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 was born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, on 9 January 1985. His father was a science teacher. His family attended a nondenominational Christian church whose Sunday sermons included humorous anecdotes, sketches recreating Bible stories, and rock music. At a young age, Acaster performed a sketch with his father and enjoyed the laughs it received. He attended Montagu Secondary School—since built over into Kettering Buccleuch Academy. At high school, he participated in the drama club, turning each performance into comedy. He dropped out of sixth form before sitting his A-level exams and sat a BTEC in Music Practice at Northampton College.
Between the ages of 17 and 22, Acaster played the drums in various bands around his hometown, including The Wow! Scenario, Three Line Whip and Pindrop. While a drummer, Acaster had a number of jobs, including working in Wicksteed Park. He was a dishwasher in two kitchens but did not learn to cook in either role; the first kitchen had a culture of bullying but he was also able to make friends.
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. After completing a stand-up course at the Kettering Volunteer Bureau, he began performing every few months, but maintained the vision of becoming a professional musician.
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. He started performing on open mics in 2008. He moved to Wood Green, North London, and supported himself financially by working as a teaching assistant in a South London secondary school for autistic students for nine months.
For the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Acaster performed with Nick Helm and Josh Widdicombe in a free fringe show, garnering poor attendance and a single review—ThreeWeeks rated it one star and called it "depressing". 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.
2011–2013: Edinburgh Fringe Festival Acaster garnered acclaim through annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows, receiving five consecutive nominations for the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Comedy Show from 2012 to 2016, a record. 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.
In 2011, he performed his first solo show, Amongst Other Things, at the Pleasance Courtyard. It included material on cheese graters, shopping trolleys, watching The West Wing, a surprise party and skydiving. It received four stars out of five from the British Comedy Guide; Matt Wood praised the "more abstract and ambitious routines" but was more critical of the structure, audience participation and slice of life material. 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. In a four star review, Chortles Steve Bennett wrote that Acaster combined observational comedy with eccentricity in a well-structured performance. 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. With fictionalised biographic material, he commented on Yoko Ono's impact on The Beatles, Percy Pig sweets, mariachi music and the placeholder names Joe Bloggs and John Doe. A four-star Time Out review praised the careful structuring, wording and delivery. 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. Acaster appeared again in The Wrestling at the inaugural 2023 Just for Laughs festival in London, a sister event to the Canadian festival.
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. Topics for routines include the 2010 Copiapó mining accident, a teabag analogy for Brexit, the existential question of what preceded the Big Bang and the British Empire. There is also more mainstream material, such as the experience of massaging a partner.
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. From January to September 2017, Acaster toured with The Trelogy, performing the first three shows in 14 locations over three nights. He performed them in a cycle at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. During The Trelogy, Acaster adapted the routines for narrative cohesion and to suit his faster delivery and new comedic style.
Acaster wrote Recap while touring and began to perform it on the third night. It makes use of his material from 2011 to 2013 and ties together the three preceding shows. 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. The recorded version ends with Acaster returning to the setup at the start of the first performance. In March 2018, the four performances were released as a serialised Netflix stand-up comedy special, Repertoire.
As individual performances, the routines received positive attention from critics. Recognise, Represent and Reset were three of Acaster's five consecutive shows nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award. Recognise won the New Zealand International Comedy Festival Award for Best International Show and Chortle Awards for Best Breakthrough Act and Best Show. Represent was nominated for a Chortle Award. Hugh Montgomery of The Independent rated Recognise four stars, summarising it as "an acquired taste" of "surreal set-pieces" and "observations as astute as they are trivial" with intelligent callbacks. 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.
2018–2021: Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999