JAMES ACASTER'S CLASSIC SCRAPES
       
       2025-01-12
       
 (IMG) Book cover of James Acaster's Classic Scrapes.
       On the flight over to Trinidad I finished reading James Acaster's Classic
       Scrapes by James Acaster, which I received as part of our family's traditional
       Christmas Eve book exchange. I'm a big fan of his stand-up work (and I
       maintain that his 2018 serialised show Repertoire is among of the most
       artfully-crafted pieces of live comedy ever written) and clearly JTA recalled
       this fact when giving me this book.
       
       Many of the stories in Classic Scrapes have featured in his work before, in
       various forms, and I found myself occasionally recognising one and wondering
       if I'd accidentally skipped back a chapter. It helps a lot to read them in
       Acaster's "voice" - imagining his delivery - because they're clearly written
       to be enjoyed in that way. In the first few chapters the book struggled to
       "grab" me, and it wasn't until I started hearing it as if I were listening in
       to James's internal monologue that it gave me my first laugh-out-loud moment.
       
       After that, though, it got easier to enjoy each and every tall tale told.
       Acaster's masterful callback humour ties together anecdotes about giant letter
       Ws, repeated car crashes, and the failures of his band (and, I suppose, almost
       everything else in his life, at some point or another), across different
       chapters, which is fun and refreshing and adds a new dimension to each that
       wouldn't be experienced in isolation.
       
       A further ongoing concept seems to be a certain idolisation of Dave Gorman,
       whose Are You Dave Gorman? and Googlewhack storytelling style was clearly an
       inspiration. In these, of course, a series of (mis)adventures with a common
       theme or mission becomes a vehicle for a personal arc within which the
       absurdity of the situations described is made accessible and believable. But
       with James Acaster's self-deprecating style, this is delivered as a negative
       self-portrayal: somebody who doesn't live up to their idea of their own hero,
       and becomes a parody of themselves for trying. It's fun, but perhaps not for
       everybody (I tried to explain to Ruth why I'd laughed out loud at something
       but then needed to explain to her who Dave Gorman is and why that matters.)
       
       A fun read if you enjoy Acaster's comedic style.
       
       LINKS
       
 (HTM) The flight
 (HTM) James Acaster's Classic Scrapes
 (HTM) I received
 (HTM) JTA
 (HTM) Dave Gorman
 (HTM) Ruth