The Wild World of Ricky Gervais: Interview by Lynn Barber

                    (Credit: ANDY LO PO FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE)


We meet at a photographer’s studio and I arrive 15 minutes early, but Gervais has already finished doing photos. This is unprecedented, I tell him: in my experience, photo sessions always overrun. “Yes, but people who need a lot of time for photos are people who care what they look like. I gave up when I was about 28.” Fair enough — except that he does seem to care what he looks like, because he immediately apologises for wearing a jacket: “I should have worn a nice sweater.”
What’s wrong with the jacket? “It’s because it looks like I don’t want to be here. That’s my anxiety. Like if I’m in a pub with a mate, I’ll say, ‘Take your coat off, it looks like the evening’s over, take your coat off!’” This is a whole branch of etiquette that has passed me by.
He is here, of course, to promote his latest film, David Brent: Life on the Road, which is coming out on DVD in time for Christmas. This is what he will be doing for the next year or more, he says, first in Britain, then the US, then Canada, Mexico, South America and all points east and west, and then hopefully going round collecting awards. “Because when you do something like a movie or an album, they’re like an oil tanker, they take a long time to slow down and stop. So, for the general public, it pops up on your telly and goes away, but for me, it’s two years before and two years after.”

The Office has aired in more than 90 countries , and then there were local remakes. “Even so, you can’t assume that everyone in the world has seen your series from 15 years ago. You know, most people don’t watch most things. There’s 7bn people on the planet, so even if 100m people watch them, it’s still a very small percentage. So you have to push it under their nose for them even to notice.”
Is the film actually worth all this publicity? Our critic Camilla Long described it as “an empty, disappointing, weird 90 minutes of disability jokes and ego-wank”. It’s based on the premise that Brent from The Office has sunk so low that he is now working as a sales rep for a tampon firm (“One size fits all — no, it doesn’t actually”), and has decided to blow all his savings on one last fling — to make himself a rock star. So he books some good session musicians, and a tour bus, and finds a few venues willing to take him (though only around Slough) and sets out on the road. There are some good jokes, even some good songs, but not quite enough to fill the time. And then there is a completely bogus happy ending when the film suddenly turns into a Richard Curtis love-in and all the musicians who had to be paid £20 an hour even to have a drink with Brent suddenly decide they admire him after all and he’s a great chap. Why? There is no reason for their change of heart — they are barely sketched as characters — but someone has obviously told Gervais you need a feelgood ending to send the audience home happy. Pish and tush.

However, I’d better throw him a compliment, so I tell him truthfully that I enjoyed the songs, especially the one about Native Americans. “Yes, it’s David Brent being accidentally offensive. He wants to be politically correct because he’s heard this term and he knows it’s a good thing to be, but he’s not quite there yet, he doesn’t quite understand the things he’s talking about. So he goes on Wikipedia to look up the plight of Native Americans, and wants to win house points for writing a song about them. But he gets it slightly wrong — he brings up scalping, which he’s probably seen in a 1950s western. Like we all do, he wants to feel that he’s accepted and he has a place. We’ve all got a bit of David Brent in us, we all try too hard sometimes, and that’s his worst crime, really — he tries too hard.”

Gervais in conversation is surprisingly earnest, not at all silly-giggly like Brent. But the trouble is, like all stand-ups, he often uses bits of his routine so that his answers feel, if not scripted, at least honed. Only once or twice do I seem to catch him unprepared, and then he just looks blank. But I expect he will have scripted some answers by the time he embarks on his stand-up tour next year. Has the film sated his desire to be a rock star? “Oh, I would never try to be a rock star under my own name. When I release an album — Ricky Gervais Sings the Ballads — that’s when you should shoot me. However, I defy anyone, ironic character comedy or not, to stand in front of a sold-out Hammersmith Apollo with a great band behind you and 4,000 people singing along to your spoof lyrics … it still feels incredible. And even though you write spoof songs for a fictional character, it still takes the same skills as if they were for real. But, no, this isn’t me living vicariously through David Brent.
“I mean, when I was in Ghost Town, people didn’t come up to me and say, ‘Ah, so you want to be a dentist!’”
Presumably he knows that Ghost Town, in which he plays a dentist who can talk to the dead, got rather mixed reviews here? “But that’s been the case with everything I’ve ever done. You’re going to polarise people and you should polarise them, because you shouldn’t be aiming at pleasing everyone. Everything I’ve ever done has been loved and hated in equal proportions.” Really? I got the impression everyone loved The Office and Extras, then hated Derek. “Not true, not true. The first review I ever read of The Office — I sometimes retweet it — was Victor Lewis-Smith saying, ‘Summer stinker’. You can’t whinge about criticism, it’s like a sailor moaning about waves. But what I have learnt is: it makes no difference. Maybe when you’re starting out, some reviews can make you or break you, but once you’ve been around the block a bit, it really doesn’t matter. We’ve just seen someone elected president who has publicly admitted that he gropes women, he doesn’t pay taxes — I mean, what do you have to do to be unelectable? So a comedian making a joke that you don’t like, that is small fry. And now there’s a whole new profession of people looking for offence, saying, ‘I’m offended!’ and expecting us to care. Some people are offended by mixed marriage. So what?”

HIS biggest opportunity to offend people came when asked to present the Golden Globe awards — he’s done it four times now and reckons he’s more famous for that in America than anything else. “Because it’s a huge audience — 25m in the US alone — and then there’s all the rest of the world, and all the press, and all the controversy. But for me it’s just three hours of my life.”
He first presented the Golden Globes in 2010 and the audience seemed surprised by some of his jokes, because they expected award ceremonies to be showers of praise. The second time, in 2011, they were absolutely outraged, especially when he said he liked a drink as much as the next man, “unless the next man is Mel Gibson”.
“It just went crazy, and I thought, ‘Really? You’re not allowed to make fun of a Hollywood superstar?’ I wasn’t trying to ruin anyone’s day. And anyway I admire a lot of people in that room, I’ve worked with them, I’m almost one of them, in many ways — but I have to be the outsider. How nauseating would it be for me to go on and say, ‘Hey, George — see you in Italy. Hey, Brad, how ya’ doing?’ I have to make it entertaining for the people watching it at home, because there’s nothing in it for them, they’re not winning awards.”
Before setting off for his fourth Globes monologue back in January, he tweeted: “Better get dressed and offend some humourless c**** I suppose.” Which indeed he did, with remarks about Bruce Jenner (no one is allowed to call Caitlyn Bruce) that would have caused a big Twitter storm, except that David Bowie died the same day, so Twitter switched from Golden Globes outrage to full-scale lamentation. Nevertheless, NBC was quick to announce that Jimmy Fallon would be doing the awards next year; perhaps it didn’t like Gervais saying that it was good of NBC to host the awards, given that it had absolutely zero nominations. I’ll be surprised if he’s asked to do them again.

He won’t care, though. He has enough work; he has enough money. Moreover — and this is what I admire about him — he has arranged his life exactly how he wants it. It helps, he says, that fame came late (he was 40 when The Office started), when he was already long settled with his girlfriend, the writer Jane Fallon. They met in the student bar when they were both at University College London (UCL) and have been together ever since, but have never actually married.
“I just don’t see the point. We share everything. I mean we are married, apart from in the eyes of God, which neither of us believe in.” But legally, I warn him, it could make a difference when one of them dies. “That’s ridiculous, that law. I mean, how more married can we be? But we don’t want a big do. We don’t want our families to meet!” He cackles loudly, back in stand-up mode. “No, I’m joking — we know each other’s families, that’s fine.”
They come from similar families — she the youngest of five, he the youngest of four. Her father was a newsagent in Buckinghamshire, his a labourer in Berkshire. After studying philosophy at UCL, he worked as an events organiser for the student union while also having a brief, inglorious career as a pop singer in a new-romantics duo called Seona Dancing. Then he was a radio producer on Xfm, where he met Stephen Merchant, with whom he then co-wrote The Office. Jane, meanwhile, got into television, first as a script editor, then as producer on EastEnders, This Life and Teachers, but she gave it up to become a writer, because “you don’t have to talk to anyone and can wear pyjamas all day”.
He and Jane have a big house in Hampstead, and another on the river at Marlow, with a tennis court, where they go at weekends. “I love it. I love tennis, it’s like a little holiday every weekend.” They also have two apartments on the Upper East Side in New York. Until about l0 years ago, they used to go on holiday to Italy, but now they don’t, because “every day is like a holiday”.
Does he ever miss office life? “I suppose, at this time of year. I mean, one day I say, ‘Oh, is it Christmas today?’ and I’ve almost forgotten, but in an office it’s like a three-week lead-up when everything is about Christmas. But when you’re self-employed, that doesn’t hit you any more. So I miss that a little bit.”

He works 10am to 4pm every day, but 80% of that time is spent on admin. “It bores me, and I hate it, but I’ve always done it. The alternative is worse: not being in control and not knowing what’s going on. That would be worse for me. I can’t stand not being in charge.” He must have some staff, surely? “What? House staff? No. I’ve got an assistant, and I’ve got an agent, but I’m not one of those people who has an entourage.”
Does he ever visit the dry-cleaner’s? “Yes, of course I do. I live a very normal life.” But don’t people pester him? “I live in Hampstead, and on the Upper East Side in New York, and in Beverly Hills when I’m in LA, where they see plenty of famous people. If I land in the sticks then it’s probably a bit more hairy.” He says he wouldn’t go on the Tube because “I’d feel vulnerable, but I never liked the Tube anyway”.

THE KING OF CRINGE

• “I can have a go at the French, ’cause I’m half-French, half-English with a stupid name like Gervais … I’ve got qualities of both, French and English, which is good, so I am crap in bed, but at least I’ve got bad breath.” Animals, stand-up
• Ben Stiller: Who are you?
  Andy (Ricky Gervais): Nobody.
  Ben Stiller: That’s right. Nobody. Yeah. And who am I?
  Andy: It’s either Starsky or Hutch, I can never remember.
  Ben Stiller: Was that supposed to be funny?
  Andy: You tell me, you were in it. Extras
• “I’ve created an atmosphere where I’m a friend first, boss second. Probably entertainer third.” David Brent, The Office
• “Looking at all the wonderful faces here today reminds me of the great work that’s been done this year … by cosmetic surgeons.” Golden Globes, 2010
• “I can wake up one morning and go, ‘I don’t feel like working today. Can I stay in bed?’ ‘You’d better ask the boss.’ ‘David, can I stay in bed?’ ‘Yes, David.’ Both me. Not me in bed with another bloke called David.” David Brent, The Office
• “I may not be very conscientious, but I do object.” Valiant, animation film, 2005
• “It’s going to be a night of partying and heavy drinking. Or as Charlie Sheen calls it: breakfast.” Golden Globes, 2011
• Brent on Stephen Hawking: “He’s not a genius, he’s pretentious. Born in Kent and talks with an American accent!” David Brent, The Office

After work, he goes for a walk on Hampstead Heath or a workout with Jane (they have their own gym), has a bath, changes into his pyjamas, eats something, and then at 6pm settles on the sofa with Jane and the cat (he shows me the cat on his iPhone) to drink wine and watch telly all evening. He has his laptop at hand in case an idea occurs to him, but basically it’s couch-potato time.
Supposing Jane says, “Let’s ask some friends round”?
“Oh!” he shudders. “Really? No — she’d never do that. The thing is, our best night out is a night in. We do a Christmas soirée every year, inviting 25 people round, but we’d rather be on the sofa. We’re not antisocial — well, we are a bit — but it’s got to compete with a lot.”
Who are his friends, anyway? He says the closest are the oldest: people he’s known from university or from his music days, long before he was famous. But he seems to have fallen out with Stephen Merchant, or at any rate has no plans to work with him again. Nor does he seem to see any of the Office cast — he mentions that he had dinner once with Mackenzie Crook and he bumped into Martin Freeman on the street, but “they’re all busy doing their own things”. He sees his LA friends once or twice a year, when he goes over for the Emmys or the Golden Globes, “but I think nothing of not seeing friends for a year. I only see my family once a year — I go round their houses at Christmas — though I’ve seen my brother a lot because he’s a decorator and he did up both our houses. We’ll go to their houses for an occasion, if it’s someone’s 60th or a wedding or something. But I always try and get out of social occasions. I’ll get out of going to accept an award if I can.”

Award ceremonies are his idea of hell. “Standing up and chatting and talking about yourself for an hour on the red carpet and thinking, ‘I mustn’t get too drunk because there are photographers.’ There are award ceremonies where people party all night, but we can’t wait to get back into our pyjamas, thinking, ‘Ah, brilliant, job done.’ Or you’re meant to have dinner with people and they say, ‘Eight o’clock.’ And I go, ‘Eight o’clock! What’s wrong with 6.30?’ I’m so lazy. I’ve just got a lovely life and then a letter comes through the door and I think, [sigh] ‘What’s that?’ Will I go to New York for a week to do a chat show, here’s two first-class tickets? It’s lovely, but I go, ‘Agh — the trauma, the admin, the jet lag.’ I’m going to be Howard Hughes one day. I’m going to find a costume that’s self-cleaning and be a recluse.”
Given that he and Jane are so happy to stay at home, it seems a pity they haven’t had children. They’ve always said they never wanted them and felt no pressure because, both being the youngest children of large families, they felt they could leave the business of reproduction to their siblings. But Jane wrote a piece in The Guardian back in January, saying that she was suddenly full of regret that she would never have grandchildren. Gervais looks blank when I mention it. Didn’t he read it? It seems not. So I tell him: she said she felt that not having grandchildren was “a disastrous oversight on my part” because she’d “started to realise that as you get older it’s more important than ever to have relationships with younger people in order to feel connected to the world”. It seemed quite poignant to me, but Gervais immediately brushes it aside: “Yes, that’s a good leap. You leap over all the parenting and the angst and trauma of the first 15 years and then just go and collect some grandchildren. I’ve got loads of nieces and nephews and some of them have got kids now, so about 30 of them come over to me at Christmas — I don’t even know all their names — and they go through my pockets because they know I’ve got a bit of money — it’s a bit of shtick that I do.”

THE one time words seem to fail him is when I ask if he gives money to charity. He says “yes”, but looks shocked by the question. Why? “Because it’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to say ‘yes’.” (Actually it would be more embarrassing to say “no”, given that he is worth about £50m.) Does he give mainly to animal charities? “Well, probably not if you add them all up, but they’re the ones I talk about because I think they’re the ones that are less trendy, and I suppose I’ve sort of unofficially become a spokesman for animal causes. If I suddenly started talking about Syria, or child cancer, there’s that awful hump you’ve got to get over of people thinking, ‘Who the f*** do you think you are?’ I’ve got over the hump with animals, because people think, ‘Well, that’s his thing.’ But poor Lily Allen was bullied off Twitter because she said something about the refugees. Like, you’re not allowed to be a celeb and have an opinion about politics. It’s bullshit.”
So, what does he think about the refugee crisis? “Well …” He’s gone blank again. ‘I want to say it doesn’t matter what your politics are, they’re f****** children. That’s what I want to say. But it’s too complicated. And there are a million things that need changing, so you almost have to prioritise.” He flannels around for a bit and then suddenly goes into impassioned mode: “What’s more urgent is that some people are still torturing bulls for fun. It’s psychopathic! Why would you want to see it? They bleed it till it’s weak, they blunt its horns, just so some f****** c*** in sequins can kill it. It’s mental, it’s f****** mental, there’s no argument. That’s the only thing that makes my blood boil, I think.”
The only thing? Crikey. You wonder if he ever watches the news. But, like so many sentimentalists, he finds it easier to weep over the death of a bull than the death of a child. My theory of sentimentality is that it’s a form of bogus emotion for people who don’t really feel much emotion. They observe it in other people and think they should try to show some themselves, but they always get it wrong; they overdo it; they lay it on with a trowel. And for reasons that baffle me, they always prefer to expend it on animals. Gervais has often said that he would like to have a donkey sanctuary in his garden, and now he’s got a large house in Marlow presumably he could, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even have a dog — he says he loves going on Hampstead Heath and stroking other people’s dogs, but he and Jane are away too much to own a dog. So pragmatism trumps sentiment every time.
His next stand-up tour will be called Humanity. I wait for the joke explanation, but it doesn’t come, so I ask him why. “Everything I’ve ever done is about humanity,” he says earnestly. “I didn’t realise it at the time, but it is and was. It’s much more me than my previous stand-up, I’m much more honest and grown-up.” But still funny, I hope? “Oh yes, I still talk about all the things people think shouldn’t be talked about. But I’m the target of the jokes because I’m the one whingeing about the world from the most privileged position.”
He’s currently doing small warm-up gigs and will launch the tour in the new year. He’s also executive producing a comedy game show for ABC in America, and voicing a character in the animated film Blazing Samurai, which he describes as “cats do Blazing Saddles”. After that, he hopes to start writing another film or sitcom for himself. You work hard, I tell him. “This isn’t work — my dad used to get up at seven to go to work at a building site until he was 70. What I do is nothing like that. Celebrity is whingeing about being paid millions for doing what you’d want to do anyway. It’s great, it’s crazy.”
As we are leaving the studio, someone stops him for a selfie “for my mother” and he poses politely. I suppose it would be polite for me to ask for a selfie too, but I can’t: I’m still not entirely sure who Ricky Gervais is.

David Brent Songbook is out now (Blink Publishing £13). David Brent: Life on the Road is out on DVD and digital download on Dec 12