Ricky Gervais
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Ricky Gervais (born June 25, 1961) is a comic writer and performer who grew up in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. Gervais has recently achieved mainstream fame, enjoying success with his award-winning BBC2 television programme The Office, which he co-wrote and co-directed with long-term friend and collaborator Stephen Merchant. As well as writing and directing the show, Gervais also played the lead role of David Brent, an office manager who firmly believes he is popular and funny, but is in fact neither.
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Background
Gervais's father is of French Canadian descent and grew up in French Canada, and came to the UK on duty during the Second World War, where he met his wife. Raised as the youngest of four brothers, Ricky Gervais has described his childhood as "nice" and "normal".
Gervais went to UCL in 1985 to study biology, later switching to philosophy. [1] (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Development/alumni/membership/famousalumni/) [2] (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/02/09/bfdc09.xml)
During the early 1980s Gervais was the lead singer of the New Romantic group Seona Dancing. The group released two singles that failed to break the top 40 in the UK. One of the tracks, "Bitter Heart", completely sank, but the 1985 tune "More To Lose" became a massive hit in the Philippines. This came as a great surprise to the band, who had actually broken up the previous year.
Radio Career
Following various odd jobs, including working in an office, a stint as events manager at the University of London Union followed in the early 1990s. Through this, Gervais went on to briefly manage the British rock group Suede in their pre-record contract days before taking a job at London radio station XFM, though he was sacked when the station was taken over by the Capital Radio group. He was also music advisor for the popular BBC drama This Life at this time, thanks to his long-term partner, and This Life producer, Jane Fallon.
Gervais returned to XFM for a Saturday afternoon radio show that first went on the air in November 2001 and ran intermittently until January 2004 with breaks ranging between 1-3 months between new shows. After that, Gevais took 18 months off to work on his new television show Extras, write Flanimals, and perform his live show Politics. He returned to the airwaves on 28 May 2005 to host the show once again with Karl Pilkington and Stephen Merchant. 42 episodes of the radio show are archived at xfm.co.uk/ricky (http://xfm.co.uk/sectional.asp?id=4159).
Television Career
Gervais then came to much wider national attention with an obnoxious, cutting persona featuring in a topical slot which replaced Ali G's segments on the satirical Channel 4 comedy programme The 11 O'Clock Show in 1999. He later went on to present his own comedy chat show for Channel 4 called Meet Ricky Gervais two years later which was poorly received and has since been mocked by Gervais himself.
Throughout all this, in the late 1990s, Gervais had quietly tried his hand at sitcom and sketches, working with Stephen Merchant on a one-off for Channel 4 called "Golden Years" and writing for the BBC sketch show Bruiser for example. He also appeared in Simon Pegg's Spaced. A home-made pilot for The Office surfaced in 1999/2000, and was bought up by the BBC.
The Office
The first, six-episode season of The Office aired in the UK in July/August 2001 to little fanfare or attention, but word-of-mouth, re-runs and DVDs helped spread the word, building up huge momentum and anticipation for the second season, also made up of six episodes, in September 2002. The second season topped the BBC2 ratings, and the show then switched to the larger BBC1 network in December 2003 for its final two special episodes.
Gervais also toured the UK in 2003 with his stand-up show Animals, with one show recorded for DVD release and television broadcast. The Politics tour then followed a year later, and the third part of the themed live trilogy, Science, will hit the road in late 2005.
Awards
In 2003, Gervais was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.
In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
Gervais has received a plethora of awards for his work on The Office, most notably two Golden Globes (one for acting, one for the show itself), as well as numerous BAFTAs and British Comedy Awards, amongst others.
He also released a children's book, entitled Flanimals.
Future Work
His upcoming BBC sitcom, Extras, will air on BBC2 in July 2005 and is about movie extras. It will feature cameos from Patrick Stewart, Kate Winslet and Ben Stiller amongst others. Gervais's main character, Andy Millman, will be more self-aware and intentionally humourous than David Brent, and the programme will not be made in the style of a mockumentary, as was The Office.
Gervais is also currently writing an episode of The Simpsons, and has guest starred in Alias (the season three episode Façade). He has also appeared several times on The Late Show With David Letterman.
Target of Fraud
A gang of criminals attempted to defraud him of £200,000 in February 2004, but were detected by a bullion dealer. They had used a picture from the DVD of The Office to fake Gervais's identity. In March 2005, they were sentenced to between two and two and a half years in jail. [3] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4376583.stm)