Revisiting Ricky Gervais' XFM shows

[Utter Shit]

I've been listening to these a lot again recently, and it's a very odd experience. The funny bits hold up pretty well for the most part, but in terms of decency it's aged incredibly badly, to the point that it seems weird people weren't utterly horrified at the time. Relentless homophobia, fat-shaming, sexism, racism, ableism...everything really. At times it's really nasty and personal too, attacking specific people - including a woman who emailed in to say she was upset, only for them to read it out and carry on taking the piss out of her.

It's also mad how much they got away with, considering it was on during the middle of the day on Saturdays. Was it just because no one listening bothered to complain? It seems like every week there are obvious transgressions of what you can and can't do on the radio at that time.

[bgmnts]

I mean Gervais' hill to die on was screaming mong at people wasn't it? No wonder.

But yeah Merchant definitely hated (maybe still hates) fatties, and of course Pilkington is hardly going to be the voice of wokeness. But yeah did anybody care enough about the show to get lots of complaints in? I don't imagine so. Or maybe the late 90s/early 2000s were just so different to now, where everything is under scrutiny.

[Jumblegraws]

There's some pretty nasty misogyny in the shows from what I remember, Merchant gets in on it quite enthusiastically, which as someone who generally sees him as a good egg is very disappointing. The bits that stick in my mind are Merchant's anecdote about being propositioned by a prostitute and Gervais and Merchant sneering about Abi Titmus's glamour modelling.

[Noodle Lizard]

Or maybe the late 90s/early 2000s were just so different to now, where everything is under scrutiny.

I think that's the main point. It didn't strike me as especially shocking or edgy or offensive back when I first started listening to them in the late 2000s. You had Frankie Boyle on Mock The Week and Simon Amstell on Never Mind The Buzzcocks around that time, so it all seemed relatively normal to hear that sort of thing. And yeah, the "everyone has a voice" social media thing hadn't really taken off yet, especially back when the XFM shows were recorded, so it'd have to be a tabloid or something bothering to write a takedown.

I think the whole Sachsgate thing in 2008 or so was probably the beginning of UK broadcasters becoming more careful.

[Cuellar]

It was back in the good old days when everyone knew sexism and racism and everything else was wrong so you were allowed to make sexist and racist jokes.

[up_the_hampipe]

I bet Russell Brand's old radio shows are even worse, at least in terms of how he talks about the womens.

Still, if you think those are bad, went on a binge of old Howard Stern clips recently and it's like a different fucking universe. 

[C_Larence]

Haven't listened in years but used to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the show. They got in trouble with Ofcom only once iirc, for this bit about how the word cock can mean two things.

https://youtu.be/4ZrcZvKY4dQ

[Dead Soon]

I haven't revisited the shows for this specific reason. It'll sound so fucking horrible and it'll taint the memories I have of it (aged 16-18, falling asleep to burnt CDs of the 'best' shows). I think the only moments that would hold up, hopefully (!), would be certain 'Songs of Phrase' or 'Rockbusters' segments. At least in those the dodgy elements (answers requiring a 'funny foreign accent' to work) were acknowledged as being poor in taste. The misogyny and various shamings of class and bodies were delivered very matter-of-factly.

[An tSaoi]

I only saw the cartoon version. I remember Gervais referring to someone as "a Thalidomide".

It struck me as odd at the time, because it's a bit like calling someone "a Downs Syndrome" or "a wheelchair". He said it a few times, so it wasn't a slip-up.

Probably low on his list of offenses, but it's strange how the simple addition of the indefinite article can make something sound wrong.

[lipsink]

I haven't listened to much of it but the bits I've heard have such fucking toxic masculinity vibes with the bullying of Karl. It's just horrible. That, combined with Gervais being a pub quiz/pub bore cunt.

[BritishHobo]

It was back in the good old days when everyone knew sexism and racism and everything else was wrong so you were allowed to make sexist and racist jokes.

This is exactly it. They got away with a lot because of the unspoken assumption that they were liberal guys, and they knew you shouldn't say those things about disabled people, and women, and Asians, and so on - and so the jokes must have been knowing, and cleverly ironic, and coming from the right place. That was how I used to feel, as an enormous obsessive of the Xfm shows.

The shine really came off for me during the promotion for Life's Too Short, when it really became unavoidably obvious that Gervais' obsession with ironically saying awful things about non-straight-white-able-bodied-men wasn't because he was a master satirist out to destroy prejudice, it was just because he has remained perpetually trapped in the schoolboy fascination with people who are different to him. He just finds it hilarious to see a person in a wheelchair, and bellow 'WHEELCHAIR ONE!', or 'LEG-DISABLED!', or call someone with dwarfism a child, or refer to anyone with disabilities as 'it', like the dehumanising PT Barnum cunt that he is.

And then he's had to manufacture ways to pretend that that urge comes from a place of empathy, and ridiculing prejudice/naively - in The Office it was Brent being cringeworthy in his approach to/puzzlement over political correctness, in Extras it was the inconsistency-ridden Andy mugging at Ashley Jensen's ignorance but then also inexplicably saying countless bigoted things himself. So on Xfm it was funneling it through Karl, as 'the ignorant one', positioning him and Steve as educated, right-on guys horrified by his attitudes. When really, as you've all said, he and Steve were both clearly just as happy to punch down and laugh at 'cheeky freaks' or 'little Asian blokes'.

I've long thought about giving Xfm another listen, to see whether the magic is still there, but I hadn't considered this aspect of it at all, that the source of all Gervais' cuntery would be shot right through it. Even at the time I remember being pretty disgusted by the treatment of the woman Utter Shit mentions, whose absolutely valid hurt at being ridiculed on the radio by two award-winning comedy writers was met with only further mockery. For daring to have a facial disfigurement. I remember getting into an argument on Pilkipedia because people there were taking the piss out of her and making her out to be in the wrong for not just letting some smug cunts call her a freak on the radio.

I think the main fear I have about relistening is that I would have to honestly ask myself how I was ever okay with laughing at that stuff, let alone repeatedly praising those guys as my comedy idols.

[An tSaoi]

Gervais would always make fun of Pilkington for not understanding how things work, but any time Gervais had to expound on something, he could barely explain it himself. He seemed to be operating on the assumption that he was clued in about things without actually having given them much thought, so when push came to shove his own lack of knowledge was very evident.

[Captain Z]

I've been relistening to some random KP compilations recently and it strikes me that Ricky Gervais, the man who markets himself these days as "says the unsayable", often leapt in to point out/apologise when Karl said something a bit offensive and that there was no intent, only naivety, behind it.

[BritishHobo]

I think his whole deal can be neatly summarised by that bit in Talking Funny, where they're all laughing at the lyric 'sitting on a cock 'cos I'm gay', and he is desperately trying to explain to Seinfeld, Rock and CK that the humour must be coming from the fact that we're laughing at the idea of the lyric, not the lyric itself - meanwhile they're all going 'no, it's just funny'.

He is a man who is unable to admit to himself that ultimately he just finds it funny when people are different to him.

[Kankurette]

That was Victoria Wright, wasn't it? The Changing Faces woman who Gervais and his ilk compare to a Bo Selecta character?

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

I bet Russell Brand's old radio shows are even worse, at least in terms of how he talks about the womens.

Still, if you think those are bad, went on a binge of old Howard Stern clips recently and it's like a different fucking universe.

It's quite remarkable watching or listening to virtually any non-scripted comedy from the 00s and 90s - I think the need to come up with lots of material on a daily or weekly basis caused people to lean more into lazy punching-down bants - and how much things have changed. Homophobic jokes in particular were everywhere. Just watching an episode of Letterman from that era.

I only saw the cartoon version. I remember Gervais referring to someone as "a Thalidomide".

It struck me as odd at the time, because it's a bit like calling someone "a Downs Syndrome" or "a wheelchair". He said it a few times, so it wasn't a slip-up.

Probably low on his list of offenses, but it's strange how the simple addition of the indefinite article can make something sound wrong.

One of the funniest segments from the original show was Karl's anecdote about his deranged father getting mad at "a Forrest Gump" and trapping him in a wheelie bin.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

My memory is Merchant is intensely nasty and sometimes vitriolic on most of the XFM stuff and Ricky is alright, but towards the end of the podcast Merchant started sounded like a decent human being and 75% of the gags were Ricky Gervais goading Karl into saying something offensive and Karl rarely taking the bait. Mostly painful to listen to. Of course you end up liking Karl so the moments where he does take the bait and say something racist or homophobic is just deflating.

I've been relistening to some random KP compilations recently and it strikes me that Ricky Gervais, the man who markets himself these days as "says the unsayable", often leapt in to point out/apologise when Karl said something a bit offensive and that there was no intent, only naivety, behind it.

Ricky comes across as shockingly generous sometimes. A lot of the best Karl moments involve Ricky being incredulous and wrong about something like a well-known thought experiment or piece of science news, and Ricky will gladly let himself sound like a total moron to keep Karl rolling. "Supposing someone created an exact duplicate of me would that duplicate be correct in saying it remembered my house if it had my memory but never went to my house before?" "I read that they reversed time for small sub atomic particles" "AHaha! NEVER HAPPEN. You mong" etc. Ricky being headstrong and equally ill-informed is what makes him trying to educate Karl so funny. Where did all that self-awareness go.

Of course by the end there is a nauseating amount of "little gay fella" shit from Ricky and its Karl who sounds totally embarassed at a grown up adult man with a job trying to goad him into being offensive. The bit with Ricky repeatedly asking Karl if he'd jerk off a disabled gay man out of sympathy is one of the worst things I've ever heard, Karl sounds like he wants to drop dead, Ricky is in stitches... if you heard that exchange happening in a pub you'd probably walk over and calmly piss on the table of the people having it.

[ImmaculateClump]

That was Victoria Wright, wasn't it? The Changing Faces woman who Gervais and his ilk compare to a Bo Selecta character?

yeah, I remember sotcaa doing a bit on that which is worth a read - http://sotcaa.org/comment/assisting-ricky-gervais.html

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I have a half memory of fake walk out that ends with Merchant coming back in to say something terrible about chavs and Karl responds with something about girls listening not knowing that Merchant looks so weird, which Merchant responds with a torrent of misogyny regarding Karl's partner and family and the sort of women he's dated that sounds like totally genuine abuse, no humour just snarling about the type of person Karl is, while Ricky cackles in a totally noncommital way and says stuff like "he's joking Karl!" proper school bully shit. Can't find it on the XFM stuff online. If it was podcast kayfabe from much later that would make it even worse.

[MrMrs]

play a record

[checkoutgirl]

It's also mad how much they got away with, considering it was on during the middle of the day on Saturdays.

Yeah, stuff about buttplugs at 2 in the afternoon is a bit near the mark.

[chveik]

Gervais would always make fun of Pilkington for not understanding how things work, but any time Gervais had to expound on something, he could barely explain it himself. He seemed to be operating on the assumption that he was clued in about things without actually having given them much thought, so when push came to shove his own lack of knowledge was very evident.

i seem to remember Gervais trying to explain some Kierkegaard concept. embarrassing stuff

[willbo]

I started listening to them on youtube last year after seeing one of the Karl travel shows. I think the early episodes were better, in that the personas weren't fixed/"flanderised" yet so much, and they had more natural conversations. Like they all slag off how red nose day is run, and Karl is an intelligent engaged member of the conversation. I can't remember why I stopped listening but I think it just wasn't my thing.

I just find Gervais such an odd person. I think his performance as Brent was such a raw, strange meta thing of him dealing with his real life issues on screen (both Brent and Gervais were grasping at their last chance to be famous, both Brent and Gervais had an artistic past they were embarrassed by, etc) that it stayed with me. But anything other than the original Brent...he's just a typical high-energy radio host. And his weird obsessions with atheism and what not.

There was an episode of the travel show that took me aback re-watching now - where they surprise and push Karl into getting his prostate examined by a doctor and watch through secret cameras. There's no way that would fly now with consent being such a bigger issue.

there's been some moments with Karl where he seems surprising sweet and sensitive like with him trying to save (a turtle?) by buying it in a market in Japan and feeding magpies as a kid and stuff.

I first heard of him on Gervais' Politics dvd extra where Gervais interviews him and tries to re-create some of the radio show mockery stuff. I couldn't see what was entertaining about him at all. He just sounded like a typical dumb bigoted guy being tricked into incriminating himself. That was a terrible intro to Karl for a new listener

[BritishHobo]

Also his sitcom Sick of It was very unexpectedly thoughtful and empathetic. Absolutely shat on Derek and Afterlife with their aggressive faux-kindness.

[willbo]

honestly what with Derek, and the other strangest moments/decisions of his tv career, (such as writing Brent at the quiz not care about his father at the same time his real dad was ill), Gervais is more like a fascinating psychological specimen to me now than a tv actor/comedian etc.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The travel show episode in India was my "yeah, done with this now" moment. Gervais is totally irredeemable throughout and Pilkington barely comes across much better. I think its one of the worst things ever broadcast - up there with Littlejohn's chatshow and Curry and Chips. Never watched a minute of Derek or any of that shite but I'd be shocked if they were worse. One "friend" unsuccessfully goading another "friend" into a racist outburst for nearly an hour.

The whole middle section is mostly goading Karl into a racist outburst and when they get to the hotel Gervais sounds palpably disappointed that a full un-PC moment isn't going to happen. I watched them out of order so I know most are far better than this and Karl mostly comes off alright, but even so. Eugh.

I just find Gervais such an odd person.

Me too. The more time passes since his moment the more fascinating he gets in retrospect. My take is that he was bitter or at very least annoyed by being an also ran in so many careers, and clearly has a chip on his shoulder about being seen as unintelligent or uninformed. The podcast absolutely dripped with this - constant references to people not liking or understanding science and philosophy like me, clever man. So many setups for Karl that involve stuff like badly explained Wittgenstein quotes. It stands out to me because he comes across well a lot of the time - a curious person with progressive convictions, and a generous performer who doesn't mind if he can't compete with Karl's spontaneous weirdness or Merchant's monologues. So the cruelty stands out like a sore thumb. At least until it devolves into crowing about little guy fellas and disabled people.

The Office wasn't just a smash hit, it was a hit from an outsider who beat the snobs and elite at their own game - a better conceived and performed version of something that acclaimed broadsheet favourites had tried many times before. And it wasn't just popular it was cool, people took it seriously. It was the rare populist hit that was also a critical favourite. So he's a smart artist guy now and everything becomes about maintaining the moment where the stars aligned and he was the cleverest guy in the room. And he wasn't able to recreate the moment again, he doesn't have it in him to make something on the level of his heroes like Shandling and doesn't have the humility to go back to the well, so free speech warrior is the last resort.

[petril]

I only saw the cartoon version. I remember Gervais referring to someone as "a Thalidomide".

It struck me as odd at the time, because it's a bit like calling someone "a Downs Syndrome" or "a wheelchair". He said it a few times, so it wasn't a slip-up.

Probably low on his list of offenses, but it's strange how the simple addition of the indefinite article can make something sound wrong.

I'm talking to Domingo in Little Oakley

[the science eel]

The travel show episode in India was my "yeah, done with this now" moment. Gervais is totally irredeemable throughout and Pilkington barely comes across much better. I think its one of the worst things ever broadcast - up there with Littlejohn's chatshow and Curry and Chips. Never watched a minute of Derek or any of that shite but I'd be shocked if they were worse. One "friend" unsuccessfully goading another "friend" into a racist outburst for nearly an hour.

Are you talking about An Idiot Abroad? I'm trying to remember the scenes you're talking about

[Jockice]

I'vAt times it's really nasty and personal too, attacking specific people - including a woman who emailed in to say she was upset, only for them to read it out and carry on taking the piss out of her.

Is this Victoria Wright? I didn't know she'd emailed after the initial comments and they still insulted her. That is really out of order.

[Jockice]

That was Victoria Wright, wasn't it? The Changing Faces woman who Gervais and his ilk compare to a Bo Selecta character?

Sorry, I missed this on first reading of the thread. I did some work with her a few years ago and she's lovely.