Ricky Gervais

David Brent announces new tour dates

Ricky Gervais's comedy character will take to the stage again later this year in Oxford and London.

Ricky Gervais: Satire, Celebrity and the Muppets

Comedian and writer Ricky Gervais likes to make fun of celebrities-and, sipping a latte during a recent interview, he is true to form.

Radio 4 launched us on Wednesday night into the inexplicably late-scheduled Nurse (11.15pm!), co-written and starring Paul Whitehouse. Johnny Depp once described Whitehouse, without seeming irony, as "the greatest actor of all time", and it's not wholly impossible to understand the compliment.

This was dark and enthralling comedy. It will attract faint criticism - what does Whitehouse, with his comfy Aviva ads, know of mental illness? - but it turns out that Whitehouse, without being quite as close to it as Jo Brand, had, during his Fast Show years, done a little clever research into mental illness. This show, also featuring Esther Coles as a community psychiatric nurse, is, essentially, all about bewilderment: the bewilderment of those on fringes who simply can't understand the way the rest of us think, nor why we should insist on doing so. It's deeply subtle, and the subject matter doesn't lend itself to LOL-itude, but it was a quiet (if inexcusably late-night) delight, and executed with only about four squillion times the sensitivity of Ricky Gervais's Derek.

Ricky Gervais reveals another Extras prophecy

In the wake of Samuel L. Jackson being mistaken for Laurence Fishburne in a cringe-makingly awkward US TV interview, the funnyman took to Twitter to point out that Ashley Jensen's character had done the exact same thing in a 2005 episode of the show.

Ricky Gervais interview

We chat to Ricky Gervais on the set of Muppets Most Wanted to find out more about the film...

Mrs Brown's Boys wins best Comedy at NTAs 2014

Brendan O'Carroll's BBC One sitcom beat Ricky Gervais's Derek, Miranda Hart's BBC One comedy and US import The Big Bang Theory.

Romesh Ranganathan interview

A teacher who swapped the classroom for life as a stand-up comic is on the rise, after supporting Ricky Gervais and appearing on BBC's Live at the Apollo.

Ricky Gervais offers signed DVDs to NTA voters

Ricky Gervais has been busy drumming up support for Derek at the National TV Awards and is even offering fans signed DVDs if they vote for the show.

Ricky Gervais jokes about Lionel Blair Extras prophecy

Ricky Gervais has joked about the fortune-telling of his show Extras after Lionel Blair entered the Celebrity Big Brother house on Friday (January 3).

I don't know what happened to Ricky Gervais, but the grace he earned from The Office has finally run out. Derek is painfully unfunny and misguided in so many ways, but the most galling thing about this so-called comedy is how Gervais has convinced himself it's a significant, important and affective piece of social commentary. It's not. It's just lazy manipulation hiding its sins behind the fact it's ostensible about elderly care in modern Britain. But if that were true, why are the genuine old folks just silent stooges or background extras, as Gervais pulls faces next to grumpy best-mate Karl Pilkington in a comb-over wig? Abysmal. Even the title's font is bad.