I’ve already mentioned my enjoyment of Ray Peacock and Ed Gamble, and in particular their podcasts. I was listening to the Christmas special of their first podcast (the Ray Peacock Podcast, featuring Raji James, who used to be on Eastenders, but ruined it) and it had one of the funniest things of theirs I’d heard in quite a while. Ray and Ed are fond of playing pranks on the hapless Raji, for instance, when they pretended to be his agent’s assistant, and pretended he had jobs to do live corporate training at a London McDonalds, then a London Burger King. Or when they pretended that Ed had killed Ray. However, my newly discovered favourite is… well, perhaps calling it a prank would be underselling it slightly. Ray said in an interview that “‘We would know if we pushed it too far… we wouldn’t necessarily stop – but we would edit it out of the podcast.” Well, in this case, he didn’t. If you want to listen to it for yourself, click the link to the Christmas episode, and skip to about 44 minutes in. And listen.

In a recent episode of Rum Doings, Walker and Mailer discussed how a particular sketch in Richard Herring’s AIOTM could have been improved if it had been played in a certain way – specifically, the motorcycle clothing shop sketch repeat sketch (will probably only make sense if you listen to AIOTM) should have been played with more menace. You certainly couldn’t claim that that section of the Ray Peacock podcast was short on menace. If you haven’t bothered to listen, Raji won’t sing a Christmas carol. After about a minute of saying he won’t, and Ray threatening to start destroying Raji’s possessions if he doesn’t, Ray starts destroying Raji’s possessions. With a hammer. No joke. A framed photo and a lava lamp get smashed before he finally caves and sings the song. It’s absolutely hilarious, but at the same time, almost difficult to listen to. The funniest thing is Raji’s confident prediction that Ray won’t do it, and his utter shock when he does. It’s shock humour, in a way , but shock humour more often than not can just be tasteless profanity and/or obscenity (see South Park – not that it can’t be funny, but it’s a fairly one-note sort of funny, and they sort of plumbed the depths of bad taste when they had Cartman get the kid to eat his parents) but this was genuine shock due to Ray’s action, and Raji’s reaction. Afterward, Raji seems crushed. It’s painful, in a weird sort of way, but it’s also fantastic, and shows exactly how menace should be used comedically.

That’s all for today, see you tomorrow!