Finally, everyone fancies James Acaster. What took them so long? | Polly Hudson

It’s hard not to wonder how James Acaster feels at the moment. On the one hand, everybody suddenly fancies him, which must be flattering. On the other, all the language around the phenomenon is stuff like “unlikely”, “unexpected” and “bizarre crush”, which is presumably … less so. But there’s no denying that he is now a viral heartthrob, which sounds like something that requires urgent medical attention, but isn’t. After each episode of The Celebrity Traitors, social media is flooded with slow-motion edits and thirst-trap clips of Acaster, including one of him in the castle set to Ginuwine’s Pony that has received more than 500,000 views and counting. Vogue declared that his “specifically east London-y wardrobe has captured the hearts and minds of millennial women countrywide”, and anointed him its “new internet boyfriend”.

For longtime Acaster admirers, loyal listeners to the Off Menu podcast who rooted for him on the seventh series of Taskmaster, this is bittersweet. The smug plus side: we were right all along. The lemony minus: now we have to share him. It’s like those people who saw Oasis in a tiny working-man’s club when they didn’t have a record deal. I fancied Acaster long before this crowd of Johnny Come Latelys at the BBC TV equivalent of Knebworth.

Celebrity Traitors is his second stint on a reality show, as latecomers probably don’t even know – harumph. He took part in the 2019 Stand Up To Cancer Great British Bake Off, despite having no baking experience, having not slept for 36 hours and “having the worst jet lag of my life” before entering the tent. He presented his liquid cherry Bakewell flapjacks to the judges with the legendary line: “I started making it, had a breakdown, bon appetit!” That same year, in his standup show Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999, he opened up about his ensuing mental health struggles at the time, complete with a post-filming Samaritans call where he disguised his identity by making an ill-advised decision to pretend to be a professional baker in crisis. And that’s (some of) the appeal of Acaster: he’s honest, not afraid to be vulnerable.

In the present day, he has surely also won fans by being determined not to be a Traitor. For a celebrity, it’s especially of note. As Real Housewife of Potomac Candiace Dillard Bassett explained during her stint on the American version: “I wanted to be a Traitor because the game is called The Traitors, OK? I have main character energy, so you want to be a main character.”

Everyone in our UK castle is thinking about who they can trust, and how to vote next, but let’s not be naive – they’re also definitely mindful of who is getting the most camera time. Acaster cast himself in the role of supporting co-star. He simply wanted to play the game.

“I was looking forward to being a little detective, solving puzzles and looking for clues,” he said. “When you watch it at home you know everything, and I thought: I’ll never have the opportunity again to experience it as someone who doesn’t know who the Traitors are. I wanted to figure it out.”

And when that went completely wrong on the very first day, and he was recruited to the dark side, he was bemused, good-natured and happy to let Maya Jama take the lead in the turret. Has there ever been anything more attractive than a man completely unthreatened by a powerful woman?

Our nation’s ardour for Acaster makes me strangely hopeful. In the midst of the manosphere, the Cornell seven, and other comedians in court facing horrendous accusations (which they deny), it’s certainly not a bad moment to be reminded of the existence of good men – for one to be centre-stage on the thing we’re all watching, together, on television like in the olden days. Appreciating somebody genuine, funny and pure of heart feels like a step forward. Perhaps we’re finally tired of lusting after bad boys. Rather than teaching younger generations that if a boy likes you he will pull your proverbial pigtails, let’s hold up an ideal of a gentle, respectful, sensitive man, who will reply to your texts, the kind you can take home to your mum. A Faithful. Phwoar.