Gamble has not always had an easy relationship with food, however. He has lived with type 1 diabetes since the age of 13, and in his early 20s, he weighed around 19st. “I was eating anything with salt, fat and sugar, no matter what the quality was,” he admits. He first became a comic after learning to use humour as a defence mechanism when being mocked for his weight.
“When I decided to make a lifestyle change and eat more nutritiously and mindfully, it made me enjoy and appreciate food more,” Gamble explains. “I never limited myself or said ‘I’m never eating that again’, but I got into finding the best versions of dishes. I became obsessive about quality, which led me to seeking out the best chefs and exciting restaurants.” As for his diabetes, “it’s about consequences and management,” he says. “People assume I can’t eat desserts at all, but I can. [Those of us with type 1 diabetes are] very much in control of our condition, but we just need to be aware.”
After losing 7st, Gamble was left with an abiding fascination for the British dining scene. “Reading food blogs, reviews, books and social media accounts became a habit,” he says. “I get excited by the trends, I love hearing about up-and-coming chefs. I research the people behind the food, so when it comes to visiting their restaurants, it feels like I’m stepping into hallowed halls.”
Following the success of Off Menu, Gamble rubbed shoulders with those very chefs as a guest judge on BBC Two’s Great British Menu before becoming a main judge for three series between 2022 and 2024. In October 2023, he published Glutton: The Multi-Course Life of a Very Greedy Boy, a memoir about his epicureanism. Guests on the podcast who are clearly “not into food” confound him: “I struggle to understand that. I can’t get into those people’s heads. What are they thinking about all day if it’s not what they’re going to eat next?”