Ed Gamble doesn’t like watching himself on screen. “I know a lot of comedians who struggle with watching themselves,” he says. “No one should have to look at their own face so much. It feels both arrogant and like the most self-punishing thing you can do.”
Unfortunately for him, he’s everywhere. Gamble presents the BBC’s hugely successful companion show to The Traitors, The Traitors: Uncloaked, along with the very popular podcast Off Menu, with comedian and current Celebrity Traitors contestant James Acaster.
Over the summer, Gamble hosted a new show, Unacceptable, in which comedians try to defend their worst opinions—a format produced by Romesh Ranganathan, surely the only comedian with a heavier workload than Gamble. Another series starts next month. A special for Amazon Prime, based on Gamble’s last two standup tours, will also be available this month. He is, of course, grateful and delighted about all this. It’s been a long time since I met someone so self-aware and willing to acknowledge their many privileges without a hint of resentment.
Gamble has known every twist of The Celebrity Traitors, including the eventual winner or winners, since it was filmed some months ago. How does he handle the pressure of keeping it all in?
“Even with my wife, who loves the show, I want to tell her what I’ve been doing on a work day, but I can’t tell her who I’ve met,” he says. Luckily, people generally don’t want to know. If they do ask, Gamble might pretend he’s about to tell them. “Then you see their face go: ‘I don’t want that. I want to be part of the national conversation.'”
We meet on a mild October day in a pub garden near his east London home. The actor Myha’la, who had just been banished from the show, had made comments on Instagram addressing suggestions that unconscious racial and cultural bias exists in interactions between the players. “I certainly wouldn’t want to dismiss anyone’s lived experience,” says Gamble. “I also think Myha’la said she signed her own death warrant with the wink [at Richard E Grant shortly before he was unmasked as a traitor]. But that certainly doesn’t mean it’s not true, and it’s something that needs to be discussed and looked at.”
Gamble describes himself as a Traitors “obsessive” (it becomes clear that his capacity for obsessions is part of his personality). “I don’t like it if I think people aren’t playing the game hard enough,” he says, smiling at his own exactness. He knows a lot of the people in this series—fellow comedians Ranganathan, Joanne McNally, Rob Beckett and Acaster—but it’s the actor Ross Kemp who, says Gamble, “I was most excited about going in, and I think is turning out to be my favourite so far.” He and Acaster have had Kemp on their Off Menu podcast. “He’s just such an enigma. He’s obviously got this hard man thing, but also, he’s a proper actor, a total luvvie and, from what we’ve seen on Celebrity Traitors so far, highly sensitive, highly emotional, really cares about the game. I think there’s so many things going on with Ross Kemp that I find adorable and very funny.”
Growing up, Gamble initially wanted to be an actor, “because that’s what I knew about. I loved films and TV, and I probably wasn’t really aware of ‘comedian’ as a job.” When he was 13, his mother took him to see Steve Coogan perform, and he began watching comedy shows on BBC2, such as Goodness Gracious Me. He read philosophy at Durham University, where he did sketch comedy and found like-minded fFriends, including the comic Nish Kumar, with whom he later shared a flat in London. After university, Gamble tried standup, “and fell in love with it – just wrestling with performing on stage.” He gigged regularly, did an influential comedy podcast (Peacock and Gamble, with the comedian Ian Boldsworth), then started appearing on TV in the early 2010s. His career since then has seemed unstoppable.
View image in fullscreenMeasured … Ed Gamble in The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up to Cancer in 2022. Photograph: Mark Bourdillon /Channel 4
His new standup show, Fresh Hell, which he will tour next year, is, he says, “another really heavy emotional show. Very political, of course. A lot of it is about toilet brushes. It’s hugely silly. It’s stuff that feels really fun to say.” Gamble can be hilariously revolting, but he’s not interested in being edgy. “I find the attitude of ‘I can say what I like, it’s comedy’ such a teenage opinion. Like, that’s true, you have total free speech. But there might be consequences, and some people might not like it, and they might say they don’t like it, and you can’t censor them for saying that.”
There is still a trend for “edgelord” comedians – those who set out to be offensive – but Gamble thinks it’s just part of a cycle. “Quite often they only talk about three topics, and they’ve all got the same angle on it. I think it’s bad for creativity, certainly, but it’ll subside. It’ll keep coming back round again, and it’s often aligned with how things feel politically in the world.”
In an era in which comedy clips can circulate without context, is he concerned about what he says? “I guess so, but I’ve always tried to think about what I say and how things can be interpreted. I think that’s a really important thing to do, as anyone who has a public platform. I’ve never been in the game of trying to upset anyone. That’s not who I am, and that’s not what my comedy is.”
Being likable is important to Gamble. In his 2023 memoir, Glutton, he unpicks his “desperate need to fit in with people”, as he puts it. His greatest fear is some sort of social banishment. He’s that person, he says, who reads 100 nice comments about himself, then thinks about the bad one for a week (he has a device to lock apps on his phone).
Ed Gamble: ‘As a child I was a human dustbin. I’d eat every morsel’ Read more
“I think it’s that thing of being a desperate people-pleaser, and it’s probably one of the most pathetic elements of my personality. But also, I kind of don’t mind it, because that’s what drives me, and what makes me try to hone what I’m doing. I do wish I had that slight abandon and self-confidence to be like, ‘I’m right about this, fuck you guys,’ but I don’t.”
Has his people-pleasing decreased the older and more successful he gets (he turned 40 this year)? “No, because the more people who see you doing things, the wider the field is of people who might potentially not like you, and then you see that happen.” He laughs. Those objective measures of success are “definitely something to lean on, but the brain’s an odd thing, right? It’s not logical a lot of the time. It will just go: ‘Well, think about what that one person said. That’s the real thing.'” He’s getting better, he says, “at going, ‘That doesn’t make sense, so maybe think about how well things are going.'”
In his book, he acknowledges the cliche that he has sometimes used humour as a defence mechanism. He grew up in south London, attending the prestigious private school King’s College. There, his brand became the “funny fat guy”, he writes. For the first half of his life, Gamble was overweight. “I was conscious that I could be funny, and of what that could do in a social setting. Just throwing in those jokes, go
Frequently Asked Questions
Heres a FAQ based on the Ed Gamble interview covering Traitors true love weight loss and peoplepleasing
Who is Ed Gamble
A British standup comedian and broadcaster best known for Mock the Week Taskmaster and cohosting The Off Menu podcast with James Acaster
What is this interview about
Its a wideranging chat covering his time on The Traitors his marriage his weight loss peoplepleasing and how gay men boost his ego
What did Ed Gamble say about gay men and his ego
He joked that gay men keep my ego going because they message him all the time he finds the attention flattering and funny
Why is that quote getting attention
Its a lighthearted selfdeprecating line and people enjoy his honesty about enjoying the compliments
What did he say about The Traitors
Hes spoken about being a fan of the show and how much he enjoyed the experience the paranoia the gameplay and the fun of being part of it
Was he a contestant or a fan
Hes mainly known as a celebrity fan and has appeared in related Traitors programming check the specific article for which version he took part in
What did he say about true love
He spoke warmly about his marriage and what real settled love looks like compared with the drama of dating
Who is Ed Gamble married to
Hes married to Charlie Jamison a doctor
How did he lose weight
Hes been open about changing his diet and lifestyle cutting back on unhealthy habits and getting more active no extreme gimmicks
Did he use Ozempic or surgery
Hes credited diet and lifestyle changes rather than medication or surgery
What does he say about peoplepleasing
He admits hes a peoplepleaser and has learned it can be exhausting hes working on saying no and being more honest about what he wants
Why is peoplepleasing a problem
It can lead to burnout resentment and losing sight of your own needs because you keep prioritising others approval
Whats a practical tip for peoplepleasers
Practise small nos first pause before agreeing to things and ask yourself whether youre saying yes out of guilt or genuine want
