Ricky Gervais - Armageddon

[Mobius]

i suppose modern ricky fans only know karl as that fella from derke. i doubt they're downloading 20 odd year old xfm radio recordings.

i'm grateful i can still enjoy the old radio shows, but fuck me he makes it hard.

[dead-ced-dead]

Nothing Ricky has made, with the exception of The Office possibly was as good as Karl's Sick of It, so there. *blows raspberry*

[Maurice Yeatman]

A few days ago he tweeted the wit-free scene from After Life where he calls a kid who's 50 years younger than him a tubby little ginger cunt, so it's clear he won't be changing course any time soon.  https://twitter.com/rickygervais/status/1726298206420811825

[mr. logic]

It's genuinely inexplicable how the Office was so good. And it was.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

it's really weird how large portions of his standup for the last 20 years now have just been direct ripoffs of things karl has said. sometimes nicking the concept or running with a thought, sometimes just verbatim lines taken. did the same in extras as well, and i assume the fucking shit he made afterwards

it is weird. it doesnt make sense to me since the fun was in how karl is often ultimately more right/more creative/more imaginative than the other two. from the starting point of karl saying some stupid, we'd get to an ordinary bloke coming up hilarious and strange trains of thoughts and anecdotes that leave two cocky pro comedy writers in hysterics or speechless. i thought that was a joke. the whole point of it. not only is he stealing from karl, he's stealing in a way that downplays his own part in it. bizarre. unless this is his way to tell the world that yes he did prompt karl with ideas - in which case, it was all karl then since they're shit when ricky does them

[Video Game Fan 2000]

im still convinced ricky wrote most of karl's second film idea since its so poor compared to the first and karl seemed very uninterested in defending the logic of it like he did with the first. the first one is so very strange and ends up like karl is accidentally revealing a favourite wank fantasy, the second was just meta bollocks where you imagine tom cruise doing funny things

[tdurbo]

Nothing Ricky has made since The Office, with the possible exception of Extras has been anywhere near as good as Sick Of It

Detectorists in my opinion has beat all of RKS's various projects easily.

[idunnosomename]

😂

[phantom_power]

https://youtu.be/QgFuEu8e3I4?si=MYjy1wXWm2oF8eBg

Booooooooooring

If he was really good he would do that routine with the n word rather than the r word. Lazy, cheap, easy comedy

[Pink Gregory]

Lazy, cheap, easy comedy

For lazy, cheap, easy audiences.

[PaoloTramezzani]

No it's not convincing because you're good, every role you've ever played has been Ricky Gervais and this is your favourite target for punching down. Twat.

Great crowd too, there were some jokes in there but the R word gets the biggest laugh and even applause. You're on the right track Ricky, keep going!

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

Anthony Hopkins was an actor playing a cannibal, whereas Ricky Gervais is a cunt playing a cunt

[Sebastian Cobb]

Anthony Hopkins was an actor playing a cannibal, whereas Ricky Gervais is a cunt playing a cunt

Diagnosis Murder, where Dick Van Dyke pretends to be a doctor and Barry Van Dyke pretends to be an actor.

[Ferris]

The joke doesn't even work.

The thing people object to is saying a slur (ie actually doing the objectionable thing, not acting), and then relying on "oh I'm in character, it's just a joke like in top gear".

For the Antony hopkins comparison to work, he'd have had to actually eat human flesh as part of his performance in SotL (actually doing the objectionable thing, not acting) which I'm pretty sure he didn't do. Similarly - if he ate human flesh, then "oh well I'm in character" wouldn't work as a defense. You still did something reprehensible, why would "acting" matter? You could extend the metaphor to suggest that the "character" is a handy excuse for a performer to do objectionable stuff and deflect responsibility...

The Rickster then undermines his whole shonky defence by slipping in another indefensible one for good measure, to whoops and cheers, so it was never about being in character at all was it?

He knows all this of course, but he has his lazy audience of Sun readers to pander to so he's gone with it anyway.

[tribalfusion]

Gervais is (and always was) a lazy and retrograde hack with delusions of grandeur.

[idunnosomename]

Fight for your right to talk like an American teenager twenty years ago

[Petey Pate]

it's really weird how large portions of his standup for the last 20 years now have just been direct ripoffs of things karl has said. sometimes nicking the concept or running with a thought, sometimes just verbatim lines taken. did the same in extras as well, and i assume the fucking shit he made afterwards

The Pilkipedia website catalogued the bits in his stand up that were lifted from the XFM shows, but I've don't think they've done it for any of his more recent specials because the XFM show fanbase has largely lost interest in anything Gervais has done since Derek.

If you look at the Ricky Gervais subreddit, which mainly consists of former Pilkipedia forum members, they're as negative about him as CaB is.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rickygervais/comments/186lacx/i_love_the_bits_in_rickys_standups_where_he_tells/

[sevendaughters]

It's genuinely inexplicable how the Office was so good. And it was.

no word of a lie, I just did a lecture on The Office (UK, US, German) and after class someone said they watched one episode of UK and hated it, but think that After Life is one of the best shows ever.

[jamiefairlie]

If he was really good he would do that routine with the n word rather than the r word. Lazy, cheap, easy comedy

Doubt it's cheap

[Mindy Simmons]

It'S oVerBloWn IrONy


Question: Was Gervais ever funny?

Not in my opinion, no.

Frankie Boyle may have taken his edginess too far at times, but he was always better than Gervais because unlike Gervais, he's a decent person behind that facade. Or at least on X/Twitter he came across well before I left that hell hole.

[dead-ced-dead]

no word of a lie, I just did a lecture on The Office (UK, US, German) and after class someone said they watched one episode of UK and hated it, but think that After Life is one of the best shows ever.

Did you make them write on a chalkboard, "I WILL NOT HAVE BAD OPINIONS" fifty times on the whiteboard?

[TommyTurnips]

I remember watching his ill-fated chat show and realising that every single joke is also in his first stand up dvd.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I remember watching his ill-fated chat show and realising that every single joke is also in his first stand up dvd.

Most of them were in his 11 O'Clock Show segments as well.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Sorry if this is too far off topic from the main event but I don't think it is given we're discussing the man and his trajectory, but god could you just imagine listening to this?

[Cold Meat Platter]

"his favourite smart friend"

boak

[Catalogue Trousers]

RRRRRRAMSTEINNNNNNNN

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Sorry if this is too far off topic from the main event but I don't think it is given we're discussing the man and his trajectory, but god could you just imagine listening to this?

looks like a baby barn owl about to get a bunch of partially digested mouse vomited down it

[Ferris]

god could you just imagine listening to this?

Considering it's almost certainly reheated very-online-atheist shtick from 2005, The Big Man Upstairs would (wisely) give it a wide berth.

[Snrub]

Sorry if this is too far off topic from the main event but I don't think it is given we're discussing the man and his trajectory, but god could you just imagine listening to this?

One consequence of the XFM shows is that Ricky now thinks he is God's gift to Radio/Podcasts when his non Merchant/Pilkington output is as self indulgent as his non Merchant sitcoms.

Did anyone ever listen to any of the Sirius shows - they are on YouTube and there are germs of good conversations in there but they are often bulldozed by Gervais's total inability to not completely dominate a conversation.  Dianne Morgan is in loads of them and I think James Acaster is in one but I'm not sure Gervais "got" him. Been a long time since I listened and obviously Acaster doesn't give a shit about Gervais given his subsequent standup.

I once heard Stuart Goldsmith say Gervais once sent him a note saying he loved the Comedians Comedian podcast as he loved to hear comedians discuss their craft but hed never appear on it himself as he didn't want to put himself under the microscope. Sums him up really. I know his attempts to be "one of the comedy lads" has been discussed multiple times on here, and I'd almost feel sorry for him if he wasn't an absolute cunt who punches down all the time

[madhair60]

"his favourite smart friend"?!