[ATTENDED: March 1, 2026] Ed Gamble
I have made a list of all of the contestants from Taskmaster who I want to see do stand up. And while I don’t wish to rank them or anything, Ed Gamble was near the top of my list. I have enjoyed him immensely on his TM podcast, and really I think he’s funny in just about anything. I didn’t know anything about his standup, but I assumed it would be very funny.
So after Stuart left the stage, Ed came out and made immediate jokes about the lateness of the set. He said he wanted to play Philadelphia and when the tour manager said Friday or Saturday? Ed said no Sunday–as late as possible. Tell them I’ll go on at 8:15 but I won’t go on until 9:20. He explained the the previous comic went over time, but he watched it and enjoyed, noting that the audience was very different (the previous comedian was black and the entre audience was as well).
Ed made some quick audience banter. He noted how British comedy clubs don’t have food “ah yes, it’s 9:30 o a Sunday night, let’s get food!” And then he joked with someone up front who had a lot of food in front of them. They said that their toddler had eaten all of their food and then said something which made Ed crack up and say that he is tired after this tour and he asked for an audience that would supply half of the jokes for him.
He also noted that the far side of the room was not as vocal as our side. So he guessed that they were a church group who had come out to the comedy club. He played up that joke all night and it worked every time.
He told us that every time he makes fun of something in his act, within three years he is doing that. He used to make fun of vaping, now he vapes (who starts vaping in their late 30s if they don’t smoke?). He used to make fun of tattoos and now he’s got a bunch. He promised not to make any jokes about pedophiles.
Every non-American comedian I’ve seen seems to be amazed by our bathrooms. Ed explained that he was amazed when the automatic toilet went off when he moved–and whisked everything away too fast to even look at it. While in England, the bowl, is like a lazy carousel, swirling everything around so you can see how it went. He also said that there is a brush in each stall designed for you to clean up and maybe help the stragglers down. He imagined just how much human DNA is on it. Gross.
He made some jokes about the posh school that he went to. So posh that Marcus Mumford was in the year below him. Then he joked that someone told him Mumford was on Saturday Night Live last night which made him hilariously furious. They put on plays and he was often cast in the role of the woman. Which led to a segue about drag queens. He told us that when he was on a show that filmed in the States, he met some drag queens (for the show) and they made him up. He said it gave him the utmost respect for drag and loved seeing it on stage even now.
The drag show was the only thing about his honeymoon that he liked. He said that he and his wife wanted to prove that they weren’t a boring old married couple, so they honeymooned in Las Vegas. And hated everything about it. They hated the heat, they hated the drugs, they hated the gambling (and how many time people heard his last name and assumed that’s why he was in Vegas.
His description of their Thai massage was hilarious (and Makes me never want to have one.
Ed was pretty explicit and he joked that the Christian side was muttering, enough with the shit and boob jokes. He also joked about muttering himself. That when he gets to be like 70, he’s looking forward to becoming a bigot–because that’s what you do when you get old: you make holidays uncomfortable and then you die. But he joked that as a posh person he can make that harrumph sound, and you can put any kind of slur in there.
He imagines that when he is a grandpa he will have no tolerance for humanoid cyborgs, and when his child brings one home to date, he will have some choice words for it. Somehow saying the kind of racist things old people say but saying it about a cyborg was really funny.
So yes, he made me laugh a lot. It was a lot of fun. And he told us that he loved American audiences because we think, I paid money to laugh so I’m going to laugh. Whereas British people say, “let’s see if this guy can make us laugh.” We are giving him an inflated ego.
There was no mention of Taskmaster, which doesn’t entirely surprise me, but I thought there might be a nod to it. It’s also interesting that his partner in the Off Menu podcast, James Acaster, played a much larger venue. I guess Ed is not quite as well known here–and indeed, this was his first stand up tour in the U.S. I think it went rather well for him.
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Four years ago I saw DakhaBrakha and was blown away. It was a very emotional time as Russia had just invaded Ukraine–support and anger were very high. The music was beautiful and powerful and the messages of hope and resistance were very strong. Their home base is in Kyiv and they have first hand experience with the tragedy.
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