I suppose I was just unaware that when someone pranks you, it is customary to prank them back in return. I now finally understood why my ex-colleague from the kitchen was so pissed off when I got him to help me wash the dessert sauce and fish juice off of my car. He must’ve expected me to do the same to his car the following day and then we could both delight in being even-stevens. I now felt bad for making such a faux pas all those years ago. If only I’d known, I’d have covered his car in cod batter and filled his petrol tank with milkshake. He’d have loved that.
The day after the cabadging I popped into Josh’s radio show and, on air, told Josh, Producer Neil, Intern Charles and guest Zoe Lyons what had happened and asked for suggestions as to how I could cabadge this boy back. The best suggestion came from a listener who said I should send him a PlayStation 4 box full of cabbages so that he gets all excited, believing he has received a PlayStation, then opens the box and cries his eyes out.
‘Great idea,’ I said on the radio. ‘I will do that.’
Unfortunately for me, somewhere in Cambridge the very same nine-year-old I was intending to do this to was listening to the radio with his father, cackling and rubbing his hands together.
A week or so later, I got cabadged again.
I had ordered a book by my favourite author and a DVD by my favourite director online and woke up to an email informing me that they would be delivered today. I had to go out in the morning though and received another email informing me they had tried to deliver my packages but I’d been out and that they’d try again. But when I returned home that afternoon there was a note from the postman on the doormat, one of those ‘Sorry we missed you’ notes, informing me that my package was waiting for me at the post office and I would need to bring a form of ID in order to collect it.
So the next morning I woke up half an hour earlier than I needed to, grabbed my passport and walked fifteen minutes to the post office, then stood in a queue for half an hour, then proved who I was to the lady at the desk before she then handed me my delivery. But the box was much bigger than I had anticipated. Usually DVDs and books are delivered in a flat package, not a large box about the size of a microwave. I walked out of the post office and immediately opened the box in the street because I was way too curious to wait until I got home.
Inside there was loads of shredded paper, and buried inside the shredded paper was half a cabbage wrapped in clingfilm. There was a note on top of the cabbage that read ‘HA HA CABEDGED (AGAIN) MICK’ and underneath the message he had drawn a picture of a bicycle with an arrow pointing to it that said ‘random bike’.
I had queued up for my own cabadging. Or was it cabedging? I didn’t know any more. It’d happened to me twice and been spelt different both times, I assume to mess with me even further, and it’d worked. He was in my head now to the point where I didn’t even know what the proper, Oxford English Dictionary spelling of cabbage was either. Not only that but I had proved who I was with my own passport in order to be cabedged. And why was half a cabbage somehow more unsettling than a whole cabbage? I didn’t know but it was. I felt most unsettled. The ‘random bike’ was a real psychological backhander from the boy as well. I wasn’t trying to work out what it meant, it’s just that he was flaunting his happiness in my face, that while I’m getting cabadged he’s chilling out drawing bicycles for fun and loving it. He had heard my chat on Josh’s radio show, heard about my plan to send him cabbages in a PlayStation box and had decided to strike before I had the chance and now I had fallen for the very trick I was supposed to be getting him with. What’s more, he had definitely fluked part of it: he got so lucky that the goodies I had ordered for myself were meant to be delivered on the exact same day and that I’d got an email telling me they’d tried to deliver them but I was out. What are the chances?! The very last thing I was suspecting was a cabadging when I went to that post office. It was far too coincidental. But it worked out wonderfully for Mick: I was so excited to receive my DVD and book and all I got was cabadged. If I was to get revenge now it’d have to be even better than this cabedging and the first cabadging combined. Add to that the fact that the more I get cabadged and don’t retaliate, the weirder people will think I am, and you really start to get an idea of the urgency of the situation. I must not be defeated and I must not be made to look like a weirdo by a nine-year-old boy.
A fortnight later and my father and I were lucky enough to see the Monty Python reunion show at the O2 together. We had arranged to go with David Trent and his father. And as soon as I arrived at the O2 David’s dad cabadged me. He was holding a plastic bag and smiling.
‘I’ve brought you a present,’ he smirked, and as soon as I saw his twinkling eyes I knew what was about to happen. He reached into the bag and handed me a beautifully wrapped half-sphere, with colourful wrapping paper and a lovely bow tied around it and, lo and behold, when I unwrapped it, it was another half a cabbage wrapped in clingfilm. (Was it the other half of the half a cabbage I’d received in the post? I’ll never know because I’d already thrown it in the bin.) He’d even written a note informing me that I’d been cabadged and spelt cabadged the same way Mick had done. He was chuckling so much when I opened it.
Cabadging had become inter-generational and that was the last thing I needed. Plus this had been the first time I’d been cabadged face to face, when the cabadger could see my reaction and revel in my frustration at having half a cabbage to carry around with me all night at the O2. I looked like a hardcore Monty Python fan carrying half a cabbage around as a reference to a Python sketch nobody’s even heard of. Sitting in the audience waiting until they did my favourite ‘Half a cabbage’ sketch so I could throw my half a cabbage on stage and win the respect of Cleese et al forever. Instead I left with no respect from anyone, not even from myself and certainly not from et al.
From then on the cabadging was relentless and could happen at any time, in any place and there was no telling who the cabadger would be. It became a big, unwelcome part of my life.
My girlfriend at the time lived in New Zealand, and sent me a cabbage she had made out of clay. She sent me that in the post. She had to make it herself and then pay for it to be sent to me.
Audience members sent cabbages backstage for me. One person sent a bag of cabbage seeds; another delivered a branch of Brussels sprouts with a gift tag attached to the end that read ‘mini cabadged’; someone made a chocolate cake that did not contain cabbage but looked exactly like a cabbage. (They had made it by painting a cabbage with chocolate, allowing it to set then peeling the chocolate off of the leaves before rebuilding the chocolate cabbage around a cake. This one was actually quite nice.)
Someone had started a Cabadging twitter account and was regularly tweeting me images of cabbages. The first was a picture of a cabbage with the words ‘Oi oi Savoy’ written underneath it and the second was a picture of a van full of cabbages saying ‘special delivery for Mr Acastor.’
During the final week of the Edinburgh festival I received a letter in the post (which is pretty rare for a house you’re only living in for a month, so I should’ve already been suspicious). I opened it, thinking maybe it’d be something nice from my parents, perhaps a letter telling me how proud of me they were, but no, it was the wettest, limpest cabbage leaf I’d received so far, complete with another note from Mick taunting me about getting cabadged. I was beside myself. I suddenly longed for the days when I spent the Edinburgh Festival in a flooded tent, at least then people couldn’t send me goddamn leaves in the post. But the handwriting on the front of the envelope didn’t match the handwriting on the cabadge note. Plus I was living with David Trent, Mick’s father, and it would make no sense for him to post me a letter when he could’ve just left it on my bed. I knew I recognised the handwriting from somewhere, but where? Then David Trent walked in and asked, ‘Did you get the cabbage leaf that Josh sent you?’ JOSH?!
Josh Widdicombe himself had sent me a single wilted cabbage leaf in the post, letting me know that I could now tru
st absolutely no one. Until then he had been my confidant, counselling me through this whole ordeal, but even he was cabadging me now. It’s like if you went to see your psychiatrist and they said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been sleeping with your wife.’
One day Josh and I phoned Mick live on air so I could give him a piece of my mind and put the fear in him a little bit. I told him how I would have my revenge, how he was going to get what’s coming to him and that he’d rue the day he ever crossed me. When Josh (the treacherous little toad) asked Mick how this made him feel there was a pause at the other end of the line and then Mick said, very calmly and very plainly, ‘I don’t feel anything.’
Who the hell was I up against?! It was like talking to a serial killer remorseless on death row, not regretting his past transgressions and with no fear of what was to come. I couldn’t see his face because it was a call, but I would wager he didn’t blink once during the entire conversation. I started to plot and plan. He might feel nothing now but soon he will feel sorry he ever messed with James Acaster.
I had to cabadge him back for several reasons. Revenge, pride, dignity. But I also needed to cabadge him because I felt like it was actually important on a higher level. In the past I had often failed when it came to following through on pointless challenges. I had given up when collecting the Giant Yellow W’s of Northamptonshire; I had only managed five out of seven days when trying to fill a week with new experiences as a teenager. If I didn’t cabadge this no-good punk kid then the whole cabadging thing would become yet another pointless event that briefly consumed my life but failed to deliver anything resembling a payoff – just a waste of time for all concerned. And this would be even worse because it had been made public; people knew about it and were invested in it. If I let this peter out then I won’t be the only one feeling deflated – I’ll have let down the listeners of the Josh Widdicombe show.
24 September 2014
Today was the day. I had a tour show in Cambridge and nothing planned beforehand and so I caught a train that would get me into Cambridge station just after noon, giving me plenty of time to cabadge Mick Trent.
I had liaised with his mother, Polly, since I knew his father could not be trusted. To be frank, I wasn’t 100 per cent certain Polly could be trusted and there was every chance that I was putting in a lot of effort just to be greeted at the door with a tub of coleslaw by the boy’s laughing mother (at this point it was the only form of cabbage I’d not had my life ruined by), but she was the only member of the family who hadn’t cabadged me yet so it was a risk I had to take. Before I got to the house I had to buy some cabbages. Plural, of course. I had been cabadged countless times by this point, so there was no way a single cabbage was going to even the score. My plan was simple: I was going to replace every single item in Mick’s bedroom with a cabbage.
Take. That.
As soon as I got off the train I headed to the nearest supermarket but was surprised to discover there were no cabbages on the shelves. I went to the supermarket over the road to find they had also sold out of cabbages. By the time the second supermarket had no cabbages to speak of, I started to get paranoid. He’s bought them all, I thought to myself. Mick Trent has purchased every single cabbage in Cambridge and he’s gearing up for one big mammoth attack. Oh God. I’m on his turf! What was I thinking? I’m wandering round his hometown and I’m completely unarmed. He knows these streets! He OWNS these streets maybe?
The third supermarket had some cabbages on sale but not enough. I bought them all anyway then flagged down a taxi and asked it to take me to Mick’s address but to stop at every supermarket along the way. We stopped at about five supermarkets and three of them sold cabbages. Every time I went inside, the cabbie would keep the meter running. (Some people have asked why I didn’t just hire a car for the day but given my driving history I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’d be the worst way to go, to write off a hire car full of cabbages, cabadging myself to death in the process.) By the time I got to Mick’s house I had about twenty cabbages and very little money.
Polly let me into the house and I set about moving all of Mick’s belongings out of his bedroom and into his parents’ bedroom. And then I started to arrange the cabbages. It very quickly became apparent that I had underestimated the amount of possessions a nine-year-old could possess. Twenty cabbages dotted around a tidy bedroom looked pretty rubbish. And so I called a cab and went to a bigger supermarket and bought twenty-five more cabbages. Then I returned to the boy’s house and filled his room with the new cabbages, along with some Brussel sprouts scattered between the cabbages for good measure, filling in all the gaps. I made sure the cabbages were varied as well – red, white, savoy, green. It actually looked rather beautiful.
There was a point where I started to wonder who the joke was really on here. I had spent all day cabadging Mick. I was twenty-nine years old. I had been running around all over Cambridge buying cabbages. The cost of the cabbages combined with the train and cab fare came to over £150. I’m meant to be an adult. The whole thing was oddly stressful and, in many ways, the worst day of my life.
With his room all set and his mother collecting him from school I wrote CABADGE MOMENT on a Post-It and stuck it to the door, a green scribble beneath the message, to give him the same sporting chance he had given me. I then scampered off to the bathroom and locked the door, hiding in there and listening with great anticipation.
I heard the front door open and the sound of Mick denying any knowledge of what the Post-It note was about to his mum. Polly had knocked it out of the park; she was immediately blaming Mick for the Post-It, thus confusing him even more. I then heard, ‘What the hell is all my stuff doing in your bedroom?!?!?’ Perfect! He had noticed his stuff had been moved before even going into his own room; this was playing out beautifully. Polly continued to play a blinder by accusing Mick of moving his stuff into her bedroom without asking. He was adamant he had done no such thing; I could hear his voice crack a little as he got more frustrated. Lovely, lovely, lovely stuff.
But as I heard him open the door to his bedroom I found myself thinking, I really hope he doesn’t cry. It was the first time that thought had entered my mind all day. Until then I’d been riding on pure adrenalin and not stopped to consider the possibility that I may have gone too far.
Standing in that bathroom I started to see everything from an outsider’s perspective. A nine-year-old child had sent me a couple of cabbages and I had retaliated by spending £150 on filling his bedroom with cabbages and was currently hiding in his house so that I could leap out and rub his face in it when the time came. This was an awful idea. Mick would probably have nightmares about cabbages for the rest of his life. I was probably about to put this kid through a lifetime of therapy. On the bright side, if that did happen, I would definitely have won.
Then I heard Mick shout, ‘What?!?!’ at the top of his voice and my whole body tensed. I knew I had to fully commit to this now, regardless of his reaction, so I swiftly tiptoed out of my hiding place, ran into his bedroom, pointed in his face and declared, ‘CABADGED! You got cabadged mate, look at them! Look at all the cabbages! Count them if you like! You. Got. Cabadged!’
I should point out that, regardless of how it comes across on the page, I actually didn’t go as big as I could’ve when rubbing it in his face because I was so worried about hurting his feelings. If he ended up properly upset I didn’t want to be halfway through taunting him as the tears began to roll. But he didn’t cry. In true Mick Trent fashion, he didn’t feel anything. He shrugged, picked up his tennis racket, and then proceeded to hit Brussel sprouts at me with the racket while I cowered on the bed. I hate Mick Trent.
*
Mick’s reaction was irrelevant though. At this point the only thing that mattered was following through on something stupid for once, and I had done it. I’d failed to do A Week Of New Things and I’d failed at The Great W Challenge but I’d triumphantly cabadged a primary school kid like a total boss. I should’ve celebrated by spen
ding the evening at the nearest karaoke bar and singing ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ by The Police to a room full of strangers, maybe even changing the lyrics to ‘Every little thing she does is Cabbage’, then getting a cab (probably using the same driver I’d had for the cabadging that day) all the way to Kettering, unlocking my friend’s old garage and setting the W’s free, flinging them into the wild (the street), continuing to sing ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Cabbage’, maybe incorporating it into a medley of some sort – ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Cabbage’ into ‘La La La Humpty’ into ‘Woodcutter’s Prayer’. I didn’t feel like I’d won but I felt like I’d achieved something, or not achieved something – and that was the whole point maybe, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders (and my wallet). I felt terrific. This is how Dave Gorman must feel all the time, I thought.
At this point some of you may be worried that after the cabadging had taken place, fifty perfectly good cabbages got thrown in the bin, but don’t fret. As I said, I had a gig that night, and I ended the show by handing out fifty cabbages to members of the audience as they left. What I learnt from this is that people love red cabbage infinitely more than they love any other type of cabbage. There was no contest – people were fighting over the red ones and couldn’t care less about the others. It was a real eye opener. I have since learned that red cabbage contains ten times more Vitamin A and twice the amount of iron than a green cabbage so I guess that explains it. People bloody love Vitamin A.
Eventually Mick admitted that I had done a pretty good cabadging and a truce was called. I am pleased to report he has not cabadged me since. A man of his word, he has honoured our agreement and good on him. I too have honoured the truce, although that’s not hard because I have no desire to get tormented by any variety of veg ever again. And for the most part, the general public have stopped cabadging me also – those with any respect for the rules have anyway. They have not stopped cabadging each other, though. Mick accidentally started a craze and it’s one that has been damaging people’s relationships for a good few years now. The rules are simple – cabadge someone, then don’t stop cabadging that someone until they cabadge you back. You can cabadge them in any way you like but once they have cabadged you back you are not permitted to cabadge them again, unless of course they cabadge you and in doing so trigger a whole new round of cabadging. Congratulations, Mick, what a legacy.
James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes Page 22