How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S9, Ep8 How to Fail: James Acaster

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

Yes, it's the SEASON FINALE - I know, I know, it comes around so quickly doesn't it? But fear not, for we have an excellent guest in the form of James Acaster: comedian, podcaster, author and music enthusiast (specifically enthusiastic for anything released in 2016, which he claims in his book, Perfect Sound Whatever, is the best year for music dot dot dot ever).As well as being the only British stand-up to have fronted a four-part Netflix special, James co-hosts the Off Menu podcast. He joins me to talk about mental health, political correctness, relationship break-ups, dropping out of school and the importance of making mistakes without being overly critical of everything you've ever done wrong [TW: contains discussion of suicidal thoughts]. Plus the time he called a heckler a paedophile and immediately regretted it.Thank you so much for listening to season nine - and we'll be back in the not-too distant future with a couple of exciting bonus episodes.*I have a new book out! Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong contains two-and-bit years worth of accumulated wisdom from my fantastic podcast guests.*How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email [e-mail] You can buy our fantastic PODCAST MERCH here.* James Acaster's book, Perfect Sound Whatever, is out now.*Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod        Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and

journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. James Acaster is a comedian who finds humour in the unlikeliest places. His highly acclaimed stand-up shows have tackled everything from car crashes to mental health and witness protection programmes. His latest book, Perfect Sound Whatever, describes finding refuge in the music of 2016 during a year in which his relationship broke up, he was ditched by his agent, and on the verge of a breakdown, sought counselling for the first time. If all that sounds a bit depressing, rest assured that Acaster manages to do what he always does, which is to distill the saddest parts of his life into the funniest jokes.

He also recounts how he shat himself in a steakhouse and how he accidentally found comfort in the form of a cold lasagna, referring to the refrigerated discovery as one of the most iconic moments of 2017. as one of the most iconic moments of 2017. Acaster's love of food is evident in his hit podcast Off Menu, which he co-hosts with Ed Gamble, and which is often above How to Fail in the iTunes chart. So I'm actually raging with ill-concealed bitterness as I read this introduction, but hopefully you won't notice. He's recently launched another podcast series, Perfect Sounds,

based on his contention that 2016 was the greatest year for popular music. Acaster has been nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award, a record five consecutive times, and is the only British stand-up to have fronted a four-part Netflix special. The Evening Standard has called him the Jarvis Cocker of comedy. But however successful he is on paper, Acaster never fully seems to believe it of himself. You should try and live a good life, he writes in Perfect Sound Whatever, but you should also lay off yourself when you don't get everything perfect all the time. I personally wish I was better at acknowledging my mistakes without having to punish myself over and over. But it can take a long time

to get to that point. James Acuster, welcome to How to Fail. Hello. Hello. So off the back of that quote, have you got there yet? Have you got to the point where you're easing up on yourself and you're not punishing yourself for mistakes over and over again? Well, first of all, thanks for reading the book book so I didn't think that anyone would ever read it and then uh interview me and be able to so I thought because it's a more personal book I thought oh I'll just be able to say these things and I'll never I'll never need to follow it up but you got me there I think I am getting better at it but then I think that I'm getting better at

it this year because weirdly with COVID and you know lockdown and everyone kind of like being put on pause for a bit and my usual job being put on pause it means that I'm weirdly in some areas of my life anyway less stressed and I think I found constantly going around doing gigs to be pretty stressful I'm finding that now that I'm feeling a bit more relaxed, I am a bit better at letting myself off the hook. Also, I don't feel like I'm making as many consistent mistakes because I think most comedy gigs I do, I've always got something that I didn't like about it,

especially when I'm really tired and I'm doing a tour. I have some nights where I just come off and I'm like, oh, I said so many things to that audience that they didn't deserve. I was really horrible to them. I'm really giving myself a hard time there. And obviously with no gigs this year, that's not happening at all. And I am pretty surprised,

but also worried to discover how much more relaxed I am in general. I don't want to say my life's better because no one's life is better right now. Actually, some people's lives are better, aren't they? Well, I imagine the thing with gigging is just the travel and the late nights is exhausting. So to be able to get out of that cycle

and spend some time catching up on sleep, much as we wish there wasn't actually a global pandemic which had triggered that, but I can imagine it does make you feel a bit more sorted. I mean, it certainly has for me because I'm actually a stand-up comedian no I'm not but normally I travel quite a lot and it's been a real liberation not having anything in the diary yeah I think as lucky as I feel to be able to do all those gigs and to

have that as my job I haven't stopped since I started doing the open mic circuit in 2008 and I've just been constantly gigging and trying to do as many gigs as possible since then and definitely I mean last year it got a bit crazy in my tour it was the longest and biggest tour I've ever done and I was on stage for the longest amount of time and when I said yes to all that was because you know I felt like what an opportunity to be able to do all this and I didn't really factor in the fact that it would emotionally physically and mentally wear me down following that up with a year where I'm able to be at home and work from home the contrast is pretty huge I always feel weird talking about that kind of side of Covid for me because not everyone

is having that experience and there's also a lot of things I would obviously sooner not have this pandemic happen to everybody that uh my life be like this. But in terms of just giving myself a little bit of a break and not be so hard on myself, I've definitely found it easier this year. As I mentioned in the introduction, you mine your own life for a lot of your stand-up material. Do you feel that there is a kind of relentless self-awareness that comes from that? Yeah, I definitely feel more self-aware. Like since I started doing stand-up, just within the first week of doing stand-up,

I became more self-aware than I was before. Because before, I didn't have anyone bluntly feeding back to me what they thought of me. Whereas with stand-up, suddenly every night you were going on stage and discovering oh I'm not that funny like I think I genuinely before this stand-up thought I was quite a cool person and thought that like people thought I was cool and then I started doing stand-up like oh I'm no people see me as a bit of a nerd and an outsider more than I thought I was and they don't want me to come on and be this relatable cool guy actually that's even more awkward when I try and do that and like again with that kind of like coming back to like give

yourself a break and try not to give yourself a hard time I definitely look back at so many of my interactions over the years I mean since doing stand-up but also definitely before and how I was and who I thought I was and thinking everyone must have thought I was an absolute dickhead like I was going around thinking that I was a really cool great guy that people wanted to be like and actually I was just getting everything wrong and I just had this misplaced confidence so yeah stand-up has for a while it made me a lot more self-critical maybe and finding faults in myself because those routines were funnier and there's certain aspects that have improved but also it means that every time I do notice I've done something that might sound stupid or whatever I don't get it out my head for a long time I am a bit too self-aware

in that regard there's tiny things I've done you know years ago in social interactions that I still think of now and go oh man that person must hate me But I don't think I had that before I did stand-up. One of the reasons that I loved your book, which I did actually read, well done me, is because it is a man being really open about the emotional cost of relationship breakups. And I don't think you often read that. And I really admire that about your work. How difficult was it for you to confront that? How easy was it for you to make the decision to write about it? I didn't take it lightly. I wanted to write a book about music because I was so excited about all these albums that I discovered from this one year.

excited about all these albums that I discovered from this one year but because it's such an odd music project to do to tell everyone like you bought hundreds of albums from 2016 and you now think it's the greatest year for music of all time you can't say that and then not put it in context like they have to know the full story so I was like well if I do that I do have to explain to them why so I'm gonna have to talk about my personal life luckily with a book you can just write whatever you like and then you can read it back and see how you feel about it and choose what goes in and what doesn't so I think in the early stages of it I just decided well I'll just write everything and I can always take out the stuff that makes me feel uncomfortable or that feels irrelevant and quite

early on I decided that no one wants to hear the kind of personal gritty details about a breakup and someone trying to make out like one of you was in the right one of you was in the wrong and all that tabloid dramary stuff that actually doesn't help anyone to hear that about someone else's relationship what is helpful is just your own story and being like this is how I felt when this happened and this is how I coped with it or didn't cope with it at various times and the more that I wrote about that side of things because in the book my ex-girlfriend she's not named but she's also I don't talk about anything specifically that she did anything that happened between us it's not relevant you refer to her as Becky with the good hair which is a reference to one of 2016's seminal albums

Beyonce's Lemonade so I massively appreciated that as well tell us about shitting yourself in a steakhouse because that's what we really want to hear about yeah it was just one of those things where like not really ever spoke about that sort of stuff about stand-up before I've mainly done like whimsical stand-up and people would never expect me to do a story like that necessarily but I was very grateful to have that story going into this book because a lot of the book is about suicidal thoughts and about depression and anxiety so it was nice to have a story where you shit yourself in a steakhouse at one point it was just an unfortunate series of events it was my first time or maybe my second time actually in

LA and it was my first time on American television I was very excited about it and the night before I did a gig where I tried out the material that I was going to do on TV the next day and the gig went really well so to celebrate I was just like drinking with the other comics and went and got a chicken quesadilla from the Mexican food truck outside and that gave me food poisoning I woke up in the middle of the night very poorly then had to go to the TV show the next day trying to style it out like I didn't have food poisoning. Also, I was told that the audience at that gig are the easiest audience ever. They weren't on that particular day. I got very, very unlucky.

And I had to go out to a very quiet audience and just do my set while trying not to shit myself. And then afterwards, my agent at the time wanted to go to a steakhouse to celebrate the awful gig. And I went there went to the toilet and for that point I didn't I didn't need a shit anymore so I was like oh I think I'm okay but while I was urinating my body was like you do need a shit and it's going to happen right now because I had makeup wipes and stuff in my bag because I was doing a tv show I was able to weirdly clean myself up I had a change of clothes as well so I was able to clean myself up better than most people in that situation would be able to but then go out to my agent and ask that we now go home because this has happened to me he'd been looking forward to this steakhouse

for ages so somehow and I would never do this now and this is probably a better answer to your first question about have I stopped giving myself a hard time for stuff because nowadays I would just go no I'm not staying here and having a steak dinner with you I've just shit myself I'm going back to my Airbnb and you can have a meal on your own but I'm not doing this but at the time I didn't have that in me I was just like oh okay he's you know because I was like oh he's really looked forward to coming here so I should really stay and just sat there. And I couldn't eat anything. So my insides were a mess. So I just sat and watched him eat a steak dinner while mine went cold.

And then I was in bed for a week after that with food poisoning. I mean, the agents that I've got now would 100% never do that to me. Like if I came out and went, I'll just shit myself. They go, okay, well, we're all going home now. And we're going to cancel this meal because of course we're not gonna or they'd at least go well we'll put you in a cab home yeah don't mind we're going to stay here and have the meal and even then you'd be like that's a bit off but fair enough but uh yeah I mean to be fair like I wouldn't want to eat my steak opposite someone who just shat themselves you would think so um

it's off-putting yeah I think for some reason for him being told I said look I've cleaned myself up as best I can but I'd like to go home he's like well he's cleaned himself up I'm having this steak I think he'd been looking forward to it so much that nothing could ruin it for him like he'd been thinking about it for a very long time of having this steak dinner he was just gonna have it no matter what I mean we are laughing about it now because you are very funny in how you tell stories which is lucky for you given what you do professionally but I think it does highlight that story like how low things had got when actually on the one hand

there was this career high of performing on Conan O'Brien and on the other hand you're being really let down by your agent in a foreign city, food poisoning, and you don't feel able to stand up for yourself and to voice what you need. And you talk, as you mentioned there in the book, about depression and suicidal thoughts and going into therapy for the first time.

And again, I want to salute you for that because not only do, I think, men find that harder, but particularly male stand-up comedians I imagine and I just wanted to ask you about that about how helpful you have found therapy in your life very and I had you know I had a massive speed bump with it at the end of 2017 but I've got a new therapist now and they're fantastic and I've been doing zoom sessions during lockdown to begin with it was just very useful for again what we're talking about the whole kind of not being as hard on myself I didn't even realize that was a thing that I did until I went to therapy I kind of went to therapy because I blamed the whole break upon myself

found a million little reasons little million things I'd said or done over the years to convince myself this is all my fault. Even though no one was telling me that. But I was convinced that I was just not worth being with and I'd done all these awful things or whatever. And then when I went to therapy, well, I went because I was having suicidal thoughts and that scared me. And I didn't want to have suicidal thoughts. I didn't want to kill myself because I have friends and family especially my family or nephews and stuff and I don't want to do that to them I didn't really know what I wanted out of it first of all I didn't want to have suicidal thoughts anymore it's like I wanted to stop being a dickhead almost I deliberately chose a female therapist as well because I thought a male

therapist would let me off the hook if I went and told them like what an awful boyfriend I was. And what was weird was like sitting down and actually talking to someone who you know doesn't know you, isn't being judgmental but also you can't offend them, they don't have a personal stake in what you're saying and just telling them stuff which in your head was really bad and then you hear yourself say it out loud and you're like oh no that was just like an argument that couples have and actually that wasn't that bad and that was okay or yeah and there's certain things which I saw in a completely different light when talking about it in therapy and then gradually kind of looking at oh actually my main problem is I'm so self-critical and hard

on myself that I've driven myself to a nervous breakdown essentially and I've kind of put so much on myself that no one else was putting on me that I've kind of fallen apart and that's weirdly what's got me here although actually I won't say that that's what got me in therapy because I don't want people to think that you have to get to this point and then go to therapy anyone can go at any point and it's just a healthy thing to do just like going to the gym is healthy and I know some of people listen going well I don't go to the gym but like we all know we should so at least there's that with the gym is that even if you don't go you know you should go so there's that step with therapy that we need to take of going like, okay, I don't go, but I should, no matter what, really. So that was

really helpful to begin with, not blaming myself for everything anymore. Even if I had done something wrong in my life, like not repeatedly beating myself up for it. The speed bump you refer to just for people who haven't read the book, is that you found yourself being sort of lightly stalked by your former therapist, which is a very unfortunate turn of events. And that's why you had to find a new one. But why do you think you were so self-critical? Do you think you were born that way?

There's like a load of different things. I mean, I was raised Christian, which sounds like it's putting the blame on my parents, which it 100% isn't because they have always been on the very progressive and liberal and kind side of Christianity where it's, I was going to say when it's more focused on forgiveness, but even then when it's more focused on forgiveness, it's still focused on you've done something wrong. I wasn't growing up in a Christian household where it was like focusing on sins and you're a sinner

and all this kind of stuff but i still went to a c of e school and we went to church and um i even went to like you know cubs and scouts which were very christian when i went to those things so my life was full of a lot of readings from the Bible and sermons and assemblies about the Bible and all stuff like that. And a lot of that was based on, especially my primary school. I remember there was a lot of primary school of assemblies, which were assemblies about things you shouldn't do. Even if it was like smoking or something. So I've never smoked. To this day, I've never even smoked a cigarette, even had a they call it a drag or a toke I don't

know what the cool kids are saying but like I haven't done any of that because I remember the don't smoke assembly from school scaring the shit out of me and all of that you know don't do this because it's bad and don't and I remember getting in trouble at school for um swearing and being absolutely in tears when my mum got told about it but my mum not being that angry at me yeah I just told from an early age and most of the things that I was going to that you know if you do something wrong that is bad and I wasn't being told as much but it's okay you can be forgiven or we're all human we're going to do these things there definitely wasn't a sense of we're all just people and we're going to make mistakes it was you shouldn't do this so there was that and then over

the years as well I guess like with certain it's not like Britain in general also like Kettering where I grew up is full of critical people apologies in a way to anyone listening from Kettering but you also if you're from Kettering you know that I'm right that there's loads of nice people in Kettering but if you go to school school in ketvin and you grow up around there and go to the pubs and whatever my experience growing up it wasn't the most supportive town to grow up in there were supportive people there and there were supportive places you could go youth clubs and whatnot but there's a lot of like you shouldn't think you're anything great and don't think you're good anyone was successful they'd get chopped down pretty quickly we had a metal band in ketvin do well and as soon as they did well everyone was successful they'd get chopped down pretty quickly we had a metal band in Ketman do

well and as soon as they did well everyone was like they're shit they're sellouts and they're not good anymore so there wasn't people turning to each other and going good on you that's brilliant what you've just done that's great it was more like oh what you think they're good do you well because you've just done that you're not good actually so you're not allowed to feel proud of yourself you're not allowed to pat yourself on the back you should be more self-deprecating and self-critical and there was that as well which I think England in general is like most places in England are like that and there are some positive places you've got Brighton and Bristol but everywhere else is pretty pretty negative apologies to all the places that I've been to that are really positive I'm sure there's loads of places that are positive

oh my god you're hating yourself for this as you're saying it oh yeah well exactly you say this stuff especially nowadays with like that doesn't help as well that now we've got the internet where if someone slips up we could all do a tweet and say that they're an arsehole for saying this so as soon as i said that then in my head what i'm thinking is someone who lives in somerset is going to tweet oh yeah thanks very much mate like we're a bunch of grumpy people. We're not actually, so you're not going to get that right. So like in my head, that's always what's going to happen. So yeah, it's all that. It's a mixture of a whole bunch of things. My final question before we get onto your failures is, do you think that having gone through breakups makes you better or wiser and enables you to have a more successful relationship now

I don't know I mean I'm 100% in the best relationship I've ever been in but I don't know if that's because I've been in failed ones or just because I mean this one just feels and from the start just felt completely different to anything else. It was like, I felt like I could just be myself. I didn't have to put any effort into things constantly. You know, like, when I say that, I don't mean, you know, I'm not doing anything nice. But it's that when you do put effort in, it doesn't feel like effort because you just want to do it.

You just want to do a nice thing for that person because, yeah, it just feels like there's something you want to do rather than a stress of if I don't do something nice for them we might fall out soon because we're having a tough time I think definitely being in other relationships that haven't been right for me and also haven't been right for the other person I was in a relationship with has just given me perspective if this relationship I'm in now had been the first relationship I was ever in I might just assume that all relationships are like this and take it for granted a bit more and every day that I've been with my girlfriend now I've just felt incredibly grateful and lucky I might not have if it was the first person I met and I didn't have other relationships to compare it to I mean if we

talk about self-criticism this is the only relationship I've been in where I'm not doing that to myself and i think in all other relationships i've been in i've been constantly self-criticizing and self-criticizing and criticizing them in my head you know yeah and being like oh i don't like that i don't like like oh that's not great and then looking at the relationship and criticizing the relationship and looking at myself and going oh i'm doing this this isn't good and this is the first relationship where not only am I not doing that, but also it's not even an effort to not do that. It's just, I just feel like I can just be me. And it definitely has made me more certain that this is the right relationship for me. But yeah, I mean, you know, I'd rather have just had one relationship to learn that lesson. That's so lovely. I mean, being yourself in a relationship, it is the thing and it's so underrated.

And I totally hear you. So I'm glad you found that. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? Rid me of this troublesome priest. This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis.

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the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise. Mother, a mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Let's get onto your failures. So the first one is relentlessly calling a heckler a paedophile during your first year as a stand-up. So what happened there?

Was it one heckler at one gig or did he keep coming back or she? It was one heckler at one gig. I mean, when I started stand-up, I mean, when anyone starts stand-up, they don't know what they're doing and you're just someone who you have an interest in stand-up comedy or you are the funny one in your friendship group whatever it is that makes you want to do stand-up comedy and try it out and every single routine that you write and everything that you say off the cuff is an experiment and you don't know what works and

what doesn't and you're figuring out who you are on stage and what works for you and i'd seen the comedian daniel kitson who is you know for people who don't know him a he'll be glad that you don't know him but also by stand-ups he's regarded very highly and he was and still is one of my favorite comedians and i'd gone to see him and i'd seen him deal with a heckler by calling him a pedophile and it was hilarious and i hadn't done stand-up long enough yet to know that what works for one comic doesn't necessarily work for all comics and that also what works in one situation doesn't work in every single situation even if you're that comedian like it worked because of what was going on in the room and all that he was somehow able to pull that off.

So I did this gig in Hitchin and it was a very nice gig. And it was all like all the locals and everyone kind of knew each other in the crowd and stuff. And a guy turned up who I later learned his nickname is Mad John locally. And he's got a bit of a reputation. He knows he has. And he showed up during my set as well. So I was like the third act on of six or something like that but like he turned up during my set and immediately started shouting out without knowing

what i'd been talking about and just immediately i was like you're a pedophile mate without there wasn't any context for it like there had been at the kitson show i'm sure something had happened at the kitson show which meant it made sense to call him that i just called him it immediately and it got a laugh probably just because it was so out of nowhere but then as a new comic i didn't understand every time he shouted out i called him a pedophile now this is the sound of one of those stand-up comedy stories where people are like really just they're making out something failed and actually they're just trying to talk about a success because the gig did go well for me calling him a pedophile over and over again however to me that doesn't paint a success in

comedy an audience laughing doesn't necessarily mean you're doing the right thing in fact a lot of the time it's you're kind of like taking whatever power you have through being on stage and you could be misusing it a bit. And the laughs don't mean you're doing something right. And after that gig, I felt so bad about it. And all I was doing was talking to my friend, David Trent, who was on the bill as well and saying to him, I really wish I hadn't done that.

Because that man had mental health issues, definitely. And when I spoke to the people who knew him afterwards, I was like, okay. And I was just like, that was not a good way of dealing with that I never did anything like that again because I just felt you kind of look at yourself and go oh were the laughs that important to you like you had to get them that much that you would just happily destroy this guy it's not like afterwards he came up to me laughing going nice one that was brilliant he was a bit miffed because fair enough to him it was like what what am i being called look i'd like to say that i've never

made those mistakes again i've never called someone a pedophile relentlessly again but like i've definitely gone too hard on audience members since got sidetracked with something that sometimes the rest of the room doesn't even care about especially especially on my most recent tour, every now and again. The reason why I continually make that mistake is because every now and again it works in a way that's actually good and that I don't come away feeling bad for. Every now and again, it works in a way that I'm like,

oh, that did make the gig better taking that risk and actually being negative about the gig made the gig better and no one was upset and that was good. So then I continually roll the dice on gigs where that doesn't work. being negative about the gig made the gig better and no one was upset and that was good so then i continually roll the dice on gigs where that doesn't work and then i come away feeling like i gave them a really bad show there because i anytime a gig feels middling and like it's going to be forgettable i panic and i want to make the gig memorable i don't want people going away just going oh yeah that was all right and so in the moment I try and make it an

event and take a risk and often because I'm tired on tour or grumpy or whatever you go with whatever your true feelings are your authentic feelings are because that's kind of in the moment feels like your best chance of making the gig good and often that just makes it worse and you end up bumming everyone out and making them think that they've been a bad audience and you don't like the gig and the gig's been shit I think it's such an interesting failure to have chosen because it highlights the capacity of comedy to be cruel and I think what's very interesting about you is that you've spoken in the past about how there's a responsibility both to acknowledge your privilege, but also to realise that times change. And I know that comedians are constantly asked about this, like, is there any joke too offensive to make?

And you're very interesting on that. So what is your position on that? Well, often what we get get asked because it's interesting how you phrased it because people don't usually phrase it like that people don't usually phrase it is there any joke that's too offensive to make people cleverly phrase it is there any topic that's out of bounds which are you saying i'm not clever stop heckling me james yeah sorry mate you're an idiot and a pedophile um sneakily i should have said they sneakily phrase it like that because your question is a better question but their question means there's a kind of get out there because i don't think there is any topic that is out of bounds because it just depends how you deal with that topic. And all these freedom of speech people,

and look, I believe in free speech. I'm pretty sure everyone does. Like I actually don't know anyone who doesn't believe in free speech. I've never met anyone who doesn't believe in free speech. But people who use free speech as an excuse to say awful things, and often like they're the ones who scream,

freedom of speech, when people try and like disagree with a joke they've made. They will out like it's topics or we can't talk about that or we're not allowed to talk about rape or we're not allowed to talk about pedophilia or race if you're white or whatever it is and it's like no you can absolutely talk about all those things but all of those things are way too much more weightier subjects depending on who you know well actually whoever you are they're weightier subjects but like if you're on the more privileged end of the scale when it comes to that subject then there's even more weight behind it because the routine is different when you talk about it and it's not just a joke is a joke like say if you're a man and you make a joke

about rape and the joke about rape is very much either at the expense of the victim or it's quite flippant about it. It's just having a laugh about that subject and trivializing it and making it seem like it's not important. And I know that men get raped also. Men can be sexually assaulted, but a lot of the time, the jokes that men do about it are at the expense of women. And they'll kind of get wound up. Actually, I'm jumping around all over the place now now but it helps to have a more specific example Bill Burr has a routine where he says about there's a waitress at a cafe and she wrote on the chalkboard outside or it's at a pub and she wrote on the chalkboard outside we like our beer like we like our violence domestic and that's the joke she puts

on the chalkboard outside and he tells his story and says that she then got lost her job over it because everyone on social media kicked off about this joke now whether you think she should lose her job or not is a different discussion but the main thing he defends is the joke his point is it's a good solid joke you take any word out of that joke and the joke doesn't work anymore and no one's going to see that joke and then go oh that's a good idea and then go home and beat their wife up and that's his whole point about it and the weird stance people tend to take on it is that and no one is saying that no one's saying that if you're in the audience and you hear a joke about domestic violence you're then going to start doing domestic violence when you never did it before that's not the case well it does

do that kind of joke and the comic never thinks of this there might be someone in the audience who has experienced domestic violence who themselves have been on the receiving end of that at home or who has witnessed it maybe with their parents and those jokes aren't going to be funny to that person in fact they're going to be quite the opposite and disturbing and quite horrible and gonna make them feel very alone and isolated when everyone around them is laughing at that joke and your failure to acknowledge that that person exists and it means immediately just thinking about people who aren't that person so immediately bill burr thinks of the person doing the violence and not the

victim of it yeah that's where his mind goes to immediately and so the disregard for the person who is the victim highlights the problem as well we don't see those people as mattering or as individuals hence why you're making that joke also it's not just the people doing the violence who are completely responsible for it as a society us not giving those things the weight that they deserve and us not acknowledging that they're bad and us being flippant about them and just treating them like they don't matter and it's just something we can joke about and actually take no positive action in terms of combating it but we can all make jokes and have a laugh that is a problem and that kind of like let's just make jokes about gay people let's make jokes about trans people it's just making it that these things don't matter and those people don't matter and we can all just like enable and when

people go well i'm not transphobic i'm not homophobic i'm not racist it's like but you're enabling these people you're allowing them to continue the people who are racist and transphobic and homophobic you're kind of like backing up that culture that allows them to feel emboldened enough to do what they do all the time so for me getting a laugh out of an audience is not as important as those things being eradicated and those things being combated and i'm sure that any kind of like edgy comic who defends those kind of jokes could listen to this and think it's a bunch of bollocks but like nothing's going to change their minds anyway they seem pretty stubborn on that front and if any of those people are listening i'd prompt them to ask themselves why they care about that number why are they choosing that side of things and sticking to it so aggressively

instead of considering the opposing point of view and why is your main hill that you want to die on immediately is defending the comedian making that joke who by the way is receiving no repercussions mostly like people hold up like very rare cases where things have gone to court these comedians who are releasing these trailers all the time for their netflix specials or whatever being like no one dares say anything anymore this guy's gonna say it all it's like you've got a netflix special and you're saying all of this on netflix and nothing's going to happen to you and you're a multi-millionaire what are you talking about you've literally made millions from saying this kind of shit the world is not against you but the world is against all these people that you're making the jokes about people are dying

i can't with good conscience go out and just make a flippant joke about the stereotype and encourage the same old tired ignorance about minorities and people who are experiencing bad shit happening to them and just like feel that I'm justified in doing that I don't really see I don't know I have to say I think that's an amazing answer I really do and thank you for putting it so eloquently this isn't one of your failures, but I'm always very interested when I discover it about someone,

and I know that listeners like talking about it, is that you dropped out of school before sixth form. During sixth form. During sixth form. And your dad was a teacher at that same school, wasn't he? Before I was there, yeah. Oh, okay. Almost got that right.

No, that's more than most people ever know that's good why did you drop out I mean I would have dropped out earlier but my dad had made a deal with me to do one year of sick form before I left and we're talking about this recently actually he thought he'd got me because like I basically at the end of GCSEs I just said I'm right I'm just going to form a band and that's what I'm going to do now and I'm going to try and be in a band and my dad was like just do one year of sixth form and if you don't you know get anything out of it don't like it you can stop after one year and that was the deal and I made the deal with him and I did one year and then I dropped out and he says that he thought he'd got me that

I was just going to go well I may as well do a second year because I've got to the end of the first so I may as well just get my A levels but the reason why is because I don't think I was obsessed with death but like I was definitely one of those people who was like well I'm going to die one day like this life isn't forever and at that age I was like I didn't see any point not just going for my dreams at that point I was like in a position where I could try and do that. Yeah, I could try and be in a band. I was 17 when I had less sick form. So I was like, you know, that's a great age to start trying to do that kind of stuff.

I'd already been playing drums since I was 13. If I fail at this, then I'll probably be quite young by the time I've accepted that. So I can always do something else again. And I'd say it's hate. It's too strong a word. But yeah, I did pretty much hate school. Like I didn't like it. I didn't like the environment.

I had a teacher who bullied me in my first year of year seven. She was very nasty. And also that whole thing with like, I'm still in touch with one person from school and everything else I just found exhausting. The whole constantly trying to like be liked by people, be cool enough to be in with that group, be cool enough to not have that lot bully you. It was like a constant thing in my head of like just trying to keep on everyone's good side. good side because in my school if you did slip into the kind of like outsider weirdo kind of thing you were excluded by a lot of people and I was terrified of being bullied for whatever reason so I was looking back I was very stressed all the way through school of like trying to keep a certain position in my year group or in my school where like I wasn't getting shit from people all

the time I didn't enjoy most of the lessons and all I wanted to do was creative stuff all the time. I didn't enjoy most of the lessons. And all I wanted to do was creative stuff all the way through school. I loved music. I loved drama. I loved art class. I even liked dance when we did that, actually. Those were like the ones that I enjoyed. I didn't enjoy the rest of it. I enjoyed English when we were writing stories. And when everyone was like getting ready to go to university, also like I was one of the teenagers who I didn't like drinking at that point. I hated it. Me and my friends had started going to the pub and I was always having Cokes and they were all getting hammered and I didn't see the appeal whatsoever. So going to university held zero appeal to me because I was like, well, what I want to do doesn't require qualifications being

in a band. And I had like drum teachers and stuff at the time say to me, well, what if you don't make it in a band? You might want to be a session musician and you need qualifications for that I was like but I don't want to be a session musician so I'm not going to give myself a qualification and work hard on my plan b and then I won't be able to achieve my plan a and then I'm doing plan b and then I die so I'm not doing that I want to be a musician so I don't need qualifications I don't care about getting pissed and getting drunk with people so university doesn't hold that extra appeal for me there I don't really like hanging out with a new group of people and stuff like that so I don't want to live in a house with them like there was nothing there really apart from the prospect of traveling

to a different city and living in a different city that appealed to me so I was just like I don't see why I would do this. I want to be in a band. I want to make music and release classic albums. So I'm going to start doing that as soon as possible. I went to a sixth form college after dropping out of my sixth form and did a two-year BTEC in music practice, which isn't really a proper course. But I didn't really get a very good grade at the end of that because he had to form a band for the course. And towards the end, I thought, well, a better use of my time right now is booking my band loads of gigs and trying to get us a demo and stuff like that, rather than doing this coursework and getting this qualification that I'm never going to use anyway.

And so there's a whole bunch of things on that course I didn't get good grades on because I was too busy actually trying to be in a band and working actually doing the thing yeah working on what the plan was and although being in a band didn't work out you have become a phenomenally successful comedian have you ever regretted dropping out of school no that's not me saying that everyone should do what I did but I hope that's clear to people but like like, I think I was very lucky to know what I wanted to do with my life early on. And I was lucky to be so single-minded and driven about it. I mean, there's definitely that thing of like acknowledging privilege and stuff. We moved into a nicer house

and we were considered middle-class at that point. There wasn't many major risks in going for a band. The worst thing that could have happened is that I would be skinned and my parents would let me move back in with them. So I was lucky that I had all that and I was able to just roll the dice and go for my number one dream. And that when that didn't work out, because I hadn't given myself a plan B or a backup, I started doing stand-up because I'd done a couple of stand-up gigs already just for fun and I'd enjoyed them I didn't have any ideas when the band stopped so because I didn't want to sit around moping at home and complaining that I wasn't in a band anymore I thought well I can get out the house and do comedy gigs and I booked myself gigs all over the country because

I did enjoy with the band traveling somewhere to do a gig our gigs were always a disaster as a band we would you know drive to Blackpool and play to seven people and drive home and none of them would listen to us but I liked the journey I liked oh I'm going out of Kettering we're going to Blackpool today and that was exciting to me and so I thought I can sustain that by doing the open mic circuit around England and doing stand-up and I was 23 and someone told me early on if you're not making a living out of stand-up after three years you should quit and I was like great I'll be 26 that's nothing so I just like threw myself into it but not thinking at the time it was going to be my career but I wouldn't have done that and had that as a plan B

if I hadn't given myself a plan B at all and was then forced to just do whatever the second most enjoyable thing I'd been doing was. I think it's so important for people to realise that there are so many different paths to get somewhere and that it doesn't have to be the traditional route of school and A-levels and university so thank you for that but your second failure is related to music which is trying to explain to people why I couldn't play the songs they requested at my friend's wedding when I DJ'd which does sound pretty stressful to be fair oh it was bad and also like it's not even just that wedding it's like a load of different DJ experiences and I think there's some metaphor here for life I think and something that I haven't yet learned so I love music I love introducing

people to new music and so my first ever DJ experience was when I was like still in a band so it's probably 18 19 and I did a guest spot at the Prince of Wales in Kettering and it was an hour and they just let you do an unpaid hour-long DJ set and it was usually at like eight o'clock so it's not jumping yet and I just thought what a great opportunity to play people all these amazing songs they've never heard and introduce people to new music i'll be like john peel and the amount of people who was constantly coming up to me going can you play something we know please and they got progressively more angry with me with being like mate if the next song you play is an oasis i'm gonna fucking kick off and i mean knowing that i was about to play some math metal band that they'd never heard of i remember that ended with

a group of people chanting wanker at me in time with the song i was playing and you know that goes back as well to the encouragement of the ketwin public that's what i was growing up with was i'm there trying to connect with them and try to and try to do something positive and they're literally calling me a wanker over and over again and And I'm not sure if I'm going to get out the pub alive. And I learned from that to play songs that people know. And so I put a playlist together over the years that was like all big hits that everyone would dance to. I DJed at a friend's house party and it went well with that playlist. And then I DJed a friend's wedding and that also went really well the film was a comic and it was just so much fun and it was in 2017 a year where I wasn't having

a good time and then DJing at that wedding I just felt amazing and everyone was dancing and I just felt so happy because I'd felt so isolated and on my own all year and then suddenly to feel connected to a ring full of people in a just a purely positive way and in a way where your ego wasn't as involved as with stand-up you know you haven't written the songs you are just playing them so you feel a bit like you know you're doing this and you're choosing the songs but you're not there going like yeah I've written a pretty great song so like there's this you're sharing something with people more than being the recipient of all the credit I just loved it I want to DJ loads and so I kind of offered to a couple of friends that I knew who were getting married I just put my name down to do two DJ sets

at weddings that were coming up and the first one there was no wi-fi in the venue. So I had my iPod, which already had this playlist that I'd made for them on my iPod. And they had a laptop, which already had a playlist that they had chosen, the bride and groom that they wanted. So all I could do, all I was capable of doing was going back and forth between these two. Now I'd like to add the dance floor was full all night. These are all bangers. Nothing I'm playing is like obscure. There's no ego involved in this either. I'm completely giving them the songs everyone wants at weddings. But at the first wedding I'd done, most people were performers.

And performers don't heckle each other. And performers don't bother each other during something. So no one was coming up to me at my comedy friend's wedding and requesting songs because most of them had been on stage or they just wanted to have a good time and they weren't going to give anyone any hassle. And so at this one, I'm DJing and it's going well. And a guy who's pretty drunk at that point just comes up to me. And also like he walks, I'm on a stage,

but he just walks onto the stage and right up to me so there's that thing of like he's not staying the other side of the tj booth and speaking to me like that from the safe distance he's just coming up to me and just says have you got any queen i was like oh no i'm sorry i don't have any queen they said we'll get on the internet and find it i was like i don't have wi-fi in the building So all I can do is I've got my iPod here and it's got songs on it. And their playlist is the Brian and Green's playlist. So all I can do is go back and forth between the two. And Queen aren't on either one of them, I'm afraid.

And he was like, it's a yes or no question, mate. I was like, oh, okay, well, no. He went, why not? And then I had to explain it again. And then he went, oh, so I'm like, I'm not the biggest cunt in the world for asking, am I? And you're thinking, well, I didn't think you were, but now you've said that.

It doesn't feel like you're a great guy. And then I was trying to be like, no, I'm just telling you. I said, I'm sorry, I don't really know what's going on here and he was like what you don't know what's going on I'm asking you for a song and you're just like completely mugging me off I was like no I'm not and then he was in my face

and then someone had to come and get him and drag him away and then because of that I was pretty shaken up and because I had to be he was squaring up to me i was like oh i'm gonna get i'm about to get beaten up and then like he goes away and complains to his friends and you can see him so you can see the group who are now looking over at you and now in my head i'm like oh they're gonna chuck wanker at me it's like a whole thing now it's gonna happen again and one of his friends

comes up she requests a song brian adams or something and she's half smiling as well because she's like i'm gonna go and see if he's a dickhead again and i looked on both playlists no brian adams explained the exact same thing to her and she just looks over her shoulder at her friends and is like shakes her head and they're like this guy's a fucking and then she's like right okay so you're not gonna play it then you just not going to play what i've asked for at a wedding and i was like i know it's a wedding but like i haven't got this she goes away then a friend comes up to me which you think this is fine and she's like are you okay you don't look like you're enjoying yourself i was like yeah i just had this guy shouting my face and he was like saying oh i'm the biggest cunt in the world and all this like it was really

aggressive and this group are kind of like looking over at me now and i just feel a bit uneasy she's like well do you want to cheer up it is a wedding james i was like yeah i just need a second like someone just confronted me so i just need a second and then she starts laughing and going you're being so stupid just tell them you're not going to play the song i was like well i did and that made them angrier she's like well just tell them no requests i going to play the song. I was like, well, I did. And that made them angrier, which is like, well, just tell them no requests. I was like, I don't think that'll go down better. If I just say to them, no requests,

I think I'm in big trouble. Also, what I hadn't taken into account, and I talked to people afterwards, and some people were like, everyone at that wedding, well, a lot of people at the wedding knew who you were. You're a local comedian who's now on TV and they get to fuck with you like and they get to go over and so you not playing their requests it's like oh you think

you're fucking too good to play our requests now we're coming over and asking for brian ann's but am i a dickhead am i because the mock the week i won't play brian so like there was that on top of it which i hadn't factored into it at that point i just thought no these are strangers who hate me how is this a metaphor for life? I'll tell you what it is. The next time I did a wedding, I spoke to my friend who's a DJ and told him about the previous wedding. And he said, you don't say no requests and you don't explain to them why you can't play it. You just say, yeah, I'll do my best and they'll leave you alone. So they're drunk. They actually don't give a shit

if you play their song or not. They don't care. All they want is to be heard and to chip in and tell the DJ how to do their job. So there's coming over, they're going to request a song. If you've got it, play it. They'll think you're amazing. If you haven't got it, say you'll do your best. They'll go away. They won't come back up and request it again. That won't happen. They'll accept accept it and then i was like yeah too much of my life i'm constantly trying to do the very best by everybody i've got to explain to them if i can't do something i've got to explain to them why and justify it i want them to realize why i kind of don't want to let anyone down i want them all said like not feel mugged off and all this kind of stuff and actually some people there's no winning with them and so fobbing them off isn't the worst

thing in the world like for me i've really learned with some people now just to smile and nod and go yeah sure that isn't the worst thing in the world right it really reminds me i heard mikaela cole interviewed on a podcast recently and she talked about taking the note about when someone is aggressive or criticizes you, you don't have to react or defend yourself there in the moment. You just take the note and think about it and then decide whether it's worth your time or not. And I just thought that was such great advice. It sounds quite similar. I mean, yeah, I mean mean that's an excellent way of putting what I think was a 20 minute story for me but like yeah absolutely brilliant yeah and I think there's that thing also just like because weirdly looking back you almost do sound more shitty in that situation you're gonna make them feel better just saying yeah I'll do my best rather than going no and even if you explain to them why they feel like it's being

explained to them in a patronizing way or whatever like like they should have known that where it's not you try to explain to them why because you want them to know the only reason i'm not playing this is because i'm physically incapable of doing it like there's no way it's impossible that's the only reason i'm not playing your request otherwise i would play it no one's mugging you off it but instead yeah like just every now and again in life just tell certain people yeah sure I'll do my best I love that you'll never hear from them again your final failure is trying out new material on the ITV show live at the Palladium which I can imagine is like quite an intense place to try out new material what happened there I think I was at a point I

don't know if this was in 2017 or 2016 but I was at a point where I'd done quite a lot of my stand-up on tv and I was getting ready to film these specials I don't think Netflix had picked them up yet but I had it in my head I was going to film basically everything I've ever done and release it. And that was my next goal. And I was offered live at the Palladium. And I think it is, you know, to be vulgar, I think it's one of those situations where the money was too good to say no to it. Maybe it wasn't, maybe the money was awful.

And I just wanted to play the Palladium. I think that was a big factor in it as well. I said yes, because it was stand-up as well. I think at the time, if I was offered to do stand-up on anything, I was just going to say yes, because there's actually not loads of opportunities for stand-up comedians to do stand-up on tv a lot of the time we're on panels or something like that and so it was great I get to do stand-up so I'll say yes to that and at the time but it might have been 2017

actually in which case I'm annoyed that I didn't put this story in the book at the time i feel i was tired of doing old stuff and i was more into doing new material and i don't think i respected the program enough either i don't think i respected the show enough for some reason i just thought i'll be fine i've done this routine about squash a couple of times and it worked i'm going to be more engaged with the room and enjoy myself more if i do this routine this is the routine that currently i'm the most excited about in my set so i'm just going to be more engaged with the room and enjoy myself more if I do this routine this is the routine that currently I'm the most excited about in my set so I'm just going to go on and do it even though I've only done it twice before I got there and the bill was like Bradley Walsh is hosting it there's a improv group called the noise next door doing a set when they get suggestions

from the audience and do improvisation and there's like the cast of school of rock are doing one of the songs from their west end musical and stuff like that it's a real variety show there might have been a band on as well and the vibe is very itv i'm gonna say brexity so the audience is they would much rather listen to yeah in a way yeah they'd much rather listen to the songs from school of rock like Joe Pasquale was in the audience as well going around with a roving microphone they'd much rather that than have someone go on and try out a whimsical new routine about squash yeah I'm just talking about how when you're a kid your parents make squash for you and then when you grow up you get to make it yourself and how that's a sign of independence and now eventually that would become a routine which worked quite well for me at this point

it was a weak squash and I was I was just playing to pretty much nothing and the only people who were laughing were Jordan Banjo and his friends who were sitting in the audience him and two of his mates were enjoying it bless him and i kept on referring to i mean i didn't know it was jordan banjo at the time i hadn't heard of him because i watched i don't know if he's got talent now i know jordan and i've done a couple of shows with him and he's told me that that was him at that gig i didn't know it was i just kept on going oh thank god for you three guys i kept on saying to them on stage which you shouldn't say during a normal gig let alone a tv recording and keep going oh thank god these three are enjoying it I'm really glad you're liking it and I remember coming off and Bradley

Walsh been in the wings and just smiling at me but this smile that like almost it was quite nice a smile between comics of like that was shit like probably that was shit but it's pretty funny how shit it went and it did make me feel a bit better and is this the most stupid question in the world but is it actually live so you're being recorded and it's being beamed into people's sitting rooms luckily not it gets edited down and if you're lucky some of those ones they plug laughter into it although i say if you're lucky do you know what it saves you the complete embarrassment when that happens but generally speaking and it's not the same on panel shows sometimes you do a panel show and the audience could be dead and then it goes out and the

audience at home love it and that's because the panel have enjoyed themselves if you enjoy yourself within the panel it doesn't actually matter what the studio audience are doing because you are making each other laugh and it is fun and it's a good show. Stand-up, if you're doing badly in the room, it rarely comes across well on TV at home. Even if they've plugged laughs in and made it fake, people can still be like, this hasn't got much energy to it. It's a bit flat and it's because the comic is playing to nothing

and their confidence is being eroded with each line. And so they're not going to give a good show, you know, unless they're completely bulletproof when it comes to their confidence, which some people are. Did you watch it back? No. It's one of the only things I've never watched back. There's a few things I've never watched back.

There's that. There's at least one panel show appearance that I've never watched back. Maybe two, actually. No, there's two panel show appearances that I've never watched back. Occasionally you do something where you go go there is nothing to be gained from watching this back I like to watch things back sometimes just to learn from it and be like okay I like that thing that I did I don't like that thing that I did and next time I have a better idea of how I come across and then sometimes you just had a really good show when you did it and you you want

to watch it back and pat yourself on the back and go oh great i feel proud of myself i don't need to doubt myself next time i go on something i never watched that and i'm never going to i think someone would literally have to force me to watch it and create a format for some podcast or tv show where people have to watch their most embarrassing tv appearances i didn't go on twitter that night because i was like there's gonna be nothing good there for me there's no point doing that i knew it is objectively a bad performance. And anyone who said it was, was correct. James, I've loved talking to you so much, and we're really running out of time. So I want to ask you, because I know so many people who listen to this also rightly love your podcast Off Menu. And in Off Menu, you interview people

about their favourite foods. But instead of asking you what your favourite meal would be in your restaurant of dreams served by the genie, I wonder what dish you would be. If you were reincarnated as a dish, what would James Acaster be? Well, I've spoke about ice cream so much on things and I'm so obsessed with it and still am convinced it's the greatest. It's still like the best food. I think the best food group would be ice cream in my opinion and I've eaten so much of it in my life that I can't think of anything outside of that which I would justifiably

be able to put myself as just because of like just how much of a factor it's been in my life I think the main motivation in my life has always been at some point I'll get some ice cream so yeah I mean I'd probably have to be ice cream and in terms of what flavor would be a difficult one to choose I think if you just go with the classic flavors I would either want to be mint choc chip or raspberry ripple because I think they're the more interesting classic flavours of ice cream. Also, I think they're tastier. And I know some people who hate mint ice cream. Those people are wrong.

If all that was available was the classics. And Raspberry Ripple is like on the very edge of the classics. It's the very experimental. It's a kind of wacky classic. It's like an eccentric classic. Yeah, it is. But like, I'd want to be one of them. In terms of like

all the ice cream I've ever had then it gets difficult because then you're like if it's me represented as an ice cream I like ice cream that has a lot of stuff in it me too that's the only ice cream I can eat yeah and I like salty ice cream I like salty and sweet ice cream that has like if it's got salted peanut butter or salted caramel or salted fudge pretzels even potato chips in it i say potato chips because it's only the american ice creams that put those in there so you know if i say crisps no ice cream has crisps in it because britain doesn't do that yet that's the kind of stuff that i like however if i'm thinking about representing myself as an ice cream i don't know if I think anyone who says I'll be one of those ice creams.

I've got a bit of everything in me. A load of stuff going on. It's like, I don't think. It's a bit arrogant. Yeah. It's a bit arrogant. And I don't think I would really feel comfortable.

So I think, I think I would put myself as Raspi Ripple. I would put myself on the, where I've aimed for on the standup comedy landscape is the wacky edge of the standards. You know, this is your mainstream ice creams, but right on the wacky edge of it is Raspi Ripple. And Raspi Ripple can pop up in a boring person's ice cream sundae, and it can also pop up in a wacky person's ice cream sundae. And I would like to be enjoyed by both. So, cause that's what i'm

not saying i've achieved it in comedy but what i've aimed for is being the raspy ripple of comedy so i'll take that well as your dad famously tweeted once he's not for everyone but he works hard yeah there you go that's very raspy ripple classic ice cream. You were asking me why I doubt myself so much. Oh, James, you've been an absolute delight. You are Raspberry Ripple. You are a cool classic traditionalist. You can aspire to having pretzels in you one day, but thank you so, so much for coming on How To Fail.

Thanks for having me. if you enjoyed this episode of how to fail with elizabeth day i would so appreciate it if you could rate review and subscribe apparently it helps other people know that we exist