Though I've enjoyed his work, I don't care for the man.

Have an up arrow Mr Centres....

The Office was genius but Gervais has always strayed far too close to his 11 O Clock Show "character" for my ears.

He's not a stand up and he's not an actor. I don't think he really knows what to do with himself apart from repeating himself.

Bit of a Narcisssus.

In the UK we hate success, and he's a very successful person. The US has a different attitude and he is likely do be able to sustain a career for longer over there. He will run out of tricks and 'get cancelled' eventually but not for a while.

I don't care much for him personally, but maybe he's telling it like it is this time.

about 'sterilising poor parents' was some sort of 'ironic' satire rather than a genuinely held belief.

"If there’s a woman in leggings, eating chips with a fag in her mouth, sterilise her."

If he really believes that then he's even more contemptible than I previously thought.

(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/a...)

The Office.That's all folks!

what is funny about this guy? I've completely failed to get anything he's done.

as very, very smug, I have three straight questions for you 5C:
1. What's your problem with comedians?
2. Which ones do you think are ok?
3. What should RG do in your opinion to makes amends with you? He's promoting some stuff and doing a few interviews. You don't have to read them. (I only say this cos I bought the 20p Sun today to read his interview which wound me up a little, but only a little)

And come on Stimpy...! 'If he really believes that'...he's a comedian not a politician or a vicar. Do you think Les Dawson's mother-in-law was really so fat or his dog literally had no nose? etc etc?

... I worked in an office with an idiot boss who thought he was funny. This meant that I absolutely couldn't bear watching the programme as it reminded me of being at work. I could appreciate that it was well done, but I could never warm to it.

However, I will say that I'm not so sure that people in the UK get snarky about success by itself. What we like is a bit of humility so Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson, extremely successful, full of self deprecation, well liked as a result. Ricky Gervais, ironic self regard seems to be turning into full on rampant egotism, people start to get suspicious. If he thinks no one understands him, then he needs to modify his comic persona a bit if he really is actually a nice chap and feels misunderstood.

However Extras I genuinely didn't like; the big stars were all faux horrible (Orlando Bloom loves himself, Kate Winslet wants an Oscar, Patrick Stewart is a bit randy) while the crap turns were fully pathetic or full on horrible (look at Les Dennis reporting his own celeb spots, Keith Chegwin as a racist etc). And this failure of nerve is why I really don't like Gervais; if he wants to satirize the cult of celebrity then he needs to apply the same standards to all of them.

as New York. Big difference. His recent performance at the awards thing has split opinion and a lot of folks hated it.

I think the biggest problem is that he's a bit of a one-trick pony and after a while, for most people the joke begins to wear thin.

by his "art"
The Office - funny, Extras - funny, The Invention of Lying (watched it this weekend) - funnier than most comedy movies.

I would say he is comedian - and a good one

I suspect that in a lot of his interviews - he is trying way to hard - he always looks nervous to me - again - measure him by his art

He's being ironic godammit.

Britain has a history of likeable comics- his "comedy" is much more in the tradition of American comics like the Larry Sanders Show and the other Larry - David.

He's being unlikable to wind folks up.

Obviously works.

so I guess I am in a party on one here. I am not entirely enamoured with him although I do think his obnoxiousness is a bit of an act - which he learnt from watching the Larry Sanders show, didn't he? However, something that does irritate me is the old chum act with Wossy.

It strikes me that his whole schtick is quite similar to that other 11' o'clock Show graduate Sacha Barron-Cohen, it's about making laughs out of uncomfortable situations. I actually prefer RG's take on this, there seems to be less humiliation and "let's all laugh at the [insert naf person here]" in it.

Moving on from UK comedy to do films etc?

It's that shrieking laugh I can't stand - mostly because he laughs at his own jokes. But still capable of being very funny nonetheless.

and he seemed to me to be self deprecating. He also seemed to use the same level of deprecation on others.

He talked of New York and the UK and basically said that New York is the only other place he would ever consider living in other than the UK. He seems to have fallen for New York in a big way (and he won't be the first or last to do this) rather than fallen out of love for the UK.

His line about sterilisation seems to me to be a joke rather than a deeply held belief. Not a great joke mind, but a joke nonetheless.

I'm afraid I don't really rate him as a comedian. I suspect he's trying to be a modern Tony Hancock (self deprecating - "everything happens to me and it's all bad"). He's having a successful time at the moment and is clearly looking to go where the higher paying jobs are - good luck to him because it'll never last!

Dudley Moore did the same thing, although I would suggest that he had more talent than Mr Gervais could ever hope to have.

No they're not. They are a complete distortion of what he said to show him in a bad light and present him saying something which he didn't say at all.
He wasn't comparing New York and the UK, he was comparing how he is perceived in New York with how he is perceived in 'Middle America', which is a very different thing.
Reading this post and the piece it's based on I can completely understand why people mistrust and dislike journalists; why they think journalists trick you into saying things you don't really mean, pull quotes out of context to make a good headline etc.
Ricky Gervais made two very good and successful TV series in the UK and has since started making films in the US. It's a well-worn showbiz route. Like a lot of British people who visit New York he's really attracted to the city and quite fancies living there for a while. What's the big deal?
And, if this article is anything to go by, I'd rather spend an evening with Ricky Gervais than with Camilla Long.

who needs the oxygen of publicity and notoriety, nothing new there. Oh and he makes me laugh, so that's good too. Then there's this, how can you not love this AND I believe he is laughing at himself in this as well as the Brent character.

was giving Ashley Jensen a gig.

I'd include Martin Freeman on that list as well.

discovering Karl Pilkington,
and for this - The funniest scene on telly in the last 20 years -

- Gervais is always welcome in my world
He's funny, intelligent, he has great taste in music generally and LOVES Bowie particularly & he's given me more moments of pleasure than any other artist I can think of in the last 10 years. I do find myself disagreeing with some of the more objectionable things he says occasionally, but as far as I know he's not killed anybody, abused kids or mugged an old lady so I'll let him off with a few personality flaws [cos I've got loads]
As with all things artistic, where one is unavoidably detached from the creator of the work, it all comes down to one thing, If you like somebody's work you will excuse them most things and if you don't, you wont.

Extras. I thought Ghost Town was quite funny in parts. I think Gervais is putting on an act whenever he's being interviewed. The persona he's developed sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. It didn't seem to click at the Golden Globes the other week but personally I think it's hilarious when any A-lister gets the piss taken out of them, particularly when it's by a short, overweight Ernest Penfold look-a-like.

His persona allows him to make some close to the bone and opinionated comments which I also think is OK. Too much comedy is being neutered in the name of tolerance when it's actual effect is to perpetuate intolerance.

Gervais is obviously of the "anything is a legitimate target" school of comedy and his persona means we are unsure just what is his opinion and what is the opinion of the stage version of himself. It's a delicate balancing act to get it right and I think the broader requirements of American mainstream comedy might be his downfall. The subtleties of the tension in his "act" will be lost.

On the whole I like him because you get the warts and all.

I Loved The office and Extras and also thouyght that his stand up Comedy is ver good. I thought he was good in Night at the museum and I also liked him in Ghost Town. However there are many new younger stand ups who are probably more relevant now than him. People liek Andrew Maxwell and Russell Howard are now more necessary than he is. I will always love Gervais, but I think his time is over.

There is a wider point here. Massive favourites Richard Thompson and Elvis Costello, to name but two, are pretty much North American residents and the latter has been known to complain about us small island dwellers vis a vis the appreciation of his work. I find that a little galling although I know he doesn't mean me. Mind you, I don't think many people either side of the Atlantic played his For The Stars LP more than once. The market is also much bigger there. You can be a 'cult' act and still sell a lot of CDs and concert tickets, at the same time as getting a bit of real or perceived resentment from us back home for taking the dollar in the first place, apparently.

OK, Bush might have been an exception, along with a few others we were glad to see the back of.