My mum loves baking and would make loads of biscuits and cakes, but the rule was that when a batch was gone, they were gone. Until she baked more the following month. I’d have to pace myself. I got worse at pacing myself as I got older. I was obsessed with her double chocolate chip cookies – really chewy but still with granules of demerara sugar. I still haven’t had a double chocolate chip cookie as good.
We always had dinner at the table. Mum and Dad thought it was important to have that communal time. We weren’t allowed to have dinner in front of the telly, ever. Even when I was a teen. Mum’s dessert was always kept secret. If we’d known what it was, we might have rushed or not finished our main course. Me, my brother, my sister and Dad were all obsessed by desserts, so Mum had to keep a very close eye on us.
Sometimes, when dessert came, I was disappointed. Natural yogurt and raisins were in the house, so I always thought disappointment was a possibility. She knew that what was hoped for was something outrageously sugary. I think yogurt and raisins is delicious nowadays, but back then I thought I’d suffered the biggest injustice known to man.
It’s an interesting sensory experience I’m sure and I can’t remember what it tasted like, but my mother says I wee-ed up into my mouth when I was a baby. She kept the story in her back pocket in case she wanted to end a conversation and stop me in my tracks if I was getting a bit cocky, usually when friends were round. Apparently, it arched up. I had a look of surprise, as if it was her fault. I kind of loved Mum telling the story because I was sort of part of a joke with her.
The earliest memory I have of eating while listening to music was when I was six, at a party, and ate Nik Naks while watching everybody dance to a compilation titled The Greatest Album of All Time. I loved song after song of it Hi-Ho Silver Lining, Down Under, Centerfold… . I loved it so much that I kept going back to the table and getting more and more and more lemon and scampi Nik Naks until I was horribly sick. I’ve never had Nik Naks again, of any flavour.
When I was younger I loved Jesus so much that at Easter I was crying at the church service and wondering: “Why are we celebrating that he’s dead?” It was really upsetting. So, at Easter I concentrate on the chocolate eggs and have as many as I can.
Once a year, Dad would make a meal, always on pancake day. It’s crazy looking back, but it was a tradition that he’d make the pancakes only. He did them well, to his credit.
I left school halfway through the sixth form and then did a BTEC in music practice and formed a band, the Capri-Sun Quartet – so called because every lunchtime we’d go to the canteen and drink Capri-Suns. So I was the Capri-Sun Quartet’s William Strawberry, from my middle name and my favourite flavour. I put Sir William Strawberry as the full name, because William Strawberry by itself sounded pretty pompous.
I’m obsessed by ice-cream and the best I’ve ever had was Ooey-Gooey Butter Cake, at Ample Hill Creamery in Brooklyn. It was the creamiest. Absolutely scandalous but delicious. My favourite I’ve bought in a shop is Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby. I went back to my hotel and ate it and it was just disgraceful, but in a very good way.
Being on the band circuit was probably the unhealthiest period of my life. There were still no healthy options at service stations back then. Every Friday, after band practice, we’d go to KFC and I’d have a Zinger Tower burger and watch extreme sports on the TV.
In New Zealand in 2013 I came on stage and my first line was, “So, I’ve recently started eating apricots.” I had in fact just got into dried apricots as a snack, but really over-ate them. Then I ate packets of pine nuts for a while, emptying them into my mouth as I walked around. Just recently a friend got me into Quorn cocktail sausages and I can get through a punnet very quickly. I took first took them home and put an album on the record player and sat eating them. I forget what I was also drinking at the time, but it was a nice cocktail of some kind.
I did a radio show about bread with me presenting my findings on bread and all the jokes were about it – like that 13 out of 12 people don’t know what a baker’s dozen is and that there’s no such thing as prawn bread, so the origin of it is a mystery. I also did an episode of Drunk History with me getting sugary drunk on pina coladas and then trying to recall an event from history, which I couldn’t do because I was continually going to the toilet. I also visited, in my online documentary, Sweet Home Ketteringa, the Weetabix factory in Burton Latimer where I saw there was no binding agent in Weetabix. It’s just steam-pressed. I was lucky enough to be given my own box of it, but instead of saying Weetabix on the box it says “James Acaster”. I display it in my house..
Personally, 2017 was a bad year. My girlfriend and I broke up and my professional relationship with my agent broke down and the years of not looking after my mental health got on top of me and came to a head. But I discovered cold lasagne. It was a revelation to realise that a lasagne is just as amazing, if not more amazing, when cold. There was a lot of comfort through food in 2017.
My favourite things
Food
If I could have anything, with no consequence to my health, I’d eat ice-cream all the time. I was obsessed with it for years and I still am.
Drink
Rosé smash, a cocktail they do at Hoppers, a Sri Lankan restaurant in London. Rosé smash contains rosé vermouth, watermelon shrub, Tanqueray, vitiver grass and mint, I think. It’s sweet but has a tartness. It tastes indescribable.
Restaurant
ShackFuyu, the Japanese restaurant with great sharer plates. I take people there when they visit. The French toast as dessert is what they most talk about, but there’s tuna tacos and excellent soft-shell crab and beef short-rib.
James Acaster’s Perfect Sound Whatever (Headline, £20) is out now. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 020-3176 3837. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
