The Cutting Room Floor: Peacock & Gamble on the ideas they haven't done

We're debuting a new occasional series today: the Cutting Room Floor. It's a chance for acts to showcase the different sketches, characters and jokes that didn't make the final cut for their shows. We're thinking such jokes deserve an afterlife, and we'll be playing St Peter to the ideas that comedians cut down young.

 

First up is Ed from Peacock and Gamble. Their show at Edinburgh this year is titled Don't Even Want To Be On Telly Anyway, preferring instead to nestle in the iTunes podcast chart (that's our optional subtitle for the boys).

 

“It's a strop generally that we're not on telly,” says Ed. “We've decided that we should be and rather than completely trying our best we're just having a complete strop about how we're not on it already. We've got various things in the show to prove we don't care. It's very childish. And we've got other things to show why we're too busy to be on TV anyway.”

 

So busy, in fact, that they have ideas to spare, so we've taken three of them for your delectation below.

 

Incidentally: if we were better at Photoshop we'd have taken about three stone off that picture of Ed. Have you seen him lately? There's jawbone and everything.

 

ON TO THE CUT SKETCHES EVERYONE.

 

“We put together a presentation for American tourists coming to England. Audiences just didn't go for it. We would tell Americans facts about the UK and at the end we'd be saluting a picture of Deirdre Rachid from Coronation Street. It just left people slightly confused, so that's gone. 

 

“We had a fact that we love the Queen so much that it's impossible to destroy anything with the Queen's face on, which will make it very difficult when it comes to cremating her body. So what we encountered there were fans of the Queen, and people who didn't want to her jokes about her dying. That's what I'm maintaining it is, and nothing to do with the structural integrity of the joke.  

 

“We also had the fact that a lot of people call Big Ben the name of the clock, which isn't true. Big Ben is the name of the homeless man who sleeps in the bell. We have pictures to back this all up.”

 

 

“Last year we did a ventriloquist act that Ray is desperate to perform on the telly and he claims that he's done a summer season in Blackpool, but I'm not too sure about that. That's not going to be in the show this year, although he keeps threatening to bring it with him and just do it. 

 

“It's a dummy he's made himself out of a ball and a bin bag, and it's quite terrifying. If children ever saw it it would be scarred into their retinas for years to come. It's quite horrible. We managed to do it on TV once on Russell Howard's Good News, but it's not been seen again and I don't think it will ever see the light of day again.

 

“There was shock and gasps. Ray claims they were gasps of happiness and tears of joy, whereas I maintain it probably upset people quite a lot. He'd like him to make an appearance; I worry he might go behind a curtain and pull a bin bag out.”

 

Shall we look at it? Yes we shall: 

 

 

 

“One thing I maintain we can do is interview celebrities very well, and if you come and see the show we demonstrate in the show by talking with a definitely live link-up to a real life celebrity. You have to come and see the show to see who it is, but it is a woman.

 

“We do some interviews and do some for our daily podcast at Edinburgh. We pre-recorded an interview with Russell Howard the other day, and he said that when he went on tour with Ray, all Ray did was sit in the front of the car and read a book about the Yorkshire Ripper. That's the man I'm in a double act with: he reads books on the Yorkshire Ripper and makes ventriloquist dummies out of bin bags.

 

“Last year we did live podcasts and we ended up losing money, and we decided against it as it was a free thing, so now we're recording them in our flat. We also did video blogs which if you watch it the whole way through gives you the whole Fringe experience – because about half way through I just start downing red wine. 

 

“The podcasts also include interviews with people who are so successful they don't need to go to Edinburgh any more, like Lee Mack, Russell Howard and Greg Davies.”

 

THANKS ED.

 

You can catch Peacock and Gamble at the Pleasance Dome from 1-26 August at 21.40. Get tickets over here and visit them online here. And do check in on our list of other podcast favourites at the Fringe this year.