203. James Acaster: He Welcomes Hecklers

Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out

Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out podcast

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4.8 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2026

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Beloved British comedian James Acaster and Mike have never met but they have a lot in common, including brushes with death early in their lives that influenced their comedy. James and Mike discuss James’s experience with hecklers, which is the subject of James’s new special Hecklers Welcome. Plus, James talks about having Robert De Niro on his podcast Off Menu, and he shares the best pre-show ritual that Mike has ever heard.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Is it more common in Britain than here?
0:02.5	Because I feel like heckling's not that common here. It's much more common in Britain, yeah. I saw Paul McCartney do a Q&A and get heckled by someone who wasn't sat aside with his answers. What did the person say? They said, try and answer all the questions properly, Paul. Oh, come on. That's Paul McCartney. That's outrageous. It's Paul McCartney in 2022. That is outrageous.
0:22.6	Doing a Q&A in a 2000 seat. That's Paul McCartney. That's outrageous. It's Paul McCartney in 2022.
0:22.6	That is outrageous.
0:24.7	We're in a 2,000-CET.
0:25.4	Wow.
0:33.2	That is the voice of the great James A-Caster.
0:37.1	At last, we have James A-Caster. We've been doing this podcast for five and a half years.
0:41.8	People have been saying since episode three that James A.caster should be here.
0:47.1	He is an extraordinarily prolific and funny and smart stand-up comic from the UK.
0:54.0	He has a new special on HBO called Heckler's Welcome.
0:56.8	It is exactly what it sounds like. He opens it up to the crowd for people to heckle him. It's very
1:01.9	unique, especially. He plays drums, interstitially and fascinating guy. Never met him before.
1:09.8	People talked about this guy to me for years.
1:12.8	We've never crossed paths.
1:14.4	I think you're going to love this episode.
1:16.1	By the way, thanks to everyone who has signed up for working it out premium on Apple Podcasts.
1:21.1	The people we call the Birbelia Familia listening to the premium episodes.
1:26.7	Here's what you get. When you sign up for premium,
1:30.2	you get all the episodes without ads. That's a big thing people have requested. You get every
1:35.0	episode without ads. And then you get these bonus episodes. We did a new bonus episode last week
1:39.5	where Connor Ratliff and I punched up your jokes that you sent us to Working It Outpod at gmail.com.
	...

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