He should be hosting The Brits!

Please elaborate JK I can see no possible reason for the slimey, smug , umpleasant and often vicious little tit having anything to do with promoting British music and The Brits. God knows what the American see in him.

oI absolutely understand you Bunk - not only do many people loathe him but parts of me do too; I didn't like The Office; I adored Extras; I've not really liked all of Life's Too Short but I do frequently find him very funny and I thought he was spot on at the Globes - his opening speech was hilarious.

I love Billy Crystal when he does it; but Ricky was terrific.

Billy Crystal is brilliant in everything he does even in documentaries he could be on a film on his own in a film and still be great viewing. If you remember Ricky Gervais is a failed musician just like Julian Clary.

His woeful intro to Colin Firth-"hitting a blind kitten" for god's sake-is an example of what he considers funny and most reasonable decent people consider repellently unfunny.

When the best comedians get it wrong, it's spectacularly wrong. Those who play it safe tend not to cross the line.

I don't know why anyone with a sense of humour agrees to host those shows, unless they want a one-off chance to pierce the pomposity. I loved Letterman ages ago at the academy awards but he peed off the celebs and was never let near such an event again (another sign of the Gervais myth machine - he's now held as in some way daring for doing something that's been done many times before - a bit like Cowell). It's astounding the great Christopher Guest actually seems to tolerate Gervais - his whole career has relied on ripping Guest off.

Why is Gervais so popular in the states? Didn't they have their own version of The Office? Not a fan I'm afraid. As has been mentioned the word 'smug' springs to mind.

JK2006 wrote:
When the best comedians get it wrong, it's spectacularly wrong. Those who play it safe tend not to cross the line.

That's not an especially helpful generalisation. Jack Benny, for example, was one of the greatest comedians there's been, but he wasn't the kind of comedian who 'crossed the line'. It's a bit like saying Charles Dickens wasn't as good a novelist as Laurence Sterne because formalistically he 'played it safe'. How many comedians have there been who HAVE crossed the line? From Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl to now, not that many, and some of them have just been lazy sensation seekers. (Not all, of course, but the best of those who do have also shown judgement as well as daring, knowing when it's worth running the risks, such as when Robin Williams replied on live German TV to a question about why there are so few German comics around by saying, 'Hasn't it occurred to you that you might have killed them all?' - that's quite a bit more daring than Gervais mildly upsetting some vapid Hollywood A-lister who is probably a chum anyway. And yet Williams is commonly seen as much less 'dangerous' than Gervais.) So I'm not sure what the point is. Only comics who cross the line are the 'best' comedians? I think you're taking a very specific type and then treating it like an all-encompassing category.

The Fat Controller wrote:
Why is Gervais so popular in the states? Didn't they have their own version of The Office? Not a fan I'm afraid. As has been mentioned the word 'smug' springs to mind.

He was executive producer on the US version of The Office.