Nocturnal 
James Acaster has one of the most-quoted break-up stories in comedy, and it’s doing the rounds again as he lines up alongside Amol Rajan on the opening episode of The Celebrity Traitors series two.
The launch episode reportedly ended on a cliffhanger, with Acaster and broadcaster Amol Rajan left facing an uncertain fate in the castle, according to LADbible. As ever with Traitors launch nights, viewers were left none the wiser about who would be the first to go, with the outcome held back for the next episode.
While fans wait to find out, it’s Acaster’s long-running tale about his ex-girlfriend leaving him for Rowan Atkinson that has resurfaced online, trending on Google as viewers clock the comedian among this year’s 21-strong celebrity line-up.
The Mr Bean break-up
Acaster, 41, dated actress Louise Ford, 44, until 2013. That same year, Ford starred opposite Atkinson in the play Quartermaine’s Terms at Wyndham’s Theatre, and the pair began a relationship shortly after.
Atkinson, now 70, had recently separated from his wife of 24 years, Sunetra Sastry, with the couple officially divorcing in 2015. Atkinson and Ford are still together and share a daughter.
Acaster has said he didn’t find out what had happened until a year after his own split from Ford, stumbling across the news in a newspaper. “I opened the newspaper and there it was. No one else has ever been left for Mr Bean,” he told audiences during a 2019 stand-up set, as reported by Yahoo News UK.
He went on to joke about the strange experience of constantly being reminded of Atkinson afterwards: “Until you get left for Mr Bean, you don’t realise how frequently he pops up. There’s a shop two streets from my house that sells masks of his face. There’s nowhere where I’m going to go that he’s not there.”
The story has also resurfaced because Atkinson’s daughter, Lily Sastry, recently opened up on social media about how her parents’ divorce affected her in her twenties, describing a period of “chaos” and “loneliness”. She has previously changed her surname from Atkinson to Sastry.
Filming “paused” over Acaster’s anxiety
Away from the Atkinson saga, it’s been reported that filming on Celebrity Traitors was halted at one point after Acaster became “visibly stressed” during a scene at Ardross Castle.
A source told The Sun that castmates including Maya Jama and Richard E Grant raised concerns with producers, who agreed to pause filming so Acaster could be checked on. “The show is incredibly intense, and during one particular scene at the castle, James became very anxious and panicked,” the insider said. They added that the pause didn’t affect the outcome of the game but reflected the “passionate and tense” atmosphere on set.
What happens now
Celebrity Traitors series two runs for 10 episodes, one more than the first series, with contestants competing for a prize fund of up to £100,000 for charity.
Whether Acaster or Rajan were the ones in the firing line at the end of the opening episode is, for now, unconfirmed, with the result expected to play out in the next instalment. Either way, Acaster already has plenty of material for his next stand-up tour.
