"No" News.


See below for a short conversation - recorded verbatim - that took place today while distributing Mostly Comedy posters around town.

NEWSAGENT: "So, who've you got on this month?"
ME: “James Acaster.”
NEWSAGENT: (after a moment's thought): "...no."

Hitchin likes to keep you in your place.

I mentioned he’d been nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award a record five times, but this didn’t placate the unimpressed vendor of news. Telling her he’d done plenty of television - including Have I Got News For You - provoked a shrug, though she did concede “I’d probably recognise his face.”

Pointing to his picture on the poster to an unwavering expression was the final nail in the coffin of our chat; I may as well said he’d just completed a summer season in Rhyl for the lack of reaction the whole thing got.

This only goes to show you how the impressiveness of a man’s achievements can vary according to the field of reference of the beholder; you may be regarded as one of the finest comics of your generation by the people in the know, but it’s the people in the don’t know who’ll knock you off your proverbial pedestal. There’s nothing more irritating than brazenness of the ignorant, who somehow make you carry the shame of their stupidity; if I’d booked Jethro it'd be a different story, but I’m not about to do that.

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