A wicked blend of mischief and bedlam, Ray Peacock and Ed Gamble come barrelling at you like a ridiculous storm in a ludicrous teacup. One of the longest running comedy podcast duos out there, having run on and off since 2007, Peacock and Gamble are well versed in both each other’s company, comedy podcasting, whilst also having ever growing profiles as solo acts. This current run of Edinburgh Fringe podcasts features interviews with various comedians at and away from the Fringe, of various fame and with varying levels of lucidity and inanity. With an act that is all at once so gleefully ribald, giddy and joyous as to verge on the almost distressingly hilarious, they explode with ridiculous fun, unhinged giggles and a single goal: to be uproariously foolish.
Lovely Boys: Gamble and Peacock
One of the major things setting Peacock and Gamble apart from other podcasters, is their joyous giddiness. Joining their larger than life personalities with an ability to harness an other-worldy aptitude for nonsense, their levels of excitement and crudity lead to a brilliantly evolved silliness. Aligning this with a crafted and fostered atmosphere of unbridled tomfoolery and naughtiness, they possess a both hilarious and very much individual ‘voice.’ It is this cadence that Peacock and Gamble really master, using a blend of child-like innocence, feigned naivety, club comic filth and peaks of high-energy nuttiness to create this delightfully expressive and co-operative voice. As such, they often act like semi-adorable overgrown child comics, aggressively pursuing stupid meanders, crazed nonsense inventions and hopelessly daft scenarios. It is this almost melodic childishness, fully realised and so broad as to range from their pronunciations to their obsessions and unashamed silliness that make the duo a real delight. To have not only given themselves so vividly to these courageous and pronounced personas, but to also share a real awareness of life and understanding of universes both comedic and otherwise, but always cut though with an inherent daftness that is as charming, witty and funny as it is often illuminatory.
The Gentleman Ray Peacock and the Muppet Gonzo
Admittedly, their high energy madness may well be a tough ride for those not versed in comedy performed through a constant barrage of nonsense, or the child-like machinations and other foolishness they so excitedly provide; their whole podcast legacy is a reward to those who understand the delicacy of intelligently combining idiocy, cleverness and outright absurdity. Frequently utilising a to-and-fro personality dynamic to drive their levels of silliness, the pair have gradually fallen into a fluid relationship of Peacock playing someone verging between the endearingly childish to being possibly mentally unstable; whilst Gamble is as bemused as he is amused by his partners strange re-inventions and possible disintegrations, probing him in a desperate attempt to make Peacock either break character or become irretrievably bizarre. Needless to say this results in segments where Peacock might, for instance, feign to have no understanding of what defecation is, with Gamble engaged in a hopeless bid at restoring at least partial sanity, before hastily segueing into another section. It is the synchronisation of their clear comic intelligence and understanding that really shines through in these engagements, their quick wits and ability to make one another laugh really making their pairing work it’s best and occasionally magnifying their giddiness to astronomical levels.
Also The Gentleman: Ed Gamble
This is another aspect that really takes this partnership beyond the usual: their clear love of one another’s company and comedy. More than happy to be wilfully self-indulgent, their is a shared enjoyment in making each other laugh as much as the audience, utilising with the fragility of their child-like exteriors and capability to find mischief where none is expected with aplomb. Their joyful troublesomeness is also obviously redoubled by being together, their interviews ranging wildly in terms of both seriousness and topic. This encouragement also plays into the guests hands, allowing interviewees to also be even sillier than usual, given the freedom to take their own humour to dizziying silliness because of their generous hosts co-conspiratorial exuberance. Peacock and Gamble also seem largely unbowed by their guests comparative fame, taking this instead as an excuse to be even sillier, allowing for the kind of off-hand hilarity that is usually so difficult to pull off on a regular basis. Their act though is more than simply a replacement of jokes with energy, instead acting as more of a challenge to the audience, forcing them to get past a layer of feigned idiocy to find the actual hilarity hidden beneath.
It is huge tribute to both their conjoined individuality and innate sense of comedy that rather than this being utterly exhausting (though for an unfortunate few this is the case) they are actually all the more engaging through their obsessiveness, energy and all-out assault of the senses. This ability to combine such an enviably child-like imagination and sense of wonder to make a crafted daftness; whilst also being able to translate this into utterly creative, sometimes eye-wateringly funny humour goes beyond being just admirable to make something that is very special. When they make podcasts, they make stuff extraordinary, and even if there is only ever what they’ve already given, well, that’s still something pretty special.
If you happen to be in Edinburgh (unlikely) they are still performing their live show for a couple more days, details of which are very findable. You can find their podcast on itunes or on chortle.co.uk, and they have twitters too: @EdGambleComedy and @RayPeacock. Do enjoy.