Quotes from James Acaster

I like touring, and I like stopping off at service stations and driving along motorways.

I got left for Mr. Bean. I found out a year after we split up. I opened the newspaper and there was a full-page story. No one else in the history of time has ever been left for Mr. Bean.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, sums up the Fringe. Spend a year spitting your guts out writing a show, and people forget your name as soon as they walk out.

If people are coming to see me because they like what I do on 'Mock the Week,' that's great because they are coming to see me being me.

Corduroy hits the sweet spot between jeans and slacks. They're a trouser middleman.

I really love standup, and I really love writing standup.

You can play a gig as a band and not know that they hated you; with standup, after every line, you know.

I left school and didn't go to university to be in a band.

I'd decided to write about stuff that I would like to hear standup about.

I never liked wrestling, but I thought The Rock was brilliant, and that is a statement to how funny he is that I'd even watch a show that I didn't like just to see him on it.

The Rock was one of my favourite comedy characters growing up, and I still think he is. Mainly because he took himself so seriously by being ridiculous and a buffoon all the time but always took the high status.

First I stopped believing in hell, then the afterlife. Sometimes that connection is still there, and I'll feel an impulse to pray if I'm stressed or upset.

When you're talking about a really horrible personal thing that happened to you... and it doesn't get laughs... I feel really exposed and like I've overshared with some strangers.

Until you get left for Mr. Bean, you don't realise how frequently he pops up. There's a shop two streets from my house that sells masks of his face. There's nowhere where I'm going to go that he's not there.

One of the things I figured out was that I was having good gigs when I wore jumpers. It was because I looked more like an outsider, so they expected me to talk about weird stuff rather than normal stuff.

If a comic laughs at their own jokes, I don't like it. They shouldn't find it funny; they should seriously believe in this stupid thing they're saying.

I'm almost able to be more honest by lying. By making everything up, I'm able to say what I really want to.