Who is the real James Acaster?

For James Acaster, the transition from the internet’s favourite comedian to, well, the internet’s boyfriend has been a surprisingly easy one. All it took was a turn as the most unwilling Celebrity Traitor in the show’s history, and the endearingly awkward and thoughtful British comic has found himself a source of online obsession. Not that the infamously offline Acaster has probably even seen the fancams set to George Michael’s “Father Figure”, or the montages of him and fellow player Bella Ramsay, lovingly captioned: “Me and my male co-worker who’s double my age.”

Asked about his newfound heartthrob status on Irish TV last week, the 41-year-old looked pretty bewildered by the whole thing. “I’ve never had anybody care about anything I’ve done, ever,” he claimed.

Such modesty isn’t surprising for a man who is happiest at home with his four cats and podcast producer girlfriend (Acaster has kept his relationship out of the spotlight but various outlets have identified former BBC staffer Hannah Rose as his partner). But it’s not quite true. Acaster’s impact is evident in “the huge number of comedians who can do an impression of him, deliberately or otherwise”, says stand-up comic Pierre Novelie, who adds that “his mannerisms are perfect comedy tools”.

Novelie, who has risen up alongside Acaster and recently appeared as a guest on his hit podcast Off Menu, adds, “There’s also the five consecutive Perrier nominations at the Fringe, releasing multiple interlocking Netflix series simultaneously, huge tours and all while staying off social media, widely considered impossible if you didn’t get famous by 2012. He looms over millennial comedy like an indie colossus.”

Given the many interviews Acaster is doing while promoting both Celebrity Traitors and his new stand-up special (out in December), Acaster currently appears more comfortable in the spotlight than he’s ever been. It’s somewhat surprising. From his Mock the Week days, where he complained of being “aggressively” approached by people in the street, to nearly quitting stand-up in 2019 because he was unable to handle hecklers, his relationship with his fans has historically been a little frosty. It led fans to wonder whether they were ever seeing the “real” Acaster, a question they’re still pondering today.

Following a break – part reflective career hiatus, part general lockdown pause – Acaster returned to stand-up renewed and ready to face his frustrations. In the tour that followed, Hecklers Welcome, he actively encouraged audience members to yell out while he was on stage. Somehow, it was effective in helping Acaster enjoy performing again.

I interviewed him back when he was tentatively working out the show and rediscovering his love of comedy. “To now pick it up from there and go, ‘OK, I don’t like all those things, but what are we going to do about that? How are we going to make sure those things don’t ruin it for you?’

– that’s been really positive,” he told me. In conversation, Acaster was far more lowkey – less hyper – than he is on his podcast, and in his stand-up. I found him to be thoughtful and considerate; he had clearly spent a great deal of time thinking about his position in the comedy ecosystem, and what he wanted to do with it.

By choosing to build a stand-up show around a niche experience like being heckled (rather than, say, some bland bit about queuing), and releasing a number of his specials independently, Acaster has diligently carved out his own unique path in the industry. Perhaps it’s because comedy was never the plan. Acaster played in bands as a teenager and dropped out of sixth form in hope of pursuing a career in music.

It’s a hobby he’s returned to in recent years, his 2023 album with musical collective Temps and upcoming record with The Wow! Scenario are just two of Acaster’s many career side quests. He’s released three non-fiction books, bagged acting roles in Cinderella, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and Bad Fairies.

And now: Celebrity Traitors.

When Acaster first gave stand-up a go, it was an activity for the existential 18-year-old from Kettering to tick off his bucket list. Raised in a Christian household (he playfully calls his family “chrizzos” on stage), it was crashing his parents’ car as a teen, rather than religion, that left him with a death fixation. His science teacher father was the one who “gently suggested” Acaster give comedy a try, implying that he may have “more of a knack” for it than music.

Despite his reluctance to admit it, comedy immediately made sense, and Acaster began gigging while living at home and doing the washing up in a restaurant. Tour support stints for Josie Long and Milton Jones (both of whose whimsical style would go on to influence his own) followed, around the time Acaster started popping up on the panel show circuit.

When Acaster first became known to the TV-watching public, he was a gangly man in a perennially teenage uniform of half-zipped hoodies, checked shirts and skinny jeans. He’s certainly better dressed now, though. As writer Lauren O’Neill noted in British Vogue, Acaster’s Celebrity Traitors wardrobe has only added to his “internet boyfriend” status. “Grey hoodie, gilet, pair of Keens – and I’d be shocked if there weren’t a few pairs of Service Works slacks in his arsenal,” she wrote. “Make no mistake: this is a Grow Your Own Fiancé for millennial, city-dwelling women looking for a man to adopt a sausage dog and argue in Sainsbury’s with.”

Those panel show appearances introduced Acaster to viewers via short, sharp flashes of political or observational material. A turn on Taskmaster and then the launch of Off Menu, the funny food podcast Acaster co-hosts with The Traitors: Uncloaked host Ed Gamble, showed them Acaster when he wasn’t doing material. He had that same awkward energy, but there was an ease there.

Both have had a huge impact on his career, and while Off Menu’s success might be perplexing to Acaster, it is clear that eight years in, he still enjoys interviewing his celebrity friends and top tier celebrities (with varying levels of success; Dan Aykroyd was a notorious car crash) about their dream meal. It’s also a “sweet cash cow”, as he once put it, for him and Gamble. Off Menu, Acaster has said in the past, essentially funds his stand-up career.

For Acaster, who received his first of five consecutive Edinburgh Comedy Award nominations in 2012 (making him always the Fringe bridesmaid, never the Fringe bride), touring and his subsequent specials remain his top priority. In his work, which is devilishly clever, he relishes playing with the concept of truth and challenging his audience and their perception of him, interspersing childhood stories with blatant and fantastical works of imagination. And actually, it’s through these layers of artifice that Acaster is able to be his most honest.

Often, he’ll employ a fictional persona as a clear marker of distance from the audience: an undercover police officer called Pat Springleaf, or an aviator sunglasses-wearing bad-boy comedian. In his latest show, Acaster plays a fictional comedian best known for doing Acaster impressions; the special is being released on said made-up comic’s YouTube channel, rather than Acaster’s. Are you still with me? In the show, Acaster impersonates himself via a series of twitchy, blinky movements and meme-spawning catchphrases: “poppadoms or bread” from Off Menu, “started it, had a breakdown, bon appetit” from his calamitous appearance on Bake Off.

Yet for all the loudly declared artifice, these performances are a means through which Acaster opens up. Seven years ago, his show Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 was the platform through which he discussed his break-up from fellow comedian Rose Matafeo while filming The Great British Bake Off. The routine culminates with Acaster ringing the Samaritans and then having to pretend to be a baker so the volunteer on the other end of the line doesn’t guess who he is. It’s a silly conceit, but even if his retelling isn’t exactly how the events played out, it’s clear there’s a nugget of truth and vulnerability on display.

In his new stand-up special, as a comedian impersonating himself, Acaster deadpans about why any comedian not using their platform to wholeheartedly shout about the climate crisis is failing to do their job. The layers upon layers of metacomedy in place make the special’s contents hard to write about, but in the room, it was blatantly clear that this is what truly matters to Acaster.

Yet it also felt like a challenge to the audience: take what I’m saying at face value, I dare you, and I can easily caveat it by saying I’m playing a character. In 2019, a routine Acaster had been performing on tour for months about his ex, Crashing star Louise Ford, leaving him for Rowan Atkinson was turned into a tabloid “exclusive” with the headline: “DUMPED FOR MR BEAN”. Understanding how stage material (which can be fabricated and fully made up) can be taken out of context, Acaster had specifically asked audiences not to post about it on social media. What he said wasn’t a secret. But that doesn’t mean he wanted it to make headlines, or that it was 100 per cent true, as told on stage.

There’s something unusual, then, about seeing Acaster being so completely himself on The Celebrity Traitors. Yet it tracks with the show’s format. Acaster never wanted to be a Traitor; his unwillingness to actively lie is part of the reason teammate Maya Jama is getting increasingly frustrated with him.

The Traitor identity acts as a layer of artifice, just like his stand-up performances, in allowing Acaster to reveal his true self. “All my stand-up was in this exaggerated persona, but sometimes I’m a bit more myself now. The line’s a bit more blurred,” he told me in 2022.

On The Celebrity Traitors and in his comedy, Acaster has never been more open, and that’s what people can’t get enough of.