Thread by @timesculture

Stand-up comedian @EdGambleComedy has been named a co-host of the hit teatime TV quiz show, Pointless. @alicevjones meets him 👇 thetimes.co.uk/article/ed-gam…

It was at King’s College School where Gamble became hooked on comedy, after a short lived stint in a thrash metal band.

🗣️ “I was sort of weirdly obsessed with the Cambridge Footlights because they toured to our school. [The comedian] Tom Basden was a few years above me”

He applied to Cambridge to read philosophy, but really to join Footlights. “But I wasn’t clever enough to get in. They absolutely saw through it.”

He ended up studying philosophy at Durham where he auditioned for the Durham Revue, got in and that was it for three years

Among his fellow Revue members were Nish Kumar and Tom Neenan, with whom he spent most of his time, writing and rehearsing and plotting their post-graduation careers, with some success

Another friend from Durham Revue, Ian Boldsworth, who performed as Ray Peacock, asked Gamble to guest on his podcast and in 2009 they started The Peacock and Gamble Podcast, which became a live double act.

Gamble took his first solo stand-up show to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014

.@OffMenuOfficial, the podcast he has co-hosted with James Acaster since 2018, has had more than 93 million downloads. It is a simple format — guests choose their ideal starter, main, side dish, dessert and drink — and through it talk about their lives

The podcast has made him a better comedian, he thinks.

🗣️ “Being totally relaxed, being myself with James and seeing that people like that, it makes me feel a lot more confident just to wander on stage with very little in my head”

This year he joined the judging panel of the BBC’s professional cooking competition Great British Menu, alongside the chefs Tom Kerridge and Nisha Katona

Next, he will join the presenting team of Pointless as one of a rotating cast of celebrities aiming to fill Richard Osman’s canoe-like shoes as co-host with Alexander Armstrong. Does he have Osman’s smooth way with a fact?

🗣️ “Richard is so smart and has all those facts in his brain, but I never feel like he is desperate to get them across. Whereas if I learn something, I’ll be desperate to tell someone one hour later, as if I’ve known it for ten years. So I’ll have to keep a lid on that”

As a comedian, Gamble tends to avoid politics or anything remotely thorny and his material has only landed him in trouble once — when he made a joke about type 2 diabetes.

He has little time for handwringing over cancel culture and comedy

🗣️ “No one’s actually limiting free speech. But now communities have a voice and will be able to tell you when something’s a bit wide of the mark. And that should be a discussion that people can have without feeling like, ‘Oh God, I’ve been cancelled’ ”

Read the full interview 👇
thetimes.co.uk/article/ed-gam…