Caro Meets Comedy Interview

Ed Gamble: Udderbelly, and other upcoming plans

By | Published on Friday 24 June 2016

edgambleq&a

We’re well acquainted with the work of Ed Gamble because of his, and our, long association with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and so are fans of both his solo appearances and his podcasty partnership with Ray Peacock. I bet you all are too. And you might even have seen him on the telly.

He’s doing a one-off show at Udderbelly Festival shortly, so I put a few quick questions his way.

CM: Tell us about the show you’re performing at Udderbelly this weekend – is it new? Does it have a specific theme?
EG: There’ll be some smashing new bits as well as some absolute classic nuggets. That’s right, I call my own comedy “classic nuggets”.

CM: How would you describe your comedy, for those who haven’t seen you doing stand-up?
EG: Such a difficult question to answer. Probably life altering psychedelic satire? Hang on, not that. The opposite.

CM: Can you tell us a bit about your BBC America show ‘Almost Royal’? Was it fun to do?
EG: A huge amount of fun. Amy Hoggart and I got to travel around the US pretending to be minor royals filming a documentary. We basically got to be fools in front of increasingly confused Americans.

CM: You’ve done quite a lot of TV in recent times – how does it compare to live performance? Which do you prefer?
EG: They’re too different to compare really! I love doing some TV stuff, but really I think the reason I do it is to get people to come and see me live. That’s the most exciting thing for me – I still haven’t found anything that beats the rush of performing a joke for the first time and it working. Actually, heroin beats it. I love that stuff.

CM: What got you into comedy in the first place? Did you grow up wanting to perform?
EG: I started doing comedy at uni and I have no real recollection of a reasoning behind it. I just started doing it, so I guess I wanted to? It didn’t really feel like a choice, I just did it. Although some of the sketches I wrote in 2005 would only be described as comedy if you’re feeling particularly generous.

CM: Who are your comedy heroes?
EG: There’s a huge number of people I respect in all areas of comedy. Too many to start a list even. But I just watched Patton Oswalt’s new special and he is right up there with my favourites.

CM: Who or what inspires your comedy?
EG: I am inspired by the Lord Jesus Christ and a crisp autumn day.

CM: Where do you see yourself heading? What unfulfilled ambitions do you have?
EG: Hopefully I can just keep building an audience and selling tickets whilst getting better at what I do. Failing that I’ll just make enough money to buy a hot air balloon.

CM: Are you headed to Edinburgh this year? What’s your plan for the summer?
EG: Yes! I’m doing a new show at the Fringe this year, so that is my plan for the summer. It’s my eleventh festival, so I can’t even remember what it’s like to have an actual summer.

CM: Anything else in the pipeline?
EG: So many exciting things I can’t talk about right now, mainly because I haven’t thought of them yet.

Ed Gamble is on at Udderbelly Festival on 25 Jun. Head this way for more info and tickety business. Plus, if you are heading up to edfringe later this summer, you can catch him performing his new show ‘Stampede‘ at Gilded Balloon at the Counting House from 3–29 Aug. He begins a national tour of the show in September, dates are here.

LINKS: www.udderbelly.co.uk | www.edgamble.co.uk | twitter.com/EdGambleComedy

Photo: Idil Sukan



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