Ricky Gervais bits and pieces

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Gervais defends privacy right
Ben Dowell
Monday September 10, 2007
MediaGuardian.co.uk

Comedian Ricky Gervais has become embroiled in a privacy row with his local newspaper, the Hampstead and Highgate Express after it printed pictures of his house, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal. The star of BBC2 comedies The Office and Extras instructed his lawyers to send what is understood to be a series of legal letters to his local newspaper after it ran a story in April about complaints from his neighbours over the noise and mess created by building work on his home.

It is understood that Gervais' lawyers demanded financial damages from the newspaper, known locally as the Ham & High, for identifying his residence and infringing his privacy. However, partly due to the fact that the picture did not display the house number of Gervais' house in the area, the newspaper has held firm and insisted in a reply to the comedian that it had acted "responsibly". It is understood that the issue has now reached an "impasse" according to those familiar with the situation, with "neither side prepared to back down".

The Ham & High is, internally at least, understood to be mystified by the complaint especially as Mr Gervais did not complain about a story the paper published in January of last year announcing his move to the area in positive terms. "That story had more detail about the locale of his home but he didn't complain", said a source. "It is interesting that that story was positive while the one he objected to was probably less favourable to him."

In its story published in April, a number of his neighbours criticised his work installing a swimming pool, sauna and gym underneath his home, with one complaining that it could cause flooding in their street. In his current live stand up tour, Gervais makes reference to the disputes and promises that if his neighbours continue to annoy him he will rent his property out to drug addicts. The newspaper is also adamant that it is experienced at dealing responsibly with the privacy of the many famous residents who live in its patch, which is one of London's most affluent areas.

In the past these have included the Hollywood stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and in more recent years a plethora of actors, writers and directors such as film director Anthony Minghella, pop star Boy George, the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and presenter Russell Brand, who recently moved into the area. According to Ham and High insiders, Mr Brand actively encouraged stories about his move as he "wanted young women to turn up at his address".

A spokeswoman confirmed that the story had prompted a complaint by Gervais but declined to comment on the situation that sees him join a growing list of celebrities and high-profile figures more keen than ever to protect their privacy.

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I wonder what he think will happen? An obsessed stalker to turn up and quote lines from The Office at him?

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RICKY GERVAIS
I’m not worried about a backlash ... ... I could do with losing a few fans
www.sundayherald.com

THE REAL reason I shouldn't be famous," explains Ricky Gervais, Pumas up on the table, flashing a tigerish grin, "is that everything I do is such an acquired taste." He is talking backstage at the Hammersmith Apollo, towards the end of a national tour, in the course of which he will have performed to half a million people. Not only has Britain acquired a taste for Gervais, it seems to have a bottomless appetite for the man and his work. "I don't know why we got the figures we did for The Office and Extras," he continues, shaking his head. "Just think of the things we deal with - paedophilia in the Catholic church, disability and racism. It's not My Family. So it's weird that I became a household name."

The front of the Apollo is plastered with billboards of Gervais, bequiffed and grinning, Elvis in Wonderland, but his dressing room is a study in anonymity. The impression is that he arrives, performs, and leaves as soon as possible for home and his girlfriend, Jane Fallon.
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At 46, he is arguably the most acclaimed and popular comedian in the world, and so it's unsurprising that during live performances and chat-show appearances, he comes across as arrogant. Yet this, he insists, is just a persona. It's "Ricky Gervais" rather than Ricky Gervais. He certainly couldn't be less starry in the flesh. He suits his blank dressing room. Everything about him is everymanish and mundane except his talent and achievements - the Baftas, Golden Globes and Emmys that attest to his success in Britain and America.

Gervais's live show is called Fame. He appears on stage wearing a crown and performs in front of his name spelled out in giant lights. "Too much?" he asks with a 100-watt twinkle. The stage set also includes a giant Emmy. This has been constructed with a shelf to hold a can of lager and a copy of a paper containing news of Gervais's new home in Hampstead. During the show he feigns outrage at inaccurate reporting - how dare they write his house cost £2.5 million? It was a million more than that.

Celebrity appalled Gervais before he became well-known. Ironically, his own fame came about as a result of The Office, which sent up his character David Brent's desperate quest for validation via television. The last time I interviewed him, in 2004, he hated being famous, but now feels differently. He seems to be revelling in what fame has meant - reaching a level of success that gives him complete creative freedom and puts him out of range of his critics. "I'm big enough now to stand up and go, Come on then and let's have a go,'" he says. "Before, with the press, I was timid and thought, Oh, like me.' But now I don't give a f*** whether you like me or not."

In truth, he has had a great run of critical acclaim. Only in recent months have there been the beginnings of a backlash. In July, at the Concert For Diana in Wembley Stadium, Gervais suffered an apparent humiliation when he was unexpectedly forced to fill time before Elton John came on stage, and, seeming unable to ad lib, resorted to performing David Brent's famous dance from The Office. Then, in August, his show at Edinburgh Castle was criticised for the price of the tickets - £37.50.

"I thought that was a shame because for the past seven years I've never done anything for the money," says Gervais. "I've made more than most, but that wasn't my aim." He avoids potential big-earners such as adverts, panel shows, corporate performances and merchandise, regarding these as somehow impure. "So, I thought it was a little unjust. And the money all went to charity anyway, but that's irrelevant." He seems almost embarrassed to have muttered this last point, though keen to defend himself.

"Yeah, I didn't want people thinking I was greedy." The Diana concert then - what happened? He says his stand-up tour had just sold out and therefore he didn't want to perform any of that material in front of such a massive television audience; it would have meant that when people came to his shows they would already have heard some of the jokes.

But how did it feel on stage? "I didn't give a fuck. I was just laughing. I gave them the dance and then I came off. I didn't think anything of it." Well, he looked very ill at ease. "It honestly didn't feel uncomfortable," he insists. "The crowd absolutely loved me doing the dance. That was an example of one journalist going, He was terrible at the Diana concert. Now I can say The Office was rubbish, he's not a stand-up, and this is the end of his career.' The week he wrote that, I got nominated for four Emmys, I sold 100,000 DVDs in America, and signed up for two Hollywood films. It's ridiculous. It made no difference at all."

If there is a genuine backlash, Gervais welcomes it. He thinks that so many people like him, it's impossible that all of them really get what he's all about. "I've got to whittle a few fans away. I'm bigger than I should have been." He is elitist in his tastes, and therefore the idea of being a mainstream star sits oddly with him. So he's quite keen on the idea of fairweather fans beginning to mutter that he's not funny any more. "All my heroes went through a bad patch and 10 years later people went, Oh f***ing hell, they're great.'" he explains. "There's something in me that likes Ali losing the title and then winning it back. He's The Greatest because he lost the title. No-one talks about the people who weren't defeated."

So is his time as comedy's reigning champ coming to an end? He laughs. "No, no, I don't think I've lost the title. But at least people are punching me in the face a bit now."

Gervais would also be happy to lose some public support because he is concerned about people misunderstanding the persona he adopts on stage; he doesn't want the applause of bigots who believe that he validates their prejudices. He sees himself as part of an alternative comedy tradition that includes Alf Garnett and Al Murray Pub Landlord - reactionary characters we are supposed to laugh at rather than with. So the point of Gervais's live act, beyond simply being funny, is to satirise prejudice.

However, one crucial difference between Gervais and the likes of the Pub Landlord is that it's not immediately obvious Gervais is playing a character. On stage he uses his own name, clothes, voice and mannerisms. He also, at times, seems to speak from the heart. It's inconsistent and confusing. So how exactly is he signalling to the audience that he doesn't mean what he says?

"Uh, because it is so extreme," he explains. "I mean even the 1970s comedians wouldn't touch on the really taboo subjects I do - children with cancer, starving people, jokes about rape and paedophilia. It's the extremities I go to and how wrong I am that's laughable. Do you see what I mean?"

I do, though I'm not convinced that the best way to attack prejudice is to adopt its vocabulary and values and take it to extremes. There's no doubt, though, that he has thought long and hard about this. For instance, he has a bit in his act where he talks about ME, the disabling illness sometimes known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Gervais remarks that you never see Africans with ME, a joke that seems to endorse the incorrect and not uncommon belief that the condition is something made up by lazy Westerners who don't have any real problems. The joke has been in Gervais's act for a while, but he now qualifies it by saying that ME is real, that he used to think it was psychosomatic but now realises it's physiological.

This change has come about because his gig at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall in January this year was attended by Ciara MacLaverty, an ME sufferer, and her boyfriend, Francis Macdonald. They were offended by the joke and Macdonald wrote to complain. Gervais emailed back, explaining about his stage persona, and in subsequent emails stating that, as a result of Macdonald's letter, he had tempered the routine a little. "I didn't want to get the wrong laugh'," he wrote.

Gervais, an incredibly busy megastar, took the time to respond to a complaint and took it seriously. That's impressive. Isn't it the case, though, that making jokes based on prejudice, however ironically intended, contributes to a culture where such things can be said?

"I'm not racist and homophobic and I don't want anyone to think I am," he insists. "When it comes to it I'm quite educated and middle-class. I want people to be relaxed about my stuff. It's safe. It's tested. Though I haven't done a survey of my fans, I think most people get it. I think they know the difference between Extras and Love Thy Neighbour."

He mulls this over then continues: "The important thing is to be as funny as you can and still be able to sleep at night. I think it was David Baddiel who said, Comedy is your conscience taking a day off.' It's not. My conscience never takes a day off. I can defend every joke I do."

It's not clear why he bothers with live comedy at all. His act is scripted and he doesn't get any adrenaline rush from being on stage. The thrill came when he thought of the jokes in the first place. Though undeniably funny, what he's doing is actually more like comic acting than true stand-up.

Occasionally, though, a particular gig will excite him. Madison Square Garden for instance. He made his US live debut at the New York venue in May. Acclaim in the US means a lot to Gervais. He feels accepted by a culture he has always admired.

Now the giants of US comedy whose work he loves - Matt Groening, Christopher Guest, Larry David - regard him as a peer. "If your heroes like you, you're doing something right." What does it do to the ego, though? For many years, Gervais has been routinely described as a genius. What effect does that have? "None. Absolutely none. I've always known how good I was." He laughs at this like a sea lion barking for a fish, before insisting it was a joke.

Confidence is all very well, but doesn't he agree that anxiety and self-doubt can actually help creative people work? "I think I do," he nods. "You've got to be your own harshest critic. You must never let yourself off. And I know there are people waiting. They can't wait for the Extras special to fail. They can't wait for the Fame DVD to fail. They can't wait for it."

And how does that make him feel? "It's irrelevant. If any of those things fail for any reason, either artistically or commercially, them laughing won't make me more upset." As he continues to explain how much his work means to him, he gets louder and speaks more quickly and his voice rises almost to a shriek. His friend, the comedian Robin Ince, once said Gervais has "supernova emotions" and it is easy to see what he meant.

"This has never been a career," Gervais says. "The thing for me is what I've got to get off my chest today and how I'm going to do it. This sounds pretentious, like I'm a tortured artist, and I understand that TV is a very lowly art, but even with the lowliest art you have to be consumed by it. The point of any art is to make a connection with people you'll never meet, and to me what's important is how strong the connection is with those people."

Success, he says, isn't exciting unless you believe in what you are doing and have worked hard. "Winning the pools is successful but not gratifying. And I don't want to think I've won the pools. I want to think I've built a wall." He stares at his palms in agonised wonder as if they were calloused from his labours. "Metaphorical blisters, obviously. I don't want to f***ing touch a brick. Have you felt them? They're heavy."

This analogy comes naturally. His late father Jerry was a labourer, his mother Eva a dinner lady, and Gervais has a lot of respect for their life of toil. What values has he inherited from his parents? "Uh, work hard. If you work hard and provide for your family, you can have a laugh and a drink. Duty and reward. Which I blew by not having a job and pursuing a career as a pop star."

In the early 1980s, Gervais sang with the unsuccessful group Seona Dancing, and regards that period as a painful but important lesson in artistic failure. "I got it f***ing wrong with music," he says, still cross with himself. "I should have wanted to be a musician rather than a pop star." It was a mistake he wouldn't repeat. When he and writing partner Stephen Merchant came to make The Office, they prioritised quality rather than popular appeal.

How did his parents feel, though, about his attempted pop career? Were they disappointed that he should pursue such a thing? "No, I think they were worried. But no-one said anything because I never borrowed a penny from anyone. Even when I was on the dole, not earning anything, I never went overdrawn. That was the rule - if you want to live on lentils in a skip then that's your business; don't borrow any money though."

Gervais was born in 1961 and grew up in Reading. "I always knew there was something outside Reading," he says. "I always knew I'd go to university and that I'd live in London. I can't think of a good metaphor. Hang on." He screws up his eyes, cogs whirring. "Yeah - I was a tadpole, but I knew I'd get back-legs."

Was he an outsider? "I never felt apart. I loved school. But I just thought that I knew the truth. I knew that people went to church and got married and had kids and lived next door to their mum. But I knew that I'd never do that, and I knew that there wasn't a God, and I knew that art was cool. I knew all these things but I didn't act differently. You didn't walk around in a beret going, Wasn't Oscar Wilde a genius?' I talked like everyone else and did all the normal things but I, uh, listened to Bob Dylan and liked Turner paintings. I'd take a clock apart to see how it worked."

He sensed that he was more intelligent than his peers. At school, he was particularly keen on biology, and eventually chose to study the subject at University College, London, before switching to philosophy.

"I loved nature and wanted to know everything about it. I was fascinated by how a beetle's wings came out. I was just in awe of the world from the age of five. I liked how things happened. I liked what a story did to me. I liked what a chord did. It's that little feeling at the back of your throat. And so I suppose, intuitively and subliminally, I knew that making a connection was the point."

This is an aspect of Gervais that the public rarely sees - the serious and soulful man who believes in the transformative power of the imagination. "At the moment, I'm obsessed with painting," he says. "I've done about 30. It does something to my brain. A colour makes me feel funny. I get a little lump in my throat, and I don't know why. Same with a joke." He sighs. "Some people are embarrassed or don't realise they've got a creative instinct. But art is so fundamental, isn't it?"

Journalists often expect artistic people, comedians especially, to be neurotic. Tony Hancock remains the paradigm. But Gervais says he isn't at all angsty. He is driven, not by an attempt to escape sadness in his life, but by pursuing happiness through his work - and what makes him happiest is creating television comedies which function as perfectly as a beetle's wing or a clock that keeps precise time. "I think because I started late, and there's a finite amount of time that I've got left in life, I don't want to fill it with things I'm not proud of."

He has a number of projects on the go at the moment.

British audiences will see him next in the feature-length Christmas special of Extras. Before that, Gervais will be in New York, playing the lead in a film called Ghost Town, and he has also signed up to co-write, direct and star in another US production, This Side Of The Truth.

A thoroughly domestic animal, he would rather not be away in America. He derives a great deal of pleasure from sitting at home, drinking wine with the cat on his lap, watching reality television. Yet, on a deeper level, he is driven to create.

It's a compulsion, right? "I feel I do need to do this," he nods, "although obviously I wouldn't have died if I hadn't done The Office. I think everyone has to do something artistic. They need to create something. They need to be able to say, That was mine.' Even if it's gardening. I'd be happy with that. When this is all over, I'll be happy with gardening. And I'll want to do the best fucking shrubbery in the world.

Ricky Gervais unleashes a howler monkey laugh. "That's your headline: I want to do the best fucking shrubbery in the world.' You don't need to read on."

Ricky Gervais Live 3 - Fame is out on DVD tomorrow

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I just watched the 'Fame' show and wasn't that impressed. It was entertaining enough, but as far as being good stand-up is concerned it really lacked anything original - mostly just being anecdotes rather than written material.

If I'd paid for a ticket to see it live (and they were about £40+) I'd have been pretty annoyed...

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Havin' a few Extra laffs

December 13, 2007

RICKY GERVAIS, the writer-director-star of the critically acclaimed showbiz lampoon Extras, is sitting on the set of Ghost Town, a 2008 release and his first feature film as a leading man. A few feet away, a group of real-world extras are stationed on the other side of a flimsy retractable rope line.

"They're not allowed to mix with me. That's electrified," he boasts, not breaking from the signature deadpan that helped him win a best actor Emmy for Extras earlier this year. "If they get anywhere near me, 40,000 volts go through them. It's true."

He's kidding. Right? Either way, Gervais' transition to the big screen is leaving no room for Andy Millman on the small one. The movie-extra-turned-sitcom-star character will soon join embarrassing boss David Brent from the British triumph The Office in retirement.

Gervais and comedy partner Stephen Merchant, who also plays Millman's hilariously amateurish agent, are ending Extras with an 80-minute Christmas special, just like they did with The Office four years ago.

"It probably won't capture the zeitgeist like The Office did, but I think this is the best work we've ever done," Gervais says during an interview on the Ghost Town set.

In the surprisingly emotional finale, Millman quits his silly sitcom When the Whistle Blows in the hope of more meaningful projects. Instead, in the forlorn fashion of Extras, he just fades further into obscurity, forced to accept such bit parts as an alien slug on an episode of Doctor Who and appear as a contestant on a particularly washed-up edition of Celebrity Big Brother.

Don't expect a happy ending for Millman. Do expect to "be havin' a laff." "We wanted it to be a standalone movie," Gervais says. "It was practice for my possible future career. I did want it to be more filmic, not just another episode. I wanted it to properly end the series. Most of all, if you've never seen Extras, I wanted you to be able to watch it and know what's going on. It has a beginning, middle and end."

It also has some shrewd cameos from George Michael, Gordon Ramsay and Clive Owen as themselves. Since its debut on the BBC in 2005, Extras has attracted a cadre of A-list celebrities willing to unabashedly defame themselves in the name of comedy. Looking back, Gervais counts David Bowie, Samuel L. Jackson, Kate Winslet and Robert De Niro among the series' most memorable guest stars.

Gervais says a pivotal scene in the finale, in which Clive Owen petitions perennial background actress Maggie Jacobs (played by Ashley Jensen) to smear the nastiest of special effects cocktails on her face, is the series' funniest. "I think the sketch with Clive Owen is the most perfect comedy sketch ever," Gervais says. "He's brilliant in it."

HBO is billing the Extras Christmas special as the series finale. However, unlike The Office, Gervais could envision returning for more. He already knows what he wants Millman to do next: come to America. "I can imagine it," Gervais reasons. "With The Office, I couldn't imagine it. I've never gone back to it, and I never will. If we ever did another Extras, which we almost certainly won't, I think it would be about Andy trying to make it in Hollywood and failing miserably. Obviously."

Perhaps, by then, Gervais will be A-list enough to cameo as himself.

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I have to say, anyone who quotes themselves as being a (or the) zeitgeist needs a slap!

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Gervais in debate with Archbishop
19/12/2007
www.eecho.ie


Comedian Ricky Gervais has engaged in a debate about theology with the Archbishop of Canterbury – confessing at the end that he might have “blown his image” by taking life seriously. The 'Office' star told Dr Rowan Williams he was concerned about “brainwashing” of children who are sent to faith schools at an early age, comparing teaching that God exists to belief in Father Christmas.

“Because I believe in evolution, I believe that a child’s brain is a sponge, and it is meant to be because it believes everything it is taught because it has to survive,” Gervais said on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Simon Mayo show. “I think if the first thing you are exposed to is that there is a God and you should do these things, I think there is a problem with that. For example, if your kids at the age of seven came to you and said: ’There isn’t a Santa is there?’ you would say: ’No there isn’t’ would you?”

Dr Williams replied that faith schools expose children to the full range of human experience and values and he did not believe they indoctrinated people. He added: “Belief in Santa doesn’t generate a moral code, it doesn’t generate art, it doesn’t generate imagination, belief in God is bigger than that.”

In a largely light-hearted conversation, Gervais told the Archbishop that God’s “biggest mistake” was giving him free will. At one point, Dr Williams explained Islamic and Christian traditional thought about angels and the creation of human beings.

At the end of the conversation, Gervais observed: “That was fantastic – have I blown my image – taking life seriously?” Mayo joked: “Do you think he is a secret Christian under the atheist façade?” Dr Williams joked: “I’ll give him time.” Gervais also asked “What’s the Archbishop plugging?” to which Mayo responded, “I think he is plugging Christmas.” Gervais said: “Of course, I love Christmas, I say go for it. Brilliant.”

The comedian’s remarks came after he told John Humphrys that he did not believe in God. Being an atheist makes someone a “clearer-thinking, fairer person”, he told the interviewer.


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I don’t want a son: he couldn’t live up to me

Hollywood may be beckoning but Ricky Gervais tellsTony Allen-Millswhy he is killing off his greatest comic creations
The Sunday Times
December 23, 2007

The director had just called for quiet and the cameras were ready to roll. Then suddenly the hush of an indoor film set in Brooklyn was broken by a strangely familiar cackle. Why is Ricky Gervais cracking up on the New York set of a romantic comedy?

The man who created David Brent of The Office and Andy Millman of Extras - two of the least romantic characters in the history of British television - has begun what even he suspects may prove to be a short-lived career as Hollywood’s favourite English gentleman.

“I shall be the next James Bond,” Gervais announces confidently, shooting the cuffs of his immaculate double-breasted costume blazer. “Yes, I’m several inches too short. But I could always surround myself with much shorter actors.”

He is joking, of course, but only just. Life has taken a startling turn for the 46-year-old actor-writer who has become the king of cringe-inducing television. For the first time in his late-blooming career he has taken on the role of leading man in a movie - Ghost Town (scheduled for UK release next September).

Yet Gervais has already decided, after nine weeks of polite submission to another director’s instructions, that he’s not going to star in someone else’s film again: “Don’t get me wrong, this is a great character, but I just don’t want to be a film star. I’m just not excited by seeing my face on screen. For me it’s all about the creative process. The creative idea is the exciting bit and then it’s all about how much you ruin it.”

First things first, though. For British audiences the next big chance to gauge Gervais’s progress in “ruining” a good idea will arrive on Thursday with an 80-minute grand finale of Extras. The usual parade of guest stars (notably a singularly vicious Clive Owen and George Michael with a jaw-dropping appearance near a men’s lavatory) provides occasional light relief. But you have to wait a long time for the remotest spark of Christmas cheer. Some of the humour is so cruel, I suggest to Gervais, that he seems to be challenging his audience to change the channel to something more palatable, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

“We had to take Andy Millman [his Extras alter ego] to a dark place,” Gervais responds. “No one would care if he was a little bit offish and now he’s all right. You’ve got to take him to hell and back. We had to take him to hell to redeem him. I love writing about losers because there’s something funny about losers. There’s nothing remotely funny about clever, handsome people doing nothing wrong. What’s the fun in that? You’ve got to have someone who hits the banana skin every time.”

Yet despite their remarkable success with the unique comedy genre they have wrought, Gervais and Stephen Merchant, his comedy partner, claim to be walking away from both The Office and Extras. They continue to insist that after only two series and a one-off finale - 13 episodes in all - we have seen the last of David Brent. They have been a little less certain about Extras, which will also have run for a total of 13 episodes, and Gervais recently told American interviewers that he can imagine sending Andy Millman to America “to try to make it in Hollywood. And failing miserably, obviously”.

Yet to me, he says he doubts that Extras will continue and he sounds as though he isn’t going to change his mind. “You want to leave the party early, don’t you?” he says. “Before there’s a fight. Before someone who’s so drunk bores you to death. You want to leave on top.”

It’s a rare approach in a business that relies heavily on the flogging of dead horses. Yet Gervais seems unusually determined not to sully his creations with the mediocrity of repetition. “People think they want a third series and they might love it,” he says. “But I don’t think they’d love it as much.”

In any case, he reminds me, The Office lives on in at least four copycat versions around the world, notably a highly successful American remake. “I think I’ve made more money out of the American remake than I did out of the English version,” says Gervais. “Any way you look at it, businesswise, moneywise, taste, I’ve come out on top of that decision. A third season of The Office wouldn’t be as good.”

There may be another reason why Gervais is keen to move on. He came late to success, with little to show for his twenties and early thirties. He now seems quite preoccupied with the nature and quality of his artistic legacy.

“In 20 years when I’m too fat to walk, I’ll look up at my shelf and I’ll have The Office box set and the Extras box set, my live DVD box set, a couple of films, maybe three, and I’ll be happy with that. I don’t want to flood the world with tat. There’s too much f****** tat in the world. I don’t want to bring more tat into the world.”

Yet there’s a certain amount of evidence that Gervais is losing his taste for what has been dubbed “the comedy of discomfort”. There are traces of Brent in his Ghost Town character - Gervais describes him as “socially awkward, particularly with women, and he’s a wisecracker but it gets him nowhere” - yet Gervais also calls the film “heart-warming” and says that he has become keenly interested in the very American idea of redemption. Heart-warming? Redemption? Ricky Gervais?

Don’t worry, he insists, he remains an expert on losers: “I’m not going to write about me as a cop or something else because I wouldn’t know where to start. You have to write about what you know and I know I can write about a putz.”

Yet he sees no point in trying to repeat what he has already done. “It’s like middle of the road music or a boy band,” he says. “There will be another one next year just the same, but you don’t want to be that, you want to be David Bowie and Radiohead and Bob Dylan. You want to do things that haven’t been done before.”

Including a romantic comedy? “I resisted for about five years, I’d been offered all kinds of films. Half of them were English, so that's a no. Half of them were just . . . what’s the point? But I thought, if I don’t do this, I’ll never do a film.”

Hang on a minute, I say, why should you automatically say no to the English? After an hour of calm good humour, his mood suddenly darkens and he embarks on a bit of a rant.

“Oh, the English just aren’t good at making films,” he says. “Loads of awful TV actors. We’ve only got about three real film stars. And we’re riddled with people you can see on UK Gold or popping up on the Graham Norton show or coming out of a club pissed. It goes from gritty underground gangster films to everyone acting like they’re something out of Jane Eyre. I just don’t want to be part of those things.”

So much for the British film industry. Someone has evidently upset him but he doesn’t want to explain. “The British films I’ve been offered didn’t excite me,” he shrugs. “But that doesn’t make me dislike England. I like being on English soil.”

And so we return to the boatloads of loot that Gervais must be pocketing in his triple role as actor, writer and burgeoning media tycoon.

He doesn’t consider himself much of a tycoon. “My empire is what I do,” he says. “I make my money through intellectual copyright. I own all my own shows.” He admits to being slightly embarrassed by the millions that are rolling in from syndication - not to mention the fat fees he receives for appearing in a Hollywood rom-com such as Ghost Town.

“It bores me and it’s slightly distasteful,” he says. “Money doesn’t excite me. I don’t want to buy Reading football club. My financial advisers are always saying, ‘you could do this, you could do that’, and I’m going, ‘just pay the tax’.” He says he spends a bit on property in places he likes and is thinking of buying a flat in New York.

Gervais and his longstanding girlfriend, Jane Fallon, have decided not to have children. He jokes that it wouldn’t be fair to bring a junior Gervais into the world - “How could he live up to his dad?”

He doesn’t mean that, of course, and there may be a sadder explanation. Yet what you sense most about Gervais is that behind his jokes lies not a soul in torment, but a smart, sane creative mind with a clear vision of the path to happiness that eludes his most famous characters.

“Oh, the media would love to find out that I’m Tony Hancock or Michael Barrymore [both deeply troubled comedians],” he says. “But I’m not. The most important thing I was taught when growing up was to pay your way and have a laugh. I hate to bring up my ironic catchphrase, but that’s what I’ve always done.”

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Here's Gervais on today's Richard and Judy.

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Here's Gervais on 'The Hour' from February the 22nd.

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Cheers Face - always love a likkle bit of Ricky.

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these sic (six) recordings are 'The Best Of' versions of Ricky Gervais original XFM show, with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington, that lead onto the podcasts.

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Here's Gervais on 'Room 101'

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Gervais performs in GTA IV
www.chortle.co.uk

Ricky Gervais is to perform stand-up in the next Grand Theft Auto video game. Players will be able to find him working in a comedy club within Liberty City in the long-awaited GTA IV. He has recorded three minutes of new material, plus routines from his Fame show for inclusion in the controversial game set in the criminal underworld. The comic had to wear a special suit so a perfect image of his body could be digitised for the game, which is out on April 29.

Gervais told Shorlist magazine: ‘It's a first - which always interests me. It was shot in New York, my favourite place in the world, and I got to wear a tight Lycra suit as part of the digital process. No, hold on, that wasn't so good. Unfortunately they captured the whole horror, except I look slightly tougher. It is seriously a big deal, though. Games have outsold Hollywood for the past few years so it's nice to be a small part of that.’

It is not yet known whether you will be able to kill Gervais in the game. He is not the first comic to move into the digital world, as Jimmy Carr peformed a gig in Second Life last year.

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'It is not yet known whether you will be able to kill Gervais in the game'

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Ricky in Lycra....not a pretty sight I'd wager.

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An audience with Ricky
The poster boy for British TV talks to Euan Ferguson
Sunday April 20, 2008
The Observer

Gosh. What a strange surprise. I had - hadn't we all? - thought Ricky Gervais would be something of an annoyance. At best, a cocky man with, admittedly, much to be cocky about. At worst, screeching laughs, boasts camouflaged in drapes of irony: being 'entertained'. Instead, it's just a clever man, talking quietly, often passionately, meeting my eye and subtly letting me realise, over an hour or so, why he has such a claim on this nation. And it's not, I come to grasp, that he is necessarily the 'funniest man in Britain'. There is an oddly, likeably serious side to him, too. A ripe disrespect for cant and mendacity, certainly, and a hitherto unseen principled political strain running through him - it's like Ben Elton gone right. Above all, there's a savage and all-consuming need to create.

The one time I'm properly taken aback by a response, for instance, comes when we're talking books. What does he like to read? (I can only assume that he does.) 'I don't read books. I'm sorry. I can't. I can't read books, other people's books. After the first sentence, the first paragraph, I'm off on my own scenario. It's no longer their book. I'm not reading it any more, I've put it down before turning the first page, I'm writing my own chapters, fitting in my own characters, trying to make it take off my way. So this would happen, then that would happen, of course that character would ... no, it's hopeless, so now I just don't.'

(Later, I hear, he can't stop creating, even under the arc lights: the photo-shoot was not quite directed by him but there would have to be serious subsidiary credits. He threw himself exuberantly into every aspect of the way his look might look to ensure it was both a joke and well-done: he was polite but intense, focusing on everything from pan-sticks to props, to the final late touch, slipping open the top button of the leather trousers.)

What Gervais does, instead of reading others, is of course his own thing. Create The Office, then Extras, and his sell-out one-man stand-ups, and quietly take America. Now he's directing a film for the first time, This Side of the Truth. 'It's set in a world rather like this one, but there's no gene for lying. Except for me. My character. I can suddenly lie. So I do. A lot.' There will be, I assume, redemption? 'Maybe not quite that but with all the cynicism, everything I've done, I think there always turns out to be ... a certain forgiveness. Which surprises me sometimes, for such an atheist.'

Meanwhile, he's on the final drafts of his new television series, written again with Stephen Merchant, the one who hasn't yet won quite as embarrassingly many Baftas as Ricky Dene Gervais (who has seven so far, along with three Golden Globes, couple of Emmys, as you do) but could start coming up on the rails tonight, nominated as he is for his acting in the Extras Christmas special.

The working title, says this oddly serious Ricky (a change I like but which I find strangely disconcerting nonetheless), the working title is The Men from the Pru. It's about a group of twentysomethings working in an insurance company in the early Seventies. In Reading. This is where Gervais was born, in 1961. 'It's a period piece for a couple of reasons,' he says. 'We wanted to show, for instance, that the sexual revolution was only really going on in Carnaby Street. Not Swindon. Not Reading. It is, essentially, about blue-collar people getting white-collar jobs.' And it is about people who would live and die in one town. 'Which was one of the big differences between then and now,' he says. 'So much, we forget, was door to door. Ten pence for a duster, the man from the pools, the insurance man; people saving a penny a time for their funeral. Tens of thousands of people knocking on doors. Also, you would get married at 18 and still live with your mum. And then, at that time, some would watch the telly, have their eyes opened to different countries. There's a line in it where we have a character being asked, "What do you want to go abroad for, there are parts of Reading you haven't seen?", so it's a bit like that.'

Gervais thinks that, in many ways, things are still the same now as then. 'We haven't ... the country hasn't changed all that much,' he reflects, 'not in everything. Some things remain the same. Friendships. Love and death. All the big ones. The Office wasn't about selling paper. Nor Extras about extras ... they were about friendship.'

One thing that has changed, and about which he is supremely conscious, is celebrity, which he has described before as the new class. 'There are no apprenticeships any more, no one learning anything off the back of someone who knows something. Footballers get paid more than surgeons. Everyone wants to fast track into celebrity, publicity, whether it's actually, you know, true, or, well, not. And, yes, I can go on about it, because sometimes it's stunning, but there's no point getting worked up that much about it because no one cares. No one minds, no one's getting fired up, no one's not buying the magazines, no one's refusing to keep watching people living their life like an open wound. They've already had celebrity enemas. I mean, God. It will eventually implode, it will self-destruct, but it's with us for the moment. The PR has become more important than the product.'

And with too much of British television today, he says, there's a lack of love for the product or respect for innovation. 'They might as well say, "We need 29 minutes filled, what have you got?" But why do I mind? I love the fact that most TV's rubbish, it makes me look better. And with film, well, it's not that we can't make good British films, it's just that it's too easy. Too easy to make a film here. And then you get the PR machine, something's all over the sides of buses for two weeks, and you're meant to think it's huge, but actually, it's going straight to DVD. So it might as well have been a TV show.'

What a nicely serious, but seriously serious Ricky, thoughtful and sometimes angry. But I don't want to give the impression he's not smiling, not funny, that he's like Ben Elton gone ... um, even more wrong. It's just that he doesn't really do gags, he does looks, gestures. Gestures are important. He does it, and knows you'll get it. Sometimes, as with Billy Connolly - 'I always wanted to be a cross between him and Seinfeld' - the gesture is everything, everything, the words themselves meaningless otherwise. 'If I do that thing I do about Hitler for instance, when he's being quizzed on what he did: "Come on, Hitler, how many did you kill?" Well, you need the gesture, need the thumb to make it funny. Otherwise, it's just a straight answer.' And the thumb comes out, begins to turn on the table, nubbing away on the leather desk between us in tiny embarrassed circles, the eyes downcast, the answer muttered ... "Six." "Speak up, Hitler." "Six. Six ... million." The world's most phenomenal tyrant turned instantly into blushing schoolroom twanny, and I hardly know why I'm repeating it because, looking at DVD sales, most of Britain has seen the routines twice over.

'Yes, things have turned out to be very ... successful. Which is lovely. But that wasn't necessarily the aim. I'd wanted, with those series in particular, The Office and Extras, mainly to touch a few people a lot. If something's well done, poignant, moving to the deeper side of shallow, it touches a few people hard. The point is to make a connection, and I'd rather there was that genuine connection to one million people than nothing at all with ten million.

'And, I suppose, to do it, you have to work hard. I do work hard. I can't really not. It has to feel right. I'll sit with Stephen, when we have meetings, and for five and a half hours out of six it's just talking to be sure the other's thinking the same way. What are you thinking Freddie should look like? Are you sure? No, he'd have ... he'd look more like ... he'd be wearing ...'

When you imagine Gervais and Merchant in a room together, you'd imagine they'd take their inspiration from schoolboy pranks and juvenile jokes. The reality is rather surprising. 'We use mood boards. Poems, music, reminding us of the place, the time, of what we're writing. For The Office, for instance, Betjeman's poem about Slough was there, reminding us. For Men at the Pru it's Springsteen: "Thunder Road". We need to be sure of every aspect of what's being created, and, yes, I am a control freak. Always have been. They could have said, at the beginning, "No, we're not doing The Office like that, we're changing it," and I would have been fine - shame, but gone back myself to working in an office. But I don't see the point in that compromise. There's that quote about a camel being a horse designed by a committee - I love that quote. I don't think creativity can work like that. I remember getting an email when they did the first testings of the American Office, and their focus groups had tested worse than anything in the history of ... anything. Well, so had The Office here: tests were awful, the figures were outrageously bad. I simply wrote back saying congratulations, same here, it'll be a triumph. Which it was.'

He breaks off, rocks gently on his chair in the spring sunshine, to recall on one attempted piece of editorial interference: not mocking, necessarily, but amused. 'After the first series they had a letter from Slough County Council. Asking for some input. We don't want to actually script edit or anything, they said, but you do realise that the place is changing, and perhaps you could reflect... Right. I can just see how we would have pulled that off. Me looking out the window, going ... "Say what you like, Dawn, but this new pedestrianisation initiative in Slough is really working. And clever work with the traffic lights ..." Yes, that would have worked.' There is no insane chortle, but there is a big, big smile.

This creativity, could it simply be an end in itself? Does he actually want to change anything? 'I don't know if we can. I don't know if any comedian can. I know a lot kid themselves. Trying to bring down the Coca-Cola company. Or thinking George W Bush is going to bed in tears because someone had a pop at him in Jongleurs.

'But creating something ... it is so terribly, terribly important. I've got, now, far too many ideas I want to do. My head aches if I don't. When I'm shooting this film, I'll be thinking of the Pru. When working on that, I'll be thinking of something else, something next. I have to have a lot of projects. And yes I do have a great job, it pays ridiculously well, I am my own boss, and I'm pretty good at it: but there is a rush. I need to do things. If you want to get into a little cod-psychology, then yes it's because I started late. I feel I need to make up for lost time.'

He and his long-term partner, Jane, have no children: he has said many times they never will. They have their quiet life in London, 'almost normal. Almost. I do my normal things, but in my own way. I'll walk up and down Hampstead, but won't go for drinks in the pubs, just see friends at home. Yes, I have my pyjamas on early, and no, I still don't go to many parties: I have to chat to people, have to interact, and often I simply can't wait to get home.

'But everyone gets to a point where they feel the need to leave a legacy. Something they've brought into the world. It is so urgent, so important. You have to do something creative. Not a film or a book or a painting or whatever, it could be a garden. A tiny garden, a bit of a garden, something that's yours, your idea: your very own ... shrubbery. And lots of people could do it, be more creative, but they don't. I was one, couldn't do it or wasn't really doing it for fear of failure. What happened? I met Stephen Merchant, who woke me up. Said nice things. That happened.'

It's an absolutely fair point, and self-aware, that he's not here to change anything, just to add to it. But, I say, simply by watching his shows, or the stand-up comedy, you feel there are aspects of life which he really hates. Hypocrisy, for instance? Recreational charity, perhaps?

'Well, yes, a bit, there is that. When I did Comic Relief, I was in Africa, and there was a bit of upset over me crying on camera, when people realised what I was doing was ... well, taking the piss. But I do think, of course it's serious, awful, but when you get actors, celebs, out there, I do think it is absolutely possible, if they are crying, when they are crying, to ask for the camera to turn away. Rather than looking for it, and looking like you're trying to gain attention through crying. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, try to get a laugh out of Comic Relief.

'But there are three things I really hate. Religious intolerance. Ignoring the laws of the land, of humanity, in favour of ones they've made up about a God who didn't say them in the first place, who doesn't exist, who they've made up, and it's just "Shut the fuck up, you fascists". Also, deliberate ill-treatment of animals, people who treat their dogs in that way, or run bullfights; I could happily put a spike through the back of their heads. People wearing fur. Sometimes I wish there was a God, to punish them.'

He pauses, before describing his third pet hate. 'People who just make things up. When they're not true. I don't mind people saying I'm useless. Fat. Saying The Office and Extras were shit. But when someone prints an out-and-out lie, it seriously, seriously angers me: I actually want to go and find out where they live. Hell, I should just shut my mouth, shouldn't I! But for instance ...' he begins to describe his most recent grievance, 'well, yes, I'm definitely rich. Not hugely proud of it or anything, but I do like the wealth. But I also think you have to pay tax. I think that's a good thing, and I said so. I feel guilty to an extent, and if I'm handing on 40 per cent, then fine, and I don't hugely agree with tax exiles, and said so. Then there was a story about Jenson Button, and tax, and a paper conflated the two stories, and made one up and said I had had a go, personally, at Jenson Button. Not, not true. Not true. It wasn't actually true, wasn't the case, actually, so how can someone write that?'

But the love-hate relationship with the press is always, surely, going to be here, always was: ever since they began to champion him. He must, constantly, be prepared for a backlash: any hint that he's getting too big for his boots? 'No, no, that's OK, because I started with a backlash, on The 11 O'clock Show. And you must remember, in this kind of industry, for everyone who loves you, two don't. It's not criticism I can't stand, it's untruth.'

In the years to come, either here or in America, he feels he would like to phase out acting for directing. 'I do love it. And the acting is tiring, all the standing. Or at least, when I'm acting, be sitting down a lot. I'd love to do a remake of Ironside.'

Ricky Gervais stands and takes his genial leave, not even checking to see whether I've got the joke, which I like. David Brent would have had his head back round the corridor twice, grinning. Easy physically to remember that these two terribly different men, separated by the chasm of self-knowledge, inhabit the same body; but easy, too, to know, immensely, which one to prefer. 'Ah, yes,' he says. 'Well. It's a strange thing. I stopped being funny when I became a comedian.'