Ricky Gervais
Ricky Gervais is currently one of the UK’s most
prized comedians, having achieved fame both within Britain
and across the Atlantic in the United States, with his
’mockumentary’ series ‘The Office’.
Ricky Gervais was born in Reading, Berkshire on 25th
June 1961, to a Quebecois father and English mother.
He was raised along with his three elder brothers and
spent his entire childhood in Reading. He moved to embrace
the big city, London in 1979, to begin reading Biology
at the University College London, but later switched
his degree to Philosophy.
After graduating, Gervais remained in London where
he came to meet his long term partner Jane Fallon.
During this period of the eighties he became the lead
singer of the new romantics band ’Seona Dancing’.
The band was actually received very badly by the British
public and failed even to break into the UK Top 40.
After a spell of odd jobs, including serving as the
event manager at the University College London Student
Union, Gervais secured a job at the London based radio
station XFM from 1996, but when it was taken over
by the Capital Radio Group, he was unfortunately sacked.
However, this stint at XFM would prove invaluable
later on in his career, since it was here that Gervais
met the future co-writer and director of ’The
Office’, Stephen Merchant.
Thanks to his partners connections, Gervais was however
able to secure a job as the music advisor for the
BBC TV drama ‘This Life’, where Jane Fallon
was the producer. Having gathered a little experience
behind the scenes in television, from September 1998
Gervais began his transition to the front of the camera.
He was allocated a slot on the Channel 4 programme
‘Comedy Lab’ and then filled the slot
on the ‘11o’clock show’, also on
Channel 4, that had been left vacant by Ali G.
Based on his success with the ‘11 o’clock
show’, Channel 4 allocated him his own game
show style programme called ‘Meet Ricky Gervais’,
and although today the show is recognised as far from
being a success, it was during the ‘Meet Ricky
Gervais’ series that Gervais and Merchant began
working on and writing the show which came to be ‘The
Office’. Based on the strength of one pilot
episode, the BBC bought into the idea, and on 9th
July 2001, the first episode was aired.The reaction
to the series, was at first instant relatively muted,
but by word-of-mouth and magazine reviews, news of
it spread and thus its popularity grew. In fact the
series is now multi-BAFTA award winning and has become
the only British show to ever win a Hollywood Golden
Globe; Gervais secured two Golden Globes in January
2004- both the ‘best comedy show’ award
and the ‘best comedy actor’ for Gervais
himself, in the role of David Brent.
In 2002 Gervais began work on his first stand-up
tour, ‘Animals’, which was followed two
years later by the ‘Politics’ tour. In
the same year, the children’s book ‘Flanimals’
was also released. After a short break from the small
screen, the series ‘Extras’ was broadcast
on BBC2 in 2005, in which Gervais managed to secure
cameos from several prestigious Hollywood actors,
such as Ben Stiller and Kate Winslet. The show has
recently been recommissioned by the BBC and a new
series waits in the pipeline.
Gervais’ transition into the entertainment
circuit, was by usual standards, relatively late;
he was in his mid-thirties by the time he achieved
and real kind of recognition. However this was certainly
far from detrimental to his career, which is still
going from strength to strength; Gervais has even
been cast for the big screen, with a role in the up
and coming film ‘For Your Consideration’.
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