James Acaster Quotes

With stand-up you've just got that one chance. Audiences can be quite fickle.

But I also know in standup, there's nowhere to hide. You get on stage and you deliver, or you are eviscerated and you are thrown into a pile of bodies at the bottom of a mountain.

Once you've experienced the warmth of an audience, the achievement of getting your first laugh, and entertaining them, singing or playing piano, it just keeps it all going.

I like the stage lights to be bright so I can't see people because I will inevitably only see the ones who aren't laughing.

It's a unique thing to stand in front of a crowd and sing your songs.

The best shows I play, I almost don't even remember off the stage.

It's weird because standup can be like therapy. Comedians can't be satisfied with just having fun with our friends. We've got to figure out a way to do it on stage.

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

I don't mind a crowd's not laughing; it's the groans that slow down the show.

I prefer that for my own satisfaction over radio, there's no audience. TV, there's no audience. I need the response of the audience, even if it's a silent response.

I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums.

I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.

When you get onstage, you can see everyone in the audience's face, down to the detail. You can see who may or may not be yawning.

When you're going for a joke, you're stuck out there if it doesn't work. There's nowhere to go. You've done the drum role and the cymbal clash and you're out on the end of the plank.

The hardest part, for real, is probably when you just don't feel like going on stage and being funny.

You can't explain the feeling of singing hit songs to an audience - it's like being a genuine sports star at the peak of their powers.

The beauty of it is when you can just show up and hit the notes.

But if applause throws off your timing, then you're not the kind of comedian I would like to see. All you have to do is stand there and take it.

I do love to sing. Had I a longer set of thigh bones and a sweeter voice, I should have loved to be a performer.

Playin' bass runs and singin' lead vox, is sometimes difficult, but I have three words for you: Practice, practice, practice!

I know two kinds of audiences only - one coughing, and one not coughing.

I refuse to dance. And I can't dance anyway. I'm not in a band for that.

I'm not a singer. I've sung in character, but it's just not my thing.

I started to do a study on how not to do stand-up comedy. Yeah, it's lonely work. You die, you die alone. It's you, the light, and the audience. If you win, you win big. If you lose, you lose big time.

I play the piano a lot at home. I write songs on the piano and guitar. I would like to actually play piano on stage. I don't think I'll get the chance for a while.