Ricky Gervais takes control

Ricky Gervais's comedy empire now stretches across the globe, from Hollywood films to podcasts that reach millions. But along with the adoring fans have come a legion of critics. He discusses weight loss, being a control freak, and why he always has to have the last word
Ricky Gervais
'I’m not playing the popularity game. If you’re trying to be popular you’ll be anodyne – trying to please other people rather than yourself.' Photograph: Levon Biss for the Observer

Ricky Gervais doesn't actually want to rule the world, or at least not all of it. He just wants absolute total control over his small corner of it. Although it's not that small. The Office is now a global phenomenon: it's been sold to more than 80 countries and, after an American, Brazilian, French, German and Russian version, it's about to be re-incarnated in Israel, complete with "an ultra-orthodox saleswoman", "an embittered Russian accountant" and, in the main role, a Jewish David Brent, otherwise known as Avi Meshulam.

Then there's his podcasts – basically the recorded ramblings of him and his long-time collaborator Stephen Merchant and his old producer at Xfm, Karl Pilkington – which have now been downloaded more than 200m times. And there's the HBO animation of them which is currently being broadcast as The Ricky Gervais Show on Channel 4. And Gervais's new TV show, Life's Too Short, about the trials of a showbiz dwarf, the pilot for which is currently being shot. And a forthcoming part in Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm. And the new film he's writing with an as-yet-un-named collaborator.

"Who's that?" I ask. And he pauses dramatically – I post-Google and discover it's because this bit is news. "Ben Stiller?" he says, although it's unclear what part of this is a question. Or maybe he's just checking I've heard of him.

It's not global domination, then, but not far off it. And his control of it is almost total. "I joke about it, but it is also true. I am a bit of a control freak. But I think in a good way. I think when you're doing anything creative, it isn't a democracy really. There's no room for democracy."

It really isn't a joke this, although he does joke about it. But it's a serious matter, because it's a strategy which has, put simply, worked. Even as completely untried first-timers, he and Stephen Merchant somehow managed to persuade the BBC to let them do The Office entirely their own way, with their own choice of actors, their own script, their direction.

Even now that they are who they are, this still seems like an incredible feat.

"It is rare. Unheard of, practically. Certainly for a couple of nobodies off the street. But I think that's because we were low risk. And we did our own pilot for a start, so we showed them we could do it. And it was one set, unknowns, cost almost nothing, a hundred grand an episode, and we went out in the summer, the 9th of July. I'm not a nerd but it was 9 July 2001, 9.30pm. On a Monday night."

The day that changed your life?

"It was. And originally they put it at 9pm against Big Brother. I said: 'Don't put it against Big Brother. Big Brother is going to be huge. People who work in offices watch Big Brother.' So they moved it to 9.30pm. See, I was in charge then. And I've been bullying people ever since."

He has. Before the interview, I spend an afternoon reading the archive of his blog and this particular fact has been brought manifestly to light. And if there's one thing I learn above all about Ricky Gervais, it's that he likes facts. He's a stickler for them, a fact nerd, a ferocious enemy of un-facts. If someone fails to get a fact straight… well, let's just say it's not pretty.

Those poor people, I say. I can't help but feel a pang for them.


Everybody makes mistakes, I say.

"I think it's fair enough. If someone says something about me that's not true. I've got the right to reply."

And then some. Gervais's replies could strip metal.

"But you see I don't care if someone likes my comedy. If they think I'm funny. Or dislike my decisions. My career choices. I don't care about that. I don't care whether people think I'm smug and arrogant. I don't care. You can have your own opinions. But you can't have your own facts.

"People can say, 'I don't find him funny, I've never found him funny, everything's he's done I've found awful. I hate his fat face, I wish he would die. Oh, and I saw him eating squirrel in The Ivy.' And I'd go, 'Whoah! No, no, no. You didn't. That's a fucking lie.'" (In fact, he is always in The Ivy, but he's more of a chicken-and-mash type man.)

On the one hand, this is fair enough. Who wants to have lies told about them? On the other, it seems remarkable that he can be bothered to get that worked up about it. You would think that after all the Baftas, Emmys and Golden Globes, the fact that The Office has been loved by millions, feted by his comedy heroes, Larry David and Matt Groening, been followed by the equally brilliant Extras, and spawned films such as Ghost Town, The Invention of Lying and Cemetery Junction, having some hapless journalist misquoting what he ate for dinner wouldn't matter very much.

You would think that. But you'd be wrong. His blog – on his website that receives more than 1m hits a week – bears witness to years of perceived slights, anguished cries of injustice and apoplectic rants of fury against anyone who have might have dared suggest he ate something he didn't at The Ivy – the Case of the Wrongly Attributed Fruit Salad seems to go on for weeks – or that an audience had the temerity not to laugh at one of his jokes.

"But they did," he says when I bring this up. "They can say, 'It was awful and I hated it.' But they can't say the audience hated it. They can say, 'Tasteless jokes about rape and paedophilia, dah, dah dah.' But they can't say, 'And judging by the audience they didn't like it either.' Because the audience was laughing their heads off and cheering. One is an opinion and one is a fact."

In another time and another place, he could be a crusty old colonel who feels impelled to write to the Telegraph every time he finds yet another split infinitive. He just won't let it go. "Can you see the difference? Can you? They can say: 'I fucking hated every minute of it.' What they can't say is: 'and the audience booed'. They didn't. That's a fact. Do you see what I mean? They're changing the fact to make it their opinion."

It's all very well, this little lesson in grammar and semantics. But, of course, Gervais didn't politely point the critics to the error of their ways and then quietly step aside.

"Was it proportionate," I ask, "to say that they are 'jealous lying cunts whose lives haven't turned out like they'd hoped and they want everyone to be as unhappy as they are?'"

"Yeah. Why would they lie? Why would they lie? Because they didn't like me. But, why would they say, 'And no one likes him?' That's not true. I acknowledge that as many people don't like me as like me. But I don't go round saying, 'No, everyone likes me.' I know they don't. You're allowed your opinion but I just think that's unfair. That's really unfair. You can't say that."

Well, yes. But is it really worth this? The ranting, the baroque swearing? He claims that his anger is partly "for comic effect" but it's hard to believe it's just that. It really does seem to be about control.

The great joy of the podcasts, he tells me, is not just that they require almost no preparation ("We just pick a subject really. That's about it.") but that it cuts out the middle man. He doesn't just own the means of production, he owns the means of distribution.

"There's a whole new level of control. Now, I'm not just the creator and the writer and the producer and the director, I'm the broadcaster. And now it's not got to be sold to America, it's in America. And now, I don't have to do 6pm till eight, or whatever. Now I do them when I want and put it out and that's it and they've now had 205m downloads. That's ridiculous. That you can do that and get it out there."

It's when he's not in control that he gets twitchy. When I arrive to interview him, he's still in his general's costume, but he's the exact opposite of a military dictator bent on total warfare. He's laughing and joking with the photographer, the art director, the various assistants and make-up artists. He's chatty and affable and is gamely pulling whatever expression is required of him, and then a few more.

And then he's back into his more usual uniform of black T-shirt, black trousers, and we trot off down the corridor to a tiny meeting room, and it's only then, as I click my recorder on, that he stiffens up.

It's not that he's not trying, he's 100% focused, he answers every question and sends his assistant away when he says the time is up, but it feels a bit like trying to coax a polecat out from under the sofa.

The Office gave him a great feeling of achievement, he says, as well as financial gain, and access to people. "That all came from The Office. But the cons are, no disrespect…"


"Journalists. Bad journalists. It's a noble profession. There's Woodward and Bernstein and then there's people who hide in your bin… and unfortunately the small number of journalists like that have a bigger audience. It's strange. And it's getting worse. Even just walking down the street is a… I mean I've got better at it. I feared it at first. I was nearly phobic."

I saw you once in the street, I say. You were scurrying.

"Scurrying. Yeah. Howard Hughes. I mean, it's not bad. And everyone's polite. It's, 'All right, Ricky?' 'All right, Ricky? Like the show. Can I have a picture?' But there were so many things that came with it. And I didn't want to be lumped in with all those other people who do nothing and become famous.

"I did not want to share the couch with someone who lives their life like an open wound. And is on their third autobiography not written by them. I want to be lumped in with Robert De Niro, who's famous because of all that good shit he did."

It's statements like this that have made Ricky Gervais famous not just for all the "good shit" he did, the genius who dreamt up The Office, the stand-up who fills Wembley, but as the middle-aged comedian who started making over-inflated statements about his own importance.

"As many people hate what I do as love what I do," he says more than once, and he's not wrong. The Ricky Gervais haters are legion and vocal and the petty war he wages against certain critics becomes more understandable when you read through the cuts. "Has Ricky Gervais Stopped Being Funny?" asked the Guardian. His "post-PC shtick seemed tired, the trademark self-regard wearing thin". And earlier this year, Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph called him "bilious" "obnoxious" and "a braggart" who makes "playground barbs" with "smirking disingenuousness".

It turns out that Ricky Gervais is not paranoid. Certain people really are out to get him. But, his biggest enemy, bigger than Charles Spencer or any of the other haters, is surely himself. Although his logic on this matter is almost impenetrable.

Why do you think it is that you rub certain people up the wrong way?

"Because I'm not playing a popularity game. If you are trying to be popular you'll be anodyne. You'll try and please other people rather than yourself… I think [this perception of me] probably started at award shows. When I didn't want to go up there and do the ever-so-humble. I hate that. When people go, 'I don't deserve this.' That means, you think you do. If you go up and go, 'Oh my God!' It's like, so you're taking this seriously? You're taking the award seriously, aren't you? I went up there and said, 'Yeah, well done.' Because I couldn't bear to take it that seriously. It's just an award."

One of the most frequent criticisms of Gervais is that he's closer to the paranoid, megalomaniac, insecure, attention-seeking David Brent than he cares to acknowledge. But I wonder if he's more like a character from his film, The Invention of Lying, a world in which everyone must speak their mind all the time, even multinational corporations. Pepsi is "For when they don't have Coke." Motels are "A Cheap Place to Have Intercourse with a Near Stranger."

When Gervais said that his comedy award didn't mean much when he'd already got two Golden Globes and an Emmy, was he just telling the truth? "Yeah. But I am flattered of course that someone's honoured me. I don't want I to look like I think it's beneath me."

But it can look exactly like that, I say.

"But I wouldn't turn up if it was beneath me. I wouldn't go. If someone says, 'We want to honour you' of course I'd love to go, and if I can make it I will."

Do you think you are arrogant?

"No. I'm not arrogant at all."

So why do this act then that makes you come across as arrogant?

"Because the being ever-so-humble is worse. It's just I… I don't want to win anyone over."

It's like something that Andy Millman's agent, Darren Lamb, might come up with on Extras. You want to prove to the audience that you're not desperate to win them over? Simple, just act like a big-headed egomaniac who they'll all hate.

The most bizarre aspect of this, as Ricky Gervais is the very first to point out, is that he really doesn't have anything to prove. It was a long time coming – Gervais was 40 – but The Office proved everything.

Although it's another Gervais conundrum why it did take him so long. Born and brought up in Reading in a solidly working-class family – his father, Jerry, was a Canadian labourer and his mother, Eva, a dinner lady – he studied philosophy at UCL where he met his partner Jane Fallon, and then, after a stint on the dole, decided to become a pop star.

Gervais was a New Romantic singer in a band called Seona Dancing, and there's footage on YouTube to prove it. When, unaccountably, he failed to make it big, he became entertainment officer at his old student's union and it was there he first encountered office life.

Meanwhile, his partner, Jane, had become a television producer. Not just that, she had a huge hit with This Life. That must have caused a bit of a pang, didn't it?

"No. Although, you know, I didn't want to sponge off someone. I had to feel that I was working. But I was. By the time that happened I had a full-time job. I had a long-term relationship, totally happy, nice job, happy, friends, happy."

"You don't think you'd have hit 60 and gone, 'Oh I'd wish I'd done that…'"

"Maybe. But I wasn't trying. It's weird that I just thought it'd all be all right."

But why weren't you trying? Was it fear of failure?

"Honest answer: I think it was laziness."

But you're so unlazy now.

"I'm a workaholic."

So what happened?

"I found something I really loved."

The big turning point in his life was landing a job at Xfm as head of speech and then hiring Stephen Merchant. Years later, he was offered a slot on The 11 O'Clock Show. And then came The Office. "I probably do have those nightmares. What if I'd said no to taking that job? I do feel privileged. It's kicked in more that I can do what I want so I shouldn't blow it."

It's the same impulse that has led him to embark on a recent health kick. He's become a slightly fanatical exerciser and has lost weight because, "I don't want to blow it. I don't want to go, 'Oh fuck! You idiot. So now, everything's great. And you're going to die at the age of 51 of a heart attack, you fat idiot.'"

Not blowing it is part of it, perhaps, but he also admits he could only do stand-up after he became successful: he couldn't bear the idea of being booed off the stage of a Peckham improv club. And it's this, and the faux arrogance, and the justifiable pride in his work, the desire to be in the same celebrity bandwidth as Robert De Niro not Victoria Beckham that makes him seem, well, there's no other word for it, a bit prickly.

And that's an opinion, Ricky, before you whip out your laptop and consult your profanisaurus. Not a fact, just conjecture. That all of Gervais's opinions and views on life were formulated in the years of not making it. And even though he now has the success, the glory, the large townhouse in Hampstead and the apartment in New York, there's still a them-and-us quality to the way he views the world. He can quite clearly see how his life might have taken another path.

Nobody who works as hard as he does now – he hasn't taken a holiday in five years – is "lazy". And one of the themes that runs through so much of his work is the stultifying horror of being trapped in the wrong life. Like Brent in The Office, or Freddie in Cemetery Junction, or Andy Millman in Extras – even when he has his success. Especially when he has his success.

It's why, perhaps, he takes such issue with journalistic inaccuracies, being imprisoned in a lie; and also his real and unfaked discomfort with fame, that he's literally trapped within his own body. Andy Millman's battles with the BBC comedy department were, he says, "A case of there but for the grace of God go I. I think everything I do has a touch of that. I worked in an office for seven years. And I could still be there. Brent was a little bit, there but for the grace of God go I. And there are a lot of Brents out there. There are loads of people who never get their chance. Or are compromised or don't bother or are too shy. And there's a load of people out there who've made it with a lot less talent and a lot more luck. You just have to make sure that you are firmly in the camp that whatever happens you did what you wanted."

It's his Big Thing, this. After the primacy of facts. "It's not that I think that everything I do is definitively right, it's that everything I do is the way I want it to be. That's all. I'm not even saying that other people couldn't do it better. But why would I let them? I always looked at it like buying an Airfix model and getting someone who's better than you to make it. Where's the fun in that? I only want the fun.


It's all part of Ricky Gervais's world view. And he's tenacious about his beliefs: an ardent atheist, a fervent supporter of animal rights. And, if I'm still unconvinced about the efficacy of proving your humility by displays of outrageous arrogance then maybe this is my failing, because there's certainly no doubting Gervais's talent. The podcasts might not be to everyone's taste – they're a bit like a Steve Wright Radio 1 "zoo" from the mid-80s – but The Office and Extras were truly brilliant, alive to both the absurdity and banality of office life, of celebrity and pseudo-celebrity and wannabe-celebrity. Of work. And life.

Our time is up. As I'm packing to go, Gervais says, "I hope I've cleared up a few things."

"Facts," I say. "It's all in the facts."

"Read the blog," he says.

"I have read the blog."

"No. Read the blog to see what I think of this."

Oh, great. No, really, I can hardly wait. Not least because he gave me a long explanation as to why it was not only acceptable but also hilarious to refer to Ian Hislop in one of his acts as "an ugly little pug-faced cunt". Excellent.

"Only joking," he says. Although it feels like the way a cat might "joke" with a mouse.

The Ricky Gervais Show DVD is released tomorrow on Warner Home Video, £24.99

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