Ricky Gervais

[Napoléon]

Part of Gervais' "comedy" is making constant fun of an idiot friend of his. I mean, he's done not one series on him but multiple different ones. Yes, I got it, your friend Carl is dumb. At first, that was mildly amusing hearing Carl's crazy views but after a while, it's starting to look like you're trying to get laughs by beating up a crippled man.

This is where I think there's an obvious culture divide between American humour and British humour. What most Americans in my experience fail to 'get' is British banter. When Ricky is taking the piss out of Karl he's not taking the piss out of the person necessarily, he's taking the piss out of the caricature he portrays. Also, amongst British people it's fairly common to take the mick out of your mates. If you can't call your pal a cunt without him taking offence then he's not really a pal. Self deprecation is something we're good at, but I don't think much of the rest of the world really gets it. In American comedy the main character is usually the hero, in British comedy the main character is usually a cunt.

Ricky's whole persona of David Brent in the Office for instance was taking the piss out of the stereotypical office boss who loves himself but is actually very insecure. Karl Pilkington is funny because, in many ways he's the stereotypical uncultured Englishman. It's the views and ideas that Karl expresses that Ricky highlights as funny, not necessarily Karl himself. It's not like he's the first comedian to do this style of comedy. I also wouldn't feel too sorry for Karl, he's probably in on every single joke. He's also obviously more clever than his TV persona would indicate as he used to be the producer of Ricky's radio show XFM. They really are good mates, it's not a beatdown of a crippled guy.


The thing with Gervais is, he knows how to milk something. I can see why people find that annoying.