hi sorry to bother you and you don't have to answer if you don't want to but I was curious as I've heard some stuff about the reasons ed stopped doing his double act with ray peacock but you seem like you'd know more so I was just wondering if you could elaborate what happened?
again feel free to ignore im just quite new to off menu and only really know james's past stuff xx
I've had a few questions like this from people and sorry I've never answered them before but I was never quite sure what to say to be honest.
It's obviously quite sensitive for both sides and is not something I feel like I should comment on as they both kept what happened mostly private.
However, I do understand I probably know more than most thanks to being introduced to their podcast at a stupidly young age (thank you older foster brother) and keeping up with Ed’s career, and thought that perhaps me saying what I know to be true will be better than people speculating.
I do have my own personal opinions on some things but I'll leave them out of this and keep it to just what they have said or done publicly so it's purely objective, and be as respectful as I can (also I have not kept up with Ian's career so most of the more recent stuff is second hand from people who have)
(Oh, also I will refer to Ray as Ian as that is his actual name and he chooses to no longer go by Ray)
So, okay, this is what's out there:
- First a bit of background: Ian is quite a bit older than Ed (13 years) but met Ed when he was at university as he did a show there. Ian said he liked Ed because he was by far the most polite boy who came up to him. He later offered Ed a job as a director for his Edinburgh show.
- Ed continued to help Ian out during uni and after he left, Ian would occasionally get him gigs.
- When Ian started the The Ray Peacock podcast with Raji James, Ed was initially a guest but pretty soon became another host. He was still only 21 at the time. The podcast later went on to become The Peacock and Gamble podcast which was massively successful for the time.
- Ed was still living with his mum at the time but seemed to also spend a lot of days/nights at Ian's too. They were clearly extremely close.
- The podcast naturally lead on to them becoming a double act which they toured and took to Edinburgh. They tried to get some telly shows commissioned but none of them got the green light. They kept mainly to live shows, radio, and occasional guest spots on telly.
- During their time doing the podcast, Ian was diagnosed with depression (he would talk about this openly sometimes and has since done a mental health podcast)
- Ed never talked about anything like that at the time but has since talked about struggling with managing his type 1 and body image issues after he lost weight, so I don't think it would be unfair to say they both probably weren't at their best mentally around this time.
- An incident happened during their time on Fubar radio where Ed felt slighted by the station bosses (I believe they were not paying him judging by what he said to John Robins) and he decided he didn't want to work for them. Ian liked the steady gig so continued on as a solo show.
- Ed started to get a lot more solo gigs and telly work, along with many others of his generation of comics. Touring with Greg also helped him massively.
- Ian has admitted he went a bit crazy on twitter for a while. During one of Ed's early solo Edinburgh runs, Ed did a promotional interview. He didn't mention Ian and this caused Ian to send a number of very passive aggressive tweets to him which Ed didn't engage with. All tweets were later deleted.
- Ed tweeted at a slightly later date something that was not directly at Ian but was assumed to be. I will be paraphrasing a lot here but it was basically something like "Your life hasn't gone the way you wanted. I'm sorry. But don't use that as an excuse to ruin my night." Rob Beckett also got involved, again not mentioning anyone directly, but appearing to stand up for Ed.
- All of their old podcast episodes were later no longer available on official sources.
- Ian did a Q&A on his podcast after he and Ed has split up and was asked if they were still friends. He said they didn't speak anymore. He did also however, cut ties with almost everyone in comedy.
- Another time Ian confirmed he was the one who stopped talking to Ed. He did not elaborate as to why.
- However in more recent years they have at least had some communication. Ian did a retrospective on the Ray Peacock podcast and it pushed him to call Ed. I did not hear this myself but have heard from others it was quite sweet.
- Ed has mentioned Ian by name a few times on various podcasts and always seems to have no ill will. He has said he is grateful and was very lucky to be given the opportunity by him. He also said he wouldn't be where he is today were it not for people like Ian and Greg Davies taking a chance on him.
- After the tragic death of the comedian Gareth Richards last year, Ian tweeted that he and Ed had spoken and agreed to re-release the interview they did with him for the podcast. As far as I'm aware that's the most recent occurrence of them mentioning each other.
And yeah, that's pretty much all I think. And while I won't say any more on the matter, I will say that their podcast was a massive part of my childhood and they both provided me with so many hours of laughter. So wherever they are with each other now (and I hope that they are broadly fine), their time as a double act was fantastic and meant a lot to a lot of weirdos. And nothing can change that :)
