Please watch the 3-minute story below before reading my post.

I was listening to James Acaster tell this story about his old band, Pindrop and on the face of it, it’s just an absurd, funny story. Their singer Lloyd keeps promising to behave, and then at gigs he shows up in a dress, screams instead of sings, draws a dick on his forehead, strips to his undies, and every time apologises and promises it will not happen again.

But when you dig deeper, it is advanced storytelling. Acaster sets up a pattern, repeats it, escalates it. He gives fake resolutions when Lloyd apologises, then breaks the structure. Instead of ending with Lloyd being kicked out, the final twist is random kids on bikes head-butting him. Because the band feel sorry for him, he stays in the band. It’s funny. His deadpan delivery plays a big part in that.

The story structure reminded me of the mystery format. In a crime story, there is a dead body, then suspect A, who is not the killer, then suspect B, who is not the killer, then suspect C. The tension holds until the real killer is revealed. That structure is one of the most popular in fiction, and Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time because of it.

Acaster is doing something similar. He holds the tension longer than a standard arc. He withholds the predictable resolution. Instead of problem, action, solution, he gives problem, promise, betrayal, new surprise. He shows how playing with story structure makes something memorable.

Most business stories follow a simple arc. It’s the place to start. But once you see how pros like Acaster shape their stories, you see there are more tools to keep people listening. For example, imagine telling a customer service story. A customer has a complaint, your team fixes it, but the issue pops up again. You reassure them, fix it again, only for another version of the problem to surface. Holding the tension, showing the repeated struggle, and only then revealing how you finally solved it makes the outcome more satisfying and memorable than a neat “we solved it first time” ending.