James Acaster's Classic Scrapes

by James Acaster

often think it’s a shame that hole-punches are so much fun but are seldom used by the people who’d appreciate them the most. Hole-punches, much like swivel chairs, are wasted on adults. A child looks at your average office and sees a playground; an adult looks at an office and sees a prison sentence. Then there are adults who love swivel chairs and hole-punches but can’t openly enjoy them because they aren’t children any more and their playground days are over. The universe is cruel.

The second man to approach me described my take on the song as, ‘One of the most horrifying things I’ve ever witnessed.’ That sounds pretty extreme as it is, but even more so when you consider that the jam night took place on (and remember that everything in this book is true) 11 September 2001. On the actual day itself. There was footage of New York being shown on the TV screens in the bar and yet he still felt the need to say this to me. Some people have found it hard to understand why the jam night was not cancelled that night, considering the news, but I think we all know that if we had cancelled the jam then the terrorists would have won. And nothing sticks it to them more, in my opinion, than a good old-fashioned disco beat. So in many ways, I had done the right thing.

My only contribution to the room-trashing was to open all the little milks. I didn’t even tip them out or splat them against the wall; I just opened them all one by one and arranged them on the table in a line. Those milks were now unusable, I was officially a rebel, the aforementioned cleaner would have to pour them down the sink now, and I had finally become the child my parents always feared I would be – a tearaway of the highest order.

If you haven’t been to watch live wrestling before you owe it to yourself to go. And if you already go and watch live wrestling, why are you not going more often? Yes it’s scripted but so is The West Wing and that’s why it’s amazing. I wish every sport was scripted: there’d be no nil-nil draws and I wouldn’t miss a game if the World Cup had a storyline to it. Imagine if players had vendettas against each other and were doing speeches about it beforehand, and not sporting vendettas but personal ones, unforgivable wrongs.

I once went to the Tate Modern where one of the works of art on display was a mirror. Just a normal mirror. Not even a mirror with a frame. A rectangular mirror. In the Tate Modern. The plaque next to it described the work as ‘genius’ because the viewer creates the art themselves. If I could’ve thrown that ‘art’ at a table and spat all over it while shouting, rather ironically, ‘Reflective surfaces!’ then I absolutely would have. But as we all know, breaking a mirror is bad luck and I don’t know if I need many more scrapes in my life. Although it would help me write a second book.

And then Mr Eko and myself both bent down to pick up the fork at the same time, and whilst under the table our eyes met. I froze in fear; he did a double take, recognised me and a look of concern swept over his face as he asked himself why this man had gone away and then come back wearing a disguise and sat on the adjacent table to him. In a way it’s rather fitting that someone from the TV series Lost should suddenly find themselves with so many questions but zero answers. Now they know how we felt.

What stuck with me the most was the comment the first fireman made when he climbed in through our bedroom window. ‘Jeez,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit hot in here isn’t it?’ This was a comment that every visitor to our tiny flat made because it was indeed always hot, but when you consider that most of the buildings this man enters are on fire, I think that’s pretty rich. A bit hot! Compared to the flames you’re usually wading through? A bit hot is it? Compared to an inferno? A bit hot? The nerve of that fireman.