024 Chortle Award for Best Tour. One of his first roles was on Chris Addison's Show and Tell (2011). Acaster said in 2014 that his tour sales saw a huge spike during the broadcast of a Never Mind the Buzzcocks (1996–) episode where he appeared. He was a team captain in an unbroadcast pilot of Virtually Famous (2014–2017), a panel show about the internet, and appeared in two episodes in its first series.

He has also appeared on Would I Lie to You? (2007–), 8 Out of 10 Cats (2005–), Have I Got News For You (1990–), Bethy Squires of Vulture reviewed his 2020 appearance on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year as "a great add to the madness", with his unpredictable actions including smearing ice-cream on protective COVID-19 dividers.

Acaster starred in series 7 of Taskmaster (2018), wherein five contestants perform tasks that are judged by Greg Davies, with help from his assistant Alex Horne. In 2021, Paste ranked him as one of the six best contestants, describing his performance as "a mixed bag of aimless mess and point winning turns". Den of Geek reviewers listed Acaster's highlights on the programme: his recurring refusal to greet Horne; the 30-second musical composition "Over My Shoulder" under the name Clump Stump; a live recreation of Grand Theft Auto; and practicing hula-hooping for months.

Hypothetical

Hypothetical was a panel show on Dave co-hosted by Josh Widdicombe, who conceived the idea, and Acaster. The hosts ask comedian guests absurd hypothetical questions and Acaster awards points according to their responses. The show uses physical comedy and improvisation to play out guests' ideas. Four series aired from 2019 to 2022; the third was filmed under social distancing restrictions. A tie-in podcast, Hypothetical: The Podcast, debuted in May 2022. It saw a guest host asking Acaster and Widdicombe hypothetical questions. A four-star review by Steve Bennett in Chortle praised Acaster as providing a "dash of peculiarity" in his role as Widdicombe's sidekick.

Other television Acaster has appeared on a number of gameshows, including Blockbusters (2019) and Pointless (2009–). He discussed his 2019 appearance on The Great British Bake Off in his routine Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999, and the mental health issues that he was experiencing at the time. A phrase he used to describe his flapjacks to the judges became a meme: "Started making it / Had a breakdown / Bon appétit." Similarly, fans found his 2022 Celebrity Mastermind performance humorously disastrous. He did not prepare for his specialist subject 'The History of Ice Cream', due to filming commitments, after the programme rejected subjects relating to the comedy of Nish Kumar or Ed Gamble.

The BBC Three series Sounds Random (2016) consisted of 15 short episodes in which Acaster interviews musicians. It followed a similar show that Acaster hosted on FUBAR Radio, an executive producer compared it to the radio programme Desert Island Discs (1942–).

In 2016, Acaster wrote a sitcom pilot for BBC Two called We The Jury, about a man who is called to jury duty for a murder trial after dreaming of serving as a juror. The Guardians Brian Logan said that the writing and "heightened reality" reflected Acaster's comedic style, but was less successful in the medium, while Mark Gibbings-Jones called it "delightfully off-kilter". The Observers Euan Ferguson panned its "cliched characters and surreal madness". The American channel CBS picked up the idea for a pilot, as Jury Duty, in 2018 and 2020, with Acaster as executive producer. The project has not come to fruition.

For Christmas 2017, Acaster starred in a mockumentary short for Sky Arts about turning on the Christmas lights in Kettering, James Acaster's Xmas.

Alongside Ed Gamble, Lloyd Langford and John Robins, Acaster created The Island (2022), while stuck in New York City due to a snowstorm. The panel show was hosted by Tom Allen and saw four comedians competing to create the best desert island. It was cancelled after one series on Dave, with critics panning the concept.

The documentary The Unofficial Science of Home Alone (2022) saw Acaster, along with the comedian Guz Khan, recreate stunts from the movies Home Alone (1990) and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). Alex Brooker interviews actors and crew from the original films. Production was initially scheduled for 2021, but the show premiered around Christmas 2022. Acaster described being very nervous during the stunts.

Acaster appeared with Gamble on the fifth series of Celebrity Hunted (2023), which tasked participants with evading "Hunters" around the UK for a fortnight. During their appearance they ate in a Michelin starred restaurant, called into Gamble's Radio X programme, and released a video mocking the Hunters. Acaster also gave Gamble a tattoo. Acaster was caught after goading the Hunters to the Taskmaster house and squirting them with a water gun that he joked contained "piss"; Gamble escaped but was caught soon after. In a two-star review, is Emily Baker criticised that the pair and the Hunters all put "very little" effort into the game.

Acaster is the voice of Armadillo in the English dub of the Italian animated series This World Can't Tear Me Down (2023).

Acaster is set to appear on the second series of The Celebrity Traitors in autumn 2026.

As a recurring joke, Acaster announces that it is his birthday every time he appears on the talk show Sunday Brunch.

Podcasts In addition to tie-in podcasts to his second book Perfect Sound Whatever and the television show Hypothetical, which Acaster hosts, Acaster is known as co-host of Off Menu. The hosts invite guests to a dream restaurant to give their ideal starter, main course, side dish, drink and dessert. The guest is ejected if they mention a secret ingredient. Acaster, in the role of Genie Waiter, is known for the catchphrase "Poppadoms or bread?", suddenly shouted at each guest. It reached 120million downloads by April 2023. Some episodes have been recorded in front of a live audience: for instance, Off Menu toured for 15 episodes in 2023.

Springleaf

Acaster's Repertoire character Pat Springleaf—an undercover cop—was developed in a podcast, Springleaf. It is presented as a true crime podcast, with the framing device of Springleaf playing wire recordings of his most important case. The Times noted a large number of high-profile names in the cast.

Acaster conceived the podcast while performing Recognise in 2014.

After its second episode, Springleaf topped the Spotify podcast chart in the UK and Ireland. Alexi Duggins of The Guardian recommended it as "a surreal and inventive slice of scripted comedy". Edward Wickham of Church Times analysed that it exploits podcast tropes to play "sophisticated games of subversion and irony", but also has "a charmingly traditional, pantomimic feel to the sitcom, reminiscent of radio comedy from the post-war era".

Books Classic Scrapes

His first book, James Acaster's Classic Scrapes (2017), originated from a recurring slot Acaster had on Josh Widdicombe's XFM radio programme, where he became known as the "Scrapemaster". On the radio, he would describe a mixture of "archive scrapes" and recent stories. Classic Scrapes appeared on The Sunday Times best-seller list and was listed as one of its best books of the year; it was nominated for a 2018 Chortle Award, with Chortles Steve Bennett finding humour in the "perfect combination of being socially awkward and painfully self-aware". After a 2017 breakup, Acaster had a mental breakdown and began therapy. He collected over 500 albums released in 2016, such as Lemonade (Beyoncé), Blackstar (David Bowie) and Blonde (Frank Ocean). They also include much more obscure and experimental works, including an album by a teenager that had sold seven copies when Acaster purchased it. Steve Bennett of Chortle rated the book three stars, calling the personal story "honest, unaffected, poignant – and, yes, entertaining", but commenting that the number of albums mentioned and their obscurity are overwhelming. The book was a Sunday Times Bestseller.

A tie-in podcast, James Acaster's Perfect Sounds, was launched on BBC Radio 1 in April 2020. Acaster asks guests to discuss one of his albums from 2016. Its initial run was 50 episodes. Two Christmas specials were recorded, one with Jeff Rosenstock, whose album Worry featured the track which gave Acaster's project its name: "Perfect Sound Whatever". By the end of the second series, 117 episodes had been produced. The podcast won the 2022 British Podcast Award in the Best Arts & Culture category, with the judges reviewing that it was humorous, had an "innovative format" and a host with "authentic engagement" in the material.

Guide to Quitting Social Media In 2022, he published the book James Acaster's Guide to Quitting Social Media: Being the Best YOU You Can Be and Saving Yourself from Loneliness: Vol. 1. Though Acaster did quit social media in 2019, the book is a parody of the self-help genre, motivational speakers, and people who brag about quitting social media. It charted sixth in the Hardback Non-fiction category and first in the Audiobook category.

Music projects

Temps In November 2022, Acaster announced a new musical project called Temps, a music collective of 40 musicians. Acaster described the project as neither comedic nor serious. He aimed to give as little direction to the musicians as possible, encouraging them to improvise. Some songs would change tone completely as different musicians added their parts. Acaster combined parts together, with a dozen additional people involved in audio engineering and distribution. He planned to create a mockumentary with Louis Theroux's production company in which he would transition into the music industry. Whilst music with Rochford was recorded, the idea had to be abandoned when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Initially, they feature Acaster in the 'Party Gator' costume—a lifesized toy alligator that he won at a fair as a child. After Acaster suffered an injured ankle, heatstroke and labyrinthitis, the costume was replaced by a puppet. With the release of the album came a music video for "partygatorRIP".

For Far Out, Tyler Golsen rated Party Gator Purgatory two out of five stars, summarising it as "a random soup that never congeals" due to its lack of direction, large number of contributing artists and combination of genres. However, Golsen identified a minority of songs with an overarching direction and an ambition that was occasionally successful. It was The Quietuss Album of the Week, with Alistair Shuttleworth praising that it was "genuinely excellent" as well as unique. Shuttleworth reviewed it as a "technicolour, maximalist, hugely inventive album" with a "sprightly, playful character" overall, but a number of "unexpectedly moving" commentaries on mental health.

The Wow! Scenario On 5 August 2026, the album Stand in the Star. A Verse and a Chorus was announced for release on 23 October 2026. This album, credited to The Wow! Scenario has been in the works for over 20 years with original sessions dating back to December 2007.

Other work In 2022, Acaster narrated an audiobook edition of James and the Giant Peach (1961) by Roald Dahl. In a list of the Best Audiobooks of 2022, The Times praised the "great casting".

Radio Acaster gained prominence through radio, including his role on Josh Widdicombe's XFM radio programme that led to his first book Classic Scrapes.

Sweet Home Ketteringa Early in his career, Acaster produced a web series mockumentary, Sweet Home Ketteringa (2014). Acaster revisits his favourite parts of his hometown Kettering, including an amusement park and football club. He speaks to locals, who do not recognise him. The series also starred the comedians Jack Barry and Emma Sidi.

Film In 2016, the short story To Do was published in the anthology book Dead Funny: Encore: More Horror Stories by Comedians. In the story, written by Acaster, a crime is revealed through the to-do lists of the murderer and the victim. Acaster turned the story into a screenplay during COVID-19 lockdown, with the aim of adapting it as an independent film. They voiced three mice and appeared as three transformed footmen. Acaster was a replacement for John Mulaney. In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024), Acaster played the scientist Dr. Lars Pinfield, a character similar to Egon Spengler. Ian Sandwell of Digital Spy called him an "enjoyable addition to the franchise". He also played Felix the Ironmonger in Seize Them! (2024).

Comedic style Acaster has cited as inspirations Eddie Izzard, Josie Long and Ross Noble, all whimsical comedians who deliver unexpected punchlines. Unusually for a stand-up comedian, Acaster incorporates fiction into his material. Jokes frequently reference earlier material, providing connections between unrelated topics.

Acaster told Nouse that his fictional material reflected his personal life unconsciously. In Repertoire, he recognised the connections to his life and reveals them in the routines as a twist:

Personal life Acaster dated the English comedian Louise Ford until 2013; she subsequently began dating Rowan Atkinson. He then dated the comedian Rose Matafeo; she moved from New Zealand to London in 2015 to live with him, but they broke up in 2017.

In an interview with i, Acaster said that he had been open about his mental health with his friends since his teenage years. He thought it would be self-indulgent to do this in his stand-up, but began doing so with Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999. In the routine, he discusses experiencing depression and suicidal thoughts while attending regular therapy. He also discussed these topics in his second book, Perfect Sound Whatever.

Though raised Christian, Acaster is no longer religious.

Filmography

Film YearTitleRoleNotes 2019 Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 Self Released on DICE temporarily in 2019 and on Vimeo in 2021 2021 Cinderella John 2022 The Unofficial Science of Home Alone Host 2024 Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Lars Pinfield Seize Them! Felix the Ironmonger James Acaster: Hecklers Welcome Self 2027 Bad Fairies Stickers

Television

Audio

Web series

As writer