James Acaster's Classic Scrapes

by James Acaster

Josh Widdicombe himself had sent me a single wilted cabbage leaf in the post, letting me know that I could now trust absolutely no one. Until then he had been my confidant, counselling me through this whole ordeal, but even he was cabadging me now.

punk kid then the whole cabadging thing would become yet another pointless event that briefly consumed my life but failed to deliver anything resembling a payoff – just a waste of time for all concerned.

There was a point where I started to wonder who the joke was really on here. I had spent all day cabadging Mick. I was twenty-nine years old. I had been running around all over Cambridge buying cabbages. The cost of the cabbages combined with the train and cab fare came to over £150. I’m meant to be an adult. The whole thing was oddly stressful and, in many ways, the worst day of my life.

Standing in that bathroom I started to see everything from an outsider’s perspective. A nine-year-old child had sent me a couple of cabbages and I had retaliated by spending £150 on filling his bedroom with cabbages and was currently hiding in his house so that I could leap out and rub his face in it when the time came.

I knew I had to fully commit to this now, regardless of his reaction, so I swiftly tiptoed out of my hiding place, ran into his bedroom, pointed in his face and declared, ‘CABADGED! You got cabadged mate, look at them! Look at all the cabbages! Count them if you like! You. Got. Cabadged!’

Eventually Mick admitted that I had done a pretty good cabadging and a truce was called. I am pleased to report he has not cabadged me since. A man of his word, he has honoured our agreement and good on him. I too have honoured the truce,

The lesson was going to be ‘don’t do any of the stuff I did’, but I doubt you were planning on doing that anyway.

so I guess the only lesson of the book is this: do not be open to new experiences, avoid anything that could potentially not work out for you, and enter into everything with the utmost suspicion. Never ‘let yourself go’, do not trust anybody and never ever put yourself out there (emotionally or physically). What I’m saying is, don’t take any risks and you’ll be fine. Cool.

They are the ones who set my exams. And yes I failed those exams but in failing them I actually passed them because that’s the way you pass an exam about mistakes – you fail. And all the people who ‘pass’ the exam are the ones who actually fail the exam in the end. But in doing so maybe they also end up passing them because they failed. I don’t work on an exam board; maybe everyone passes because everyone fails. And isn’t that what life is all about? We are all failures and as such we are roaring successes. Each and every one of us.