James Acaster's Classic Scrapes

by James Acaster

I really can’t stress enough how boring this particular day was. At one point I killed an hour by sitting on a bench. I didn’t normally regard sitting on a bench as a leisure activity but in Andover I chose to make an exception. Alongside me on the bench was a big tough-looking gentleman who would shout at people he knew as they walked past. At one point a lady came over and started chatting to him. Midway through the conversation she received a phone call and informed the person on the other end of the phone that she was currently talking to ‘Gary and one of his loser mates’. This was hurtful because I had been called both a loser and one of Gary’s mates, but what confused me the most was the fact that Gary didn’t attempt to correct her. Clearly it was good enough for Gary just to have people believe that strangers were his mates, even if those mates were absolute losers who people slag off openly right in front of them before getting to know them. Weirder still was that when she left, Gary continued to ignore me. But of course he did – I was a loser.