After a disastrous pilot recording

Channel 4 won’t be airing James Acaster’s game show People Person after the pilot was deemed a disaster.

The show was based on a game the comedian  devised for the Dave show Question Team in 2021, in which comics had to put members of the public in order based on factors such as who had the biggest garden or the most battery life on their phones.

Speaking to the Always Be Comedy podcast, Acaster said the idea got ‘too complicated’ when developed into a full show.

’It went from having four members of the public and four panellists to having 20 members of the public on stage behind me as well, who are also playing the game, and those four members of the public who are guessing… and the studio audience was there and  [they had] things that they had to vote with to to say what they thought the right answer was. There were these cubes that lit up so they had to press them in the right way and then to light up. 

‘We went to Glasgow to film it, and it was three hours of filming and I'd say everything went wrong that could have gone wrong.

‘I absolutely loved it. At one point I said to the audience, "I think what they should do  is just take these three hours, cut them up into six half hours in real time and put it out as a series.  This has been so fucking nuts."

‘Then the commissioner of Channel 4 – and you know it’s no secret that at minute, they're not swimming in cash – comes up to me afterwards and goes. "Are you serious about that?"

‘I was like, "Yeah, I'm very if you wanna do that, I don't care that I'm only gonna get paid for a pilot."’

Speaking about the disastrous recording to fellow comic James Gill, Acaster told how wrestler Hustle Malone was a guest, with the audience asked to guess which contestant he was going out with. But things went wrong as soon as he made his entrance on a set made to look like Acaster’s  living room 

‘He rings the doorbell, open the door, and he’s meant to walk in, go,  "Oh, nice gaff". Then he picks up a vase, which is like sugar glass, and then just smash it over his face.  But he grips the vase too hard at the top, so it just disintegrates.

‘The he drops his persona and asks, "should I not smash anything this time, or do you want me to smash?" Phil Wang’s on the panel, just tears streaming, just like laughing so hard at Hustle Malone breaking character, going very civilised,

‘The audience have now got to see this again, but they know it's all fucked. And also the the glass is all over the floor, they haven't got time to sweep it up. So I'm now like stepping on all this broken glass.’

Malone then did the stunt again, but gashed his head ‘really deep… blood is starting to like trickle down his nose and I go "Hustle Malone, have you cut your head open? There's lot of blood coming out of your face."

‘While that's happening, the panel starts playing the game already and going "Who looks the most concerned about their boyfriend?"

‘So this is better than the show we had planned. Larry Dean's cube kept fucking up. Like so many things, went wrong, including some things that are problematic and we would have to edit out.’

• Listen to the Always Be Comedy podcast here

Published: 4 Mar 2025