Turning bold into gold

PROFILE RICKY GERVAIS:A PUB IN CENTRAL London a few years ago. Ricky Gervais's phone rings. It's his radio producer and comedy sidekick, Karl Pilkington, saying he can't find Gervais anywhere in the bar. Gervais tells him to go to the back of the pub and look to the left.

The phone rings again. Pilkington still can’t find him. Gervais says he has moved tables and is now at the front of the bar. The phone rings again. Pilkington is at the front of the pub but still can’t find him. Gervais finds it hysterically funny that he is giving Pilkington the run-around, having deliberately sent Pilkington to the wrong pub. The people around Gervais start to get a bit unsettled by the puerility of this behaviour, but he carries on with his wheeze as if it’s the funniest thing he has ever done.

A few months earlier, though, and realising that the free podcast he did with Pilkington and Stephen Merchant had entered Guinness World Records for being the world’s most downloaded podcast, Gervais decided to charge a nominal fee of 95p for the podcast, with all the proceeds – a huge amount of money – going to Pilkington.

These stories tell you all need to know about Gervais: he’s as recklessly insensitive as he is loyal and generous.

It was the former characteristic that so greatly upset the sensitive souls of the Hollywood A-list at the Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles last Sunday night.

Bruce Willis, Robert Downey jnr, Charlie Sheen et al found themselves out in public without copy control and Gervais did his reckless, insensitive best to provide some robust comic commentary on the award ceremony’s annual love-in.

In so doing, Gervais became the biggest winner at the Golden Globes. Not many people can tell you who won on the night, but everyone is talking about Gervais’s performance. And why the surprise? What did people expect from a presenter with Gervais’s record? He had even warned that he was on a kamikaze mission. In interviews before the event he said he wanted “to do a proper job this time” after being the subject of only relatively mild rebuke for his presenting job at the 2010 event.

“I don’t think I went far enough last year,” he said. “Obviously not, because they invited me back this year. So I’m going to do a proper job this time, and I guarantee they will not invite me back. I’m going to go out there, guns blazing, like it’s the end of the world.”

Far from being the end of his US world, his Golden Globes performance tees him up nicely for even further penetration of the US market. Despite claims in the US press that he’ll never work in Hollywood again, it’s win-win for Gervais. His profile has never been bigger, he has burnished his bad-boy image and anyone who criticises him is seen as humourless.

He recently appeared on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight – the English journalist has just taken over the Larry King interview slot – all this month he features prominently on the US Science Channel with his An Idiot Abroadtravel series; and HBO has just started screening the second season of The Ricky Gervais Show. He's also to make a cameo appearance in the US version of his own show The Office. And on his blog, on rickygervais.com, he's just posted a photograph of himself wearing only golden underpants to show off his dramatic weight loss.

HIS FELLOW ENGLISH COMICHugh Laurie may still be the most famous Brit on US TV, thanks to his work on House, but Gervais seems destined to go further than Dudley Moore, Monty Python, Billy Connolly and Eddie Izzard in a land usually hostile to spiky "English humour".

Commenting on his ubiquity, the Los Angeles Times said this week: “We think he’s hilarious – but that’s exactly why we’re worried. With this new-found relentless everywhereness, he’s becoming the kind of PR-obsessed star who deserves to be skewered by . . . Ricky Gervais.”

Given the strength of feeling the subject provokes in the US, it is a surprise to find that Gervais’s potentially most offensive remark at the Golden Globes went almost unnoticed. He signed off the live show by saying, “Thank you, God, for making me an atheist.”

It's a subject he feels strongly about. Last month he wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journalheadlined "Why I'm an atheist", and he is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, which promotes secularism and calls for a complete separation of church and state.

His beliefs are the reason he has not married his girlfriend of 29 years, the TV producer and screenwriter Jane Fallon, saying, “There’s no point in us having an actual ceremony before the eyes of God, because there is no God.”

A failed pop star – he was in the new-romantic group Seona Dancing in the 1980s – and a former manager of the rock group Suede, Gervais struck lucky when, as “head of speech” at a London radio station, he hired Stephen Merchant as his assistant. He claims Merchant’s was the first CV he opened.

When Merchant later went on a BBC production course he had to make his own short film. The docusoap parody, written by Merchant and Gervais and only ever meant as a course-requirement module, came to the attention of the BBC’s head of entertainment, and The Office was born.

The show's sardonic humour and the emergence of the grotesque David Brent as an anti-icon helped make The Officean instant sitcom classic, and it has since been remade for French, German, Canadian, Brazilian and US audiences.

He parlayed the success into Extras(which won a Golden Globe for best television series) before beginning a stage career. To the disappointment of many who thought he was due a failure after such remarkable TV comedy success, he turned out to be a superb stand-up.

Refreshingly, there’s no faux-humble modesty from Gervais. Far from being “arrogant” (the charge usually levelled at him) he just speaks honestly about being a multimillionaire and having a house full of awards.

He appreciates his position and status because of his upbringing and the many broke years he had living in a studio flat with his girlfriend, who supported him financially for many years – including the price of a pint when he didn’t have it.

He was brought up in a council estate in Reading – his surname is explained by the fact that his father was French-Canadian. He remembers always getting what he wanted for Christmas, but also his mother having to “get it out of a catalogue and having to pay for it for the next year”.

Fame and fortune have not dimmed his powers. He remains as wickedly mischievous as ever and still derives immense pleasure from pranks. The story he most delights in telling is about the time a journalist asked what three things he would rescue if his house was on fire. The well-known animal lover replied: “The cat, the salamander and one of the twins.” His answer was printed verbatim in the newspaper, and it astonished him that it didn’t receive one comment. He still has people coming up to him to ask, “How are the twins?”

One of his least appealing characteristics, however, is his sensitivity to criticism. The Private Eyeeditor, Ian Hislop, reviewing one of his stand-up shows on the BBC's Newsnight Review, said he found his routines "flat and banal". Gervais then closed each of his shows by referring to Hislop as "an ugly little pug-faced c**t". He has thinner skin than he would like most people to believe.

His film career may be decidedly hit and miss, but most of what Gervais has turned his hand to has become a phenomenal success – even Flanimals, a best-selling range of children's books complete with a merchandising line.

Living in a spacious house in Hampstead, in north London, he says he's in his pyjamas by 7pm most evenings and is addicted to shows such as I'm A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here!and Celebrity Big Brother.His enjoyment of them is probably enhanced by the knowledge that he has already done enough in his career to avoid ever having to become a contestant on either of the shows.

The story he believes best sums him up comes from his time living in a small, cold flat with his girlfriend. If he woke up during the night and needed to go to the toilet he always found it too much trouble to walk all the way to the shared lavatory, a floor down, and instead would use the sink. His girlfriend would wake up and say: “Ricky, at least move the dishes out first this time.”

Curriculum vitae

Full nameRicky Dene Gervais. He claims that his middle name should be spelled Dean but that his father was drunk when he signed the birth certificate. His surname rhymes with "raise", not with "race".

Why he's in the newsHe caused a stir as host of last weekend's Golden Globes awards ceremony, mocking many big stars, and the awards themselves.

Hollywood Babylon?Reports of the offence taken by Hollywood A-listers at his Golden Globes remarks are greatly exaggerated, says Gervais. He claims he was drinking with them all backstage afterwards.

Distinguishing characteristicHe is unable to laugh without tilting his head right back and emitting a mad axe-murderer cackle.