Tomorrow in The Sunday Times Magazine - the only interview with Ricky Gervais you will ever need to read. Link here tomorrow. You'll really have to buy the dead tree edition as the photos by Dirk Rees are sensational. Here it is!
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Ricky Gervais
Tomorrow in The Sunday Times Magazine - the only interview with Ricky Gervais you will ever need to read. Link here tomorrow. You'll really have to buy the dead tree edition as the photos by Dirk Rees are sensational. Here it is!
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
er, do we even need that?
ReplyDeleteDid you ask him how he went from being crap to being a genius with just one series of The Office?
ReplyDeleteDon't listen to him. Buy the Observer. It's got the England cricket team, the ironies of post-colonialism, V.S. Naipaul and a list of 24 -- that's right 24 -- tax havens all in one column and, as an added extra, Ramachandra Guha!
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean you've never heard of Ramachandra Guha?
Prostitutes the lot of you.
ReplyDeleteSo its Ricky (for crying out loud what kind of mother calls their son Ricky? there is only one lower step to go ...Jamie)
Versus
SIR V.S. Naipaul (Do lefties always leave the Sir out? does the mind always tell?)
Will both of you be on tonight's Harry Hill?.........FIGHT
Well if it's a straight physical scrap we're talking about, my money's on Cohen - he'd be quicker to summon up the necessary beserker rage.
ReplyDeleteThat said, Appleyard does have some shitkicking cowboy boots in his armoury which might be employed to good effect.
Nick you need a little link in your name, drive the punters to your blog.
Oh, I love R.G. (my second favorite brit actor after B.N. -- Bill Nighy to you!). I shall certainly link & drink it in....danke, Bry.
ReplyDeleteJust read as far as page 12 of the Etonians, Cohen, you ma man, even though you wouldn't recognise what I know to be working class if it fell on your napper from 30,000 ft.
ReplyDeleteIn the interests of impartiality, I will tomorrow morning buy the observer as well as the Times, if the hype is rose tinted the Guha pusha can go screw himself.
PS, The Extras = poetry in motion and true, true, true.
Malty stop right there at page 12. You don't have to read it. You just have to buy it. I may be greedy but I'm not a sadist.
ReplyDeleteBlimey, that took all of 48 minutes, strong sense of survival I sense.
ReplyDeleteWhen push comes to shove Nick, it is my personal opinion that your writing is of the highest order, your take on reality is without peer, despite your wonky CV.
But what the fuck do I know
Nick, how do you renoncile being a socialist and a supporter of free trade?
ReplyDeleteI've tried to get on with Ricky Gervais' act but his material leaves me blank. I've never laughed at a single one of his jokes. This usually puts me in a good mood, the feeling of a job well done. Why bother with a half-funny comedian when you can have a totally unfunny one instead. Is it just me or are others also baffled?
ReplyDeleteJokes, Mark?
ReplyDeleteHe's post-jokes.
Great, great interview, by the way, Bryan. Up there with your best, along with Monica B.
ReplyDeleteI've sat and watched Gervais in the DVD extras on Extras or the Office, bemused and sometimes appalled by his inexplicable behaviour. You have definitely shed some light.
Great interview, but I wonder who possesses the greater comedic talent, Gervais or Merchant ? Would Gervais have been able to release his undoubted brilliance if he had never met his beanpole mate? Of course, we'll never know, but did he touch on any debt owed to Merchant? It doesn't emerge in the article. You've given us the almost definitive Gervais, Bryan; any chance of the almost definitive Merchant? That might open up even greater insights into Gervais.
ReplyDeleteAnd what was it all about?
ReplyDeleteOne wonders.
Great article, though kinda long (for me -- I'm in truncated-attention-span mode today, which means I'll never get through the Oscars tonight). I think Gervais is brilliant, though not so much funny as....Squirm inducing. In fact, I believe that is just what you called him. I used to watch the British "Office," but it made me feel so sorry for his character and so uncomfortable as a viewer of his faux pas, that I had to stop. Yet there has to be a gift in his ability to do that.
ReplyDeleteGood job, Bryan.
Hi Bryan
ReplyDeleteI've read you for a long time but never posted here before. I'm listening to Bob Dylan now - a passion developed because you wrote such a great article on him around the time of Scorsese's No Direction Home.
Anyway - just finished the Ricky Gervais one. He's always left me a bit cold as I don't usually enjoy humour based on people's misfortunes and general ineptitudes. He does have the occasional flash of brilliance I must admit.
Anyway - if you wanted to say that in your opinion he's not a very nice person, why didn't you just do that? I actually think the precept that "I'm doin it all to please one person, myself" is a brilliant way to be creative. Otherwise it's a case of trying to please all the people all the time - which someone once said was impossible, I think.
Sorry - but no wonder he was nervous of the interview. What you printed comes across as veiled dislike and I didn't see justification for that in the facts about him you printed.
It ain't that often I read the same piece three times but this I did / had to. First time I got the nub, the second his brouhaha the third contradicted the first and second. By the end of the interview you had as sure as apples is apples peeled back the veneer.
ReplyDeleteComic genius ? only time will judge, there have been flashes of pathos verging on genius, the ending of the extras series. The rest ? mostly topical gag stuff, Bob Hope style, wrapped up in sitcom. The office was some of us / you laughing at our / yourselves.
He failed to mention that Abi's party was really daughter of Nuts in May and that embarrassing insights into our behaviour started with the Likely Lads.
Never ceases to amaze how many workers in the comedy business have f..ked up heads.
Did you hear Walliams on Desert Island Discs, malty?
ReplyDeleteChose a gun as his luxury. It was really quite shocking.
I love Ricky Gervais - just wanted to let you know ;D
ReplyDeletehttp://www.the1000000project.blogspot.com/