I couldn't help noticing recently that a lot of comedians are intertwined. In a fiercely competitve business a lot of solo stand-ups seem to be forming temporary double acts for podcasts and programmes. And the same people keep cropping up, creating what you might want to call, if you were so inclined, the new Comedy Establishment.

We've had Romesh Ranganathan and Rob Beckett on Sky's Rob & Romesh Versus. Then there is Rob Beckett teaming up with Josh Widdicombe for the mega-successful podcast Parenting Hell. Meanwhile Last Leg co-host Josh Widdicombe has also managed to find the time to team with James Acaster for the Dave panel show with a twist, Hypothetical. And James Acaster, of course works with Ed Gamble on the hughely successful Off Menu podcast.

All we need now is for Ed Gamble to join forces with Romesh Rangnathan and we'd hve a perfect circle. Sadly Romesh has gone and played away, doing the Wolf and Owl podcast with Tom Davis.

Of course there's plenty more overlap where this came from, with the same comedians also appearing as guests on each other's shows. What this all means is another question. All of these comedians are consistently funny and have proved themselves to be sharp and snappy whether following a script, doing stand-up, freestyling or interacting wth guests. 

Critics could point out that with the exception of Romesh Ranganthan they are also white Cis males as far as I know. I tried to work out a similar number of links with female comedians such as Sara Pascoe and Kaherine Ryan but while they also do a lot of reat work I couldn't link them up quite so easily.

Do they have anything else in common? Yes. They've all been on Taskmaster, although only Ed and Josh won their series.