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The Ricky Gervais Show
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The Ricky Gervais Show is a comedy audio show in the UK starring Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington. The show started in November 2001 on Xfm, and aired in weekly periods for months at a time throughout 2002, 2003, 2004, and mid-2005. In November 2005, Guardian Unlimited offered the show as a podcast series of 12 shows. Throughout January and February 2006, the podcast was consistently ranked the number one podcast in the world; it appeared in the 2007 Guinness World Record for the world's most downloaded podcast, having gained an average of 261,670 downloads per episode during its first month.
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Encyclopedia
The Ricky Gervais Show is a comedy audio show in the UK starring Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington. The show started in November 2001 on Xfm, and aired in weekly periods for months at a time throughout 2002, 2003, 2004, and mid-2005. In November 2005, Guardian Unlimited offered the show as a podcast series of 12 shows. Throughout January and February 2006, the podcast was consistently ranked the number one podcast in the world; it appeared in the 2007 Guinness World Record for the world's most downloaded podcast, having gained an average of 261,670 downloads per episode during its first month. According to the BBC, by September 2006, the podcasts of the series had been downloaded "nearly 8 million" times.
Broadcast history
Radio shows
Early shows
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant first worked together in radio on the London-based alternative radio station Xfm London. Their show was broadcast from January to August 1998 from 4-6pm on Sundays, and only featured Gervais and Merchant (pre-The Office). The show's original format was more interactive, with features, guests, phone-ins, and audience interaction through listeners' letters. During one show, Gervais and Merchant attempted to censor the Super Furry Animals' "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" live by pulling down the fader and making a noise in place of each of the fifty-plus mentions of the word "fuck" in the song. However, the pressure became too much for Gervais, who messed up and swore in frustration. In August 1998, Gervais and Merchant took voluntary redundancy after the Capital Radio Group purchased Xfm to resolve financial issues.
There was a brief period, circa 1999-2000, when Gervais and Merchant contributed sketches to the Radio 1 show The Breezeblock. They mentioned this in an Xfm show, and said they were both eventually fired from the station for saying that fellow DJ Simon Mayo's recent record breaking DJ stint was not impressive and went on to claim he should give a rentboy a blowjob outside of McDonalds (however, Gervais later said "we weren't saying he had done it, we were saying we'd like to see him do it"). This is probably spurious, as Mayo has been the subject of many parodies from his Radio 1 colleagues (most notably Chris Morris), and took all of them in good humour. Also contributing to their dismissal was the pair becoming more busy with their TV work, forcing them to often hand in, what Gervais described as, "shoddier and shoddier work".
Return to XFM
Gervais and Merchant returned to Xfm in September 2001, after the first series of The Office had been broadcast. Xfm brought in Karl Pilkington as producer. The show was originally just billed as Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, and Karl's presence was not acknowledged on posters and other advertisements. Gervais and Merchant would speak to Karl about his thoughts on whatever they were talking about. In 2003 Pilkington was officially added to advertisements for the show as over the years Karl's role on the show became more prominent as Ricky and Steve were finding more amusement with his views and personal life. As the producer, Karl had input with features such as Rockbusters, Cheeky Freak of the Week, and Educating Ricky.
The show was broadcast between 1pm and 3pm on Saturdays, and included music selected by Gervais or Merchant, who often brought in a bag of CDs of their own to play, although they were obliged to play certain tracks on a set playlist from the station (in one instance, Ricky apologized on the air for having to play Muse's "Feeling Good"). There were competitions throughout the show, yet the prizes were often considered by Gervais and Merchant to be poor. An example of this is giving out Silence of the Lambs on VHS, which Karl had watched earlier in the week, and prompted Stephen to wonder whether Karl had even rewound it.
Pilkington would be replaced by Claire Sturgess when he was on holiday or not well (except once when Ian Camfield filled his shoes). When Karl was not present, Gervais and Merchant said "we sound like real radio" as they often would have more music-oriented discussion (such as the worst album titles ever, which they gave up after a few minutes as it appears all their listeners were "probably at a protest against the war", meaning the February 15, 2003 anti-war protest).
Controversy
On the 17 November 2001 show, Gervais and Merchant (despite Karl's protests) filled the show with sexual innuendos, in which they used the term "cock" multiple times. During later shows both Gervais and Merchant pointed out multiple times that they got into trouble with the radio authority for using the word "cock", the pair often joked how it was acceptable to say "cock" referring to the male bird but not say "cock" referring to a penis. Such as on the 2nd August 2003, when Ricky brought in a tin of "Cock Soup" then he and Steve made obvious sexual innuendos about the soup, while maintaining they were referring to "cock as in the bird", and later the two played with the name of philosopher Immanuel Kant, and its obvious similarity in sound to the "C Word", cunt.
On the 21st of June 2003, Karl described a holiday to Cornwall, in which he said it was full of "weird and odd people" and "messed up old people". On a New Year's Eve show the trio hosted on BBC Radio 2, they discussed how Karl made the papers in Cornwall for the comments he made.
In August 2003, BBC2 aired a documentary about facial disfigurement, What Are You Staring At?, which featured a young woman named Vicky Lucas. The BBC website's Ouch! section gave Vicky the right to reply to some of the negative comments she received in the media subsequent to the programme. One of the comments she addressed was made by Karl Pilkington on an XFM show, where he likened her appearance to Bo' Selecta!. XFM declined to comment, but did announce that it was writing to Lucas.
Podcasts
Creation
According to Emily Bell, editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited, Gervais and Merchant had approached the Guardian with the idea of the show. Bell believes they switched to a podcast format for greater control over content and access to a larger audience. The first 12 episodes were released for free through the Guardian Unlimited website.
Season one
The first series of Podcasts began on 5 December, 2005, and a new episode was released each Monday for the next twelve weeks. The show relies heavily on the wit and bizarre theories of Pilkington. Karl is now "unemployed", having left his job as radio producer at Xfm. The podcast focuses more on Pilkington as a primary figure of humour in the show in various ways, including questions directed at Karl that have been emailed in, either by fans of the show or by Gervais and Merchant themselves, whereas the XFM show had slightly more input and humour supplied by Gervais and Merchant, with Karl's theories and features less prominent.
Season two
Series two of the podcast began on 28 February, 2006. It consisted of 6 episodes with the final one released on April 4, 2006. The series saw the return of Karl's Diary and Rockbusters. A new (though short-lived; it was only presented in the first episode) feature was also introduced in order to replace Pilkington's "Monkey News", called "Real Monkey News", where Gervais attempts to present facts about chimpanzees which are factual and scientific.
With the start of series two, the formerly free Ricky Gervais Show shifted to a pay model - and as a result the show is now classified as an "audiobook". It is available through Audible and the iTunes Music Store with individual episodes selling for £0.95 ($1.95 in the USA); Audible also offers the complete season for £3.75 ($6.95 at audible.com). The reason for this addition, according to Ricky on the podcast, is because The Guardian agreed to pay for the bandwidth for 12 episodes, and any more extra episodes would have to be paid for out of their personal finances (hence the change in podcast host website when series 2 started).
Season three
Series three of the podcasts was released on the 22 August, 2006. This season sees the return of Karl's Diary, though all other known features have been abandoned, with the rest of each episode focusing instead on conversation. The season has the same pricing implementation as season two, although the file quality increased from 32 kbit/s to 56 kbit/s. A new feature that will be recurring is Karl's Poetry.
At the end of the sixth episode, Gervais and Merchant agreed to put the show on an indefinite hiatus.
Season four: The Podfather
Three free podcasts were announced that coincide with special days. The first was released on 31 October, 2006, to coincide with Halloween, the next was on 23 November, coinciding with Thanksgiving, and the last was released on 24 December, 2006 (to coincide with Christmas).
Fame Specials
A special podcast was made available as a giveaway to people who went to see Gervais' standup tour Fame. On 12 October 2007 this was made available as a free download to the general public, via the same subscription as the video podcasts. Toward the end of the podcast, Gervais suggested that a fifth series of the podcast would be produced in 2008. On 25 November a special free one hour podcast was released that was previously only available on the audio CD.
NME Radio Show
Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington recorded a two-hour radio show as part of the test transmissions for the new radio station NME Radio. The episode aired on Monday 9 June 2008, 12pm (BST).
Season five
Four more episodes were released on September 15, 2008 through the iTunes Music Store. This series was released all at once as an Audiobook, almost two hours in length and split into four half-hour episodes.
This series differs because they were recorded at the same time. There are no contests or any interaction from the listeners as the previous series contained.
The Ricky Gervais Guide to...
The latest series starring Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington is called The Ricky Gervais Guide to... The first volume The Ricky Gervais Guide to Medicine was released on December 31, 2008. This was followed by The Ricky Gervais Guide to Natural History on January 21, 2009. This in turn was followed by The Ricky Gervais Guide to The Arts on February 18, 2009. The next in the series will be The Ricky Gervais Guide to Philosophy to air on March 17. The Ricky Gervais Guide to England will follow on April 22 (St. George's Day).
Animated series
According to Gervais's blog, 'The Ricky Gervais Show' audiobooks may be turned into an animated American TV series.
Video podcasts
On 24 March 2006, an "irregular run of free video podcasts" was launched through the iTunes podcast directory. The video podcasts do not follow the format of the earlier audio shows and the content varies greatly from podcast to podcast. The first video was a conversation between Pilkington and Gervais, with Gervais enthusing about the idea of Pilkington becoming a human crab or having massive reconstructive surgery. The second podcast served as an advertisement for Pilkington and Gervais's new book, The World of Karl Pilkington (a series of excerpts from the previous podcasts and various musings and drawings produced by Karl). The third on the series was an audio clip from a previous edition of Monkeynews, synchronised with a flash animation. The fourth video podcast features a controversial audio advertisement for The Prostate Cancer Charity and Gervais talking about his Aerial Award. The fifth is Gervais and Merchant making Pilkington watch Brokeback Mountain. The sixth podcast was another conversation over Pilkington's book The World of Karl Pilkington. The seventh podcast was about a story Pilkington told in series one, episode one, about his bizarre journey in an abandoned asylum and rehabilitation clinic. The eighth video shows Gervais showing the viewer around the various sets during the filming of the second series of Extras, followed by Pilkington giving his opinion on Gervais's latest book, Flanimals of the Deep. The ninth was Pilkington talking about Gervais's cat; Ollie. The tenth was Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington announcing the new series of the show beginning on 22 August.
Recurring features and competitions
Monkey news
Monkey News is a popular feature that has been running since the early XFM days where at first it was titled "Chimpanzee That". Monkey News is all about "[a story] where a monkey has been involved". Normally the monkey is a mysterious protagonist until he is revealed, despite the fact that it is obvious that it is a monkey (or, most commonly, a chimp) throughout the story. The stories usually originate from a tale that Karl has made up or extrapolated out of all recognition from a news headline. Monkey News is an easy way to anger Ricky, who often disrupts the show due to being so wound up with disbelief — and even in one XFM show he left the room out of frustration because he couldn't believe what he was hearing. Stephen Merchant normally defends Karl's right to deliver the story in full vigorously (on one occasion actually cutting off Gervais' microphone for his continuing lambasting Karl), but even he has been driven to verbally abuse Karl during the most obviously fictional or extreme of his stories. Despite the fact that the stories are frequently highly unlikely (or even completely impossible), Pilkington appears to genuinely believe what he is saying. These interruptions and confrontations often turn Monkey News into a sort of collaborative shaggy dog story. During their podcast Ricky and Steve try to disprove his monkey news by "casually" talking of the story being told and how the central character could not possibly be a monkey due to need of opposable thumbs , high intelligence, etc. In this way Ricky can more subtly attack the stories though Karl pays them no heed. According to Karl on the 20 February 2006 podcast, Monkey News will no longer form part of future podcasts. However, it came back for a final reprise at the end of the third podcast series.
This feature's introduction usually consists of Ricky shouting, "Ooh, Chimpanzee That! Monkey News!", often with a swearword, or the beginning of one, at the end.
Knob news
Knob News has a format which is an amalgam of Monkey News and Educating Ricky. It features only in the latest 2005 XFM shows. Early versions had Ricky giving the news, though later it involved Karl giving a series of headlines of a male genital nature, from which Ricky and Steve would choose. A one-off show feature, similarly related, was Fanny Facts — where Karl presented news about or related to vaginas.
'Knob' was used as a non-offensive slang term for penis throughout. The sting for it was Ricky shouting 'Ooh! Nearly had me eye out! Knob News!' in a very similar fashion to Monkey News.
Rockbusters
Rockbusters was conceived by Pilkington and was played on Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's long running XFM radio show in between 2002-2004 and brought back in 2005. It debuted on 12 October 2002 as a phone-in, but converted to an e-mail competition the following week. Despite punning in its title, the game has very little in common with Blockbusters. It is played by Karl giving three clues, which he considers "cryptic" but are in reality convoluted colloquialisms which often depend on the answer being mispronounced. Along with the "clue", Karl includes the initials of the answer. Gervais and Merchant often referred to the clues as 'craptic'.
One such Rockbuster was as follows:
Clue: That Jamaican fella don't want nothing. Initials: ND. Artist or band. That Jamaican fella don't want nothing. What's going on there?
Answer: Neil Diamond (Nil Demand)
Educating Ricky
Introduced along with Rockbusters on 12 October 2002 and lasting throughout the autumn, Educating Ricky was a feature where Karl tried to teach Ricky several facts every week by catching his attention with a made-up headline, usually a pun. At the time, Gervais described Educating Ricky as being his favorite segment because the puns often left him in hysterics. Some classic stories include a man who was abducted by aliens and they grew him a beard, a man who was beheaded and his body took 32 steps after decapitation and the infamous tale of the hairy Chinese kid.
Fan Mail
Described mockingly by Merchant as their "biggest fan" although "not afraid to offer some constructive criticism", someone calling himself Richard Anderson would e-mail the show regularly in the early days of the Xfm show. His first mail was read by Steve in the 02 November 2002 episode: "Ricky, your show is appalling. Are you actually aware you are on the radio or has someone just secretly stuck a microphone on you?" Ricky and Steve from then on referred to him as Dickie Anders, Dickers and several other nickname variations.
Another listener calling himself Paul "The Party Animal" Parker would send in various facts and news stories during the early podcasts in late 2005/early 2006. Gervais immediately picked up on his self-proclaimed nickname, and imagined he looked like Milhouse from The Simpsons.
Songs of Phrase
This competition was introduced when Karl was finding it hard to come up with new Rockbusters clues. A well-known phrase from the show, such as "You never see an old man having a Twix" was split up into words of different songs. The competition was to guess the songs played. In this instance Gerry & The Pacemakers' cover of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "You'll Never Walk Alone" made up the first two words of the phrase. Problems arose in this case when Karl couldn't find a song with "Twix" in it, and so he substituted the alternative chocolate bar "Mars", using the lyrics to David Bowie's "Life on Mars". Songs of Phrase was a feature present throughout the later series of the XFM shows.
White Van Karl
At the time The Sun ran a feature called "White Van Man" whereby questions on the stories of that week were put to white van drivers across the country, just to gain an insight into their views and opinions. Stephen Merchant posed the same questions to Karl, to find out more about him. The best aspect of this was Karl's bizarre beliefs and theories. Gervais and Merchant also found humour in the very mundane answers the White Van Man of the week would give (the most famous of these being a comment about Sainsbury's bringing in square tins: 'That should be interesting for meatballs'). This feature was mainly used as a way to introduce new listeners to the mind of Karl Pilkington and was only used during the earlier days of the XFM shows.
Karl's Diary
Karl started keeping a record of his thoughts and experiences whilst on holiday in Gran Canaria with his girlfriend Suzanne. The segment first appeared in episode 8 of the Guardian Unlimited podcasts (23 January 2006). Karl compared his literary efforts to those of Anne Frank, claiming that "If she's sat in a, you know, a loft knockin' stuff up, not much goin' on in 'er life at that point, yet she was still writin' it down...I thought well I'm on holiday an' I have got stuff goin' on...start a diary".
Memorable diary moments include: conceptualizing a wristwatch that counts down the remainder of your life, the large number of cross-eyed people at the hotel on Gran Canaria and the cat licking its testicles outside the pub, also in Gran Canaria the bar called "Tattoos" where the landlord never had Tattoos but Karl never saw the landlord's wife, the time Karl refused to wash his hands after eating lemon cake at Ricky's house leading to a major argument, Karl thinking that both him and Ricky Gervais are bored when they go to meeting as "after twenty minutes he (Ricky) was trying to wrestle me", Karl's idea for a television programme Look what we can do with Science in which parts of a person's body are gradually removed until just the head remains, the post Karl received that was addressed to Mr K. Dilkington, the time Karl was carrying a lamp and bin when moving house and people thought he was in a marathon, the tongue twister "if you can't treat a cheerful tramp, what sort of tramp can you treat?", that certain tribes of cavemen wave their "tackle" about when they've had enough of visitors, and the 'experimental' mirrored wall in Karl's flat that he has stuck wallpaper over.
The diary itself is a large desk diary and is usually read by Stephen Merchant.
Notable is the fact that the jingle, performed live vocally by Ricky Gervais each podcast, is often remarkably similar to the theme from "Monkey News" (occasionally even beginning, "Ooh, Chimpanzee that!") but instead saying "Oooh he's only gone and written it down the useless cunt!" or some variant thereof.
Karl's poetry
In the third series of the podcasts, Karl had decided to write a poem based on his daily experiences and learnings, such as:
"If moths had eyes, would they be happier,
how do they know they're not dead?
Cavemen hunting for food,
but not before they style the hair on their head
What would last longer in dinosaur times?
A blind man didn't stand a chance,
not with all them rocks about,
I'd rather be a blind moth."
"Bubbled wallpaper, what a mess,
Washer/dryer knackered, what a mess,
Siamese twins separated, one leg less"
"For God's sake, bellyache,
The doctor said it was me kidney
He said he had to put a tube up me knob
I said you gotta be kidding me
For God's sake, knobache"
"It would be spiteful
To put a jellyfish in a trifle."
Shows taglines and multiple occurrences
As part of the comedy, Steven Merchant and Ricky Gervais bullied Karl - claiming that "he's got a head like a fucking orange". In the NME test Radio Broadcast Steven Merchant claims he met a Vietnamese man who said "Oy oy, Karl Pilkington's got a head like a fucking orange". Other phrases include "I don't understand" often referring to Karl's preposterous ideas and theories, or "play a record" in an attempt to bring a link to a quick end. Usually due to the ridiculousness of whatever Karl is saying.
Other features
Music-specific features
As music was played on the XFM show, Ricky and Steve often came up with features for choosing songs to play. Some of the frequent ones include:
A Song for the Lovers was a feature Ricky ran in the days of the XFM show, where he played a favourite song of his which he dedicated it to couples listening.
A Song for the Ladies was a feature Steve ran, similar to Ricky's feature, however as he is single himself, he would dedicate a favourite song of his to the ladies listening.
Hip Hop Hooray was another Steve feature originally entitled "That Hip-Hop Track". He would play a track of the hip-hop genre to Ricky and Karl. In one show, Jonathan Ross popped in live on the air to give Ricky some tickets to an Awards Ceremony, and claimed that Hip Hop Hooray was the "worst feature in the history of radio" featuring "instantly forgettable" songs.
That Film Sounds Good was a feature run by Ricky, where he picked a song from a film and played that (not to be confused with his film review).
Notable short-lived features
The Education of Karl: Following the revelation of Karl's GCSE results, a sole E in History, Ricky decides to give Karl a piece of homework, usually a short biography of an important historic figure, which Karl must report on each week. Subjects included Rasputin, Che Guevara, Hitler, Winston Churchill and Aesop's Fables. Karl soon became bored and annoyed with his homework since it reminded him of school, and abandoned the feature. This was one of the first recurring features, along with White Van Karl, which principally revolved around Karl relating his opinions on various topics.
Song with a Story: This feature ran in the final shows of XFM. Karl doesn't particularly enjoy a song unless it has a story to go with it, and in this feature he chose one of his favourite songs with a story and would play them on the show. The songs were often accompanied by commentary from Ricky, Steve and Karl. A classic example of this feature is when Karl believed that Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight was about a disabled man in a wheel chair, while having no strong evidence for this belief.
Perhaps the most notable song included in this feature is Rod Stewart's The Killing of Georgie, which Karl claims to be his favourite song.
Do We Need 'Em?: A feature from the middle years of the XFM series, which originally was simply called 'Pilkington' where Karl interviewed a woman who claimed to have had a ghostly experience, prompting him to ask "You're not on crack?". This morphed into Do We Need 'Em?, in which Karl would call an animal expert and argue for the extinction of a certain animal species, which he felt was useless and "getting in the way". Karl became dismayed by the opposition he faced from the experts, believing there was a conspiracy to keep every animal from extinction, and thus ended the feature. At the beginning and end of the feature, the theme tune to Michael Parkinson's chat show was played.
Cheap as Chimps: Karl provides information concerning the economy of raising apes. As with several other of his short-lived features, Karl had come up with the title before the actual concept of the feature, and it was discontinued when Karl, upon viewing a most likely illegal animal poaching website, realised that raising chimps wasn't as cheap as he'd originally hoped. After dropping the feature Karl became convinced that Donal MacIntyre had stolen "Cheap as Chimps" and put it on Channel Five. This, of course is most likely incorrect.
Cheeky Freak of the Week: For this feature, Karl discussed his favourite freak of the week chosen from the tabloids, internet or the Fortean Times. Cheeky Freak of the Week was a relatively short-lived feature, which only existed during the earlier days of the XFM shows. Karl ended up having to stop this feature as he was worried about people thinking he was "having a go".
Karl's Film Quiz: This feature involved a clip of a film with Karl's voice pre-recorded over one of the main characters lines. He would often change the storyline to match recent events in his life. At the end, Karl would ask a question, in which the listeners got a prize of the film on VHS.
Ricky's World Famous Film Review: Ricky's Film review was one of the earliest features included in the show. In it Ricky reviewed a film he recently had seen. Often the reviews contained very little opinion and were often just a summary of what had happened in the film. Ricky seemingly always gave films 9/10. He decided to end this feature because he wanted his average film score to stay as 9/10. The last film Ricky reviewed was The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which he hadn't even seen at the time claiming "Robbie Coltrane is probably in it, because he's in that "other one", Ricky still gave the film a 9/10 even though, he said "its about wizards called Gonads with beards."
See also
External links
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