James Acaster interview

Written by: Matthew Stiff
Published: Monday 13th March 2017

Perennial Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee James Acaster has embarked upon a tour of his most recent offerings. Recognise, Represent, and Reset will be performed on three consecutive nights throughout the country over the coming months under the title The Trelogy. We spoke with James about the nostalgia of digging up old shows, what he's learnt over the years, and what other plans he has for the coming year.

What was the inspiration to take three shows on tour together?

I'm very sentimental and once I'd finished the final show I felt like I wanted to present them all as a trilogy because that's how I view them. I also wanted to mess around with them a bit as a whole rather than individual shows, try and tie them together a bit more, in front of an audience who has seen all three.

Are there any places/venues that you're looking forward to in particular?

I've been very lucky and am looking forward to all of them, but it's been a couple of years since I've done the Wardrobe in Leeds and the Hyena in York. They were some of my favourite venues on my early tours so they'll add to the feeling of nostalgia.

We also notice that you're heading to Australia and New Zealand with these shows. You've been before - how are you received over there?

I'm really looking forward to it. I love it over there, the Melbourne Comedy Festival has an amazing atmosphere and Auckland is one of my favourite cities in the world. Both countries have been extremely welcoming to me and sometimes I fear that I could've been more grateful.

Sometimes when a gig is hard over there I get way more frustrated than I do back home because it's not as clear what I'm doing wrong, I intend to manage these situations much better when I go back this year.

Do you consider this a farewell tour to Recognise/Represent/Reset or do you think there's more life to be wrung out of them yet?

I hope to film all three this year and then I imagine that will be that. I'm changing the shows as I tour them though so I feel like for now I'm still wringing.

Which one are you most proud of?

I'm proud of them all for different reasons, I can't really pick one, which I know is frustrating for people but I honestly do view them as a whole rather than individual shows, hence the tour I suppose.

You must've grown a lot as a performer over the past three years, how do you find dusting off the earlier shows?

It's an odd feeling. I used to deliver things much slower than I do now and so the routines feel different as a result. That means I'm having to rethink certain routines and am enjoying finding new lines even now. Some jokes work better now than they did before purely because the subject I'm talking about wasn't as well known back then but is now.

By looking back at the 2014 show, do you now see areas that you could've done differently?

There are routines in all three shows that I am changing and improving for sure. I don't know if there's anything I could've done differently in 2014 because it worked well enough when I did it the first time but there's certainly things that I'm changing now because certain routines aren't in keeping with who I am as comic in 2017. I think bringing back the slower delivery for certain routines is a good idea as it brings out certain jokes a bit more.

Have you found anything in your process has changed over the years?

Not particularly. For all three shows I basically just wrote solidly for a year, trying it out in clubs every week, chose a fun ruse because that made it more fun for me, and then looked at the material and worked out what I was really trying to say. I think just writing and gigging all the time combined with honest analysis is best way to go.

How do you come up with the centrepiece of the show? The stories always seem so convoluted. Do you just think 'wouldn't it be funny if someone bought honey and then sold it at the most pointless profit'? Or do you come up with particular characters first and then find a ridiculous setting for them?

They all come about differently really. The jury duty and the undercover cop ideas were just because I thought it would be fun for me to frame the show that way, but I didn't have any jokes in mind and didn't realise they related to my personal life until 9 months into writing the show.

The honey routine I originally wrote as a short story for radio. I was told about honey being sold for less than it's bought for by a beekeeper and wanted to write a routine about it just because I was drawn to it for some reason. A lot of the time I just feel like I want to talk about something and so I run with that, rather than thinking of an actual joke first. But I had the honey routine for a while and never did anything with it and then decided that I wanted the third show to be about going into witness protection and thought the honey routine would be a fun way of getting into that.

The characters usually come in last, while I'm working on the bigger routines, they help tie everything together a bit more.

Does this hefty tour mean you're not doing an Edinburgh show in 2017?

I'll be doing the Trelogy in Edinburgh for the entire month, a different show each day in the Pleasance One at 9pm!

2016 was a particularly big one for you - presumably the culmination of which was the BBC pilot We The Jury - are you moving to do more TV/Online stuff or are you still determined to maintain a strong live presence?

I love performing live and will be keeping that up for as long as I can. I love learning and improving the more I do it, so won't be stopping any time soon. I'll keep doing TV and online stuff that excites me and right now there are a lot of projects for both that I'm excited about so I suppose the answer is yes to both. I feel very lucky to be able to explore both at the moment and they don't cancel each other out.

What, if anything, is in the pipeline after the tour for 2017?

I have a book coming out in August called Classic Scrapes, it is a collection of true stories that I used to tell on Josh Widdicombe's XFM podcast. I'll be embarking on a book tour around the UK in the Autumn when I'll be sharing stories from the book.

I should also be filming the Trelogy in September and releasing them soon after.

I'll also be working on another music project. Last year I recorded an album (I'm playing drums) with some comedian friends and friends from home and it was such a great experience. People can download it via Bandcamp and all money goes to youth centres in Kettering where I grew up.