He recounts a disastrous performance on The Great British Bake Off; during the recording, he was jet-lagged and called the Samaritans helpline.

A clip of Acaster talking about "edgy" comedians who criticise transgender people went viral when Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle released stand-up specials containing these themes.

[5] Preceding Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 was Repertoire (2018)—a four-part Netflix special combining his three previous stand-up tours.

[7][8][9] James Acaster, wearing aviator sunglasses and a sunset jacket, walks out to a stage lit in pink and blue and swears profusely.

Claiming to notice that he is losing his audience, he abruptly changes tack and performs a skit about a person ordering steak in a restaurant—an extended metaphor about a second referendum.

His cooking is a disaster and when the episode airs in March 2019, a quote about his flapjacks becomes a meme: "Started making it / Had a breakdown / Bon appétit".

He talks profanely to the "filthy top of the tea" to scare off Christians, imagines trying to save a life on a plane with his steady hand skills from controlling a Discman, and depicts two new roommates' periods syncing as they discover they are both watching The Sopranos.

On Sunday Brunch, he announces the commissioning of his Netflix specials Repertoire without permission, potentially putting the deal in jeopardy.

Acaster decides to write a text terminating their sessions, thus paradoxically showing she has been effective in helping him end unproductive relationships.

Acaster began performing under the title Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 in October 2018, continuing throughout 2019 across the UK and at the West End location Vaudeville Theatre.

[7] It had renewed popularity with the release of Dave Chappelle's The Closer (2021) and Gervais' special SuperNature (2022), which joke about transgender people.

[18][19] Acaster told Metro that the justification of "challenging people" was a "completely nonsensical" reason for "punching down" and that it is a person's responsibility to argue against behaviour that is "not appropriate or acceptable" in their place of work.

He said this was in order to avoid romanticising poor mental health, encourage people to work on their issues and know that it can improve, and to guard against "patronising" audience reactions of pity.

[21] Acaster was surprised by the heckles and audience pushback to dialogue about his mental health: he did not think it would "be that big of a deal to talk about it", assuming that the lack of open conversation about mental health was due to people not wanting to talk about their issues, rather than people not wanting to listen.

[13] Examples include hecklers calling him an attention-seeker or crybaby and expressing anger when Acaster discussed suicidal ideation.

[13] According to some online comments from audience members, much of Acaster's performances saw him engage with hecklers for large parts of the show.

[21] Released alongside Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 on Vimeo, Make a New Tomorrow was filmed across two performances at the EartH Theatre on 12 March 2019, with a warm-up the night before.

Additionally, he thinks YouTube is useful, as he can watch people eat spicy chicken wings when he wakes up during the night and remembers his mortality.

Continuing the theme of mortality, he contrasts the mysterious-sounding 'John Doe' with the arrogant 'Joe Bloggs', and explains why anonymous corpses are called the former.

[30] The Guardian's Brian Logan praised the routine for its precise wording—"burnished to gem-like perfection"—the "complex games with irony and perspective", and "unexpected angles" for jokes where the writing and delivery "marry beautifully".

[27] Bruce Dessau, writing in the Evening Standard, lauded Acaster's "brilliantly self-flagellating account" of a break-up, "ingenious absurdist routine" about a second referendum and the "winning precision" with which the performance is structured.

[28] In i, Alice Jones praises Acaster's combination of stand-up structures like the break-up show and the mental health exposé "into something new and entirely thrilling".

[12] Steve Bennett of Chortle believed that it was "as finely engineered a show" as any Acaster had performed, containing "a masterclass of observational comedy, as meticulously written as ever", an "unpredictable mixture of irony, awe and modest outrage" and a "doozy" of an ending.

Bennett praised Acaster's treatment of worn subjects such as Brexit, his use of "honesty to lend an extra push to brilliantly funny gags" and that narrative threads are "woven together" in his therapy content.

Mears praised the special as a "true feat", lauding the "dynamic, earnest" performance, but said that it had become more "complex and expansive" than its framing device of why 1999 and 2017 were the best and worst years of Acaster's life, respectively.