Ricky Gervais (born June 25, 1961) is a comic writer and performer who grew up in the English town of Reading. Gervais has recently enjoyed success with his award-winning BBC2 television programme The Office, which he co-wrote with Stephen Merchant. As well as writing it, Gervais also played the lead role of David Brent, an office manager who believes he is popular and funny, but is in fact neither.

Gervais' father grew up in French Canada, and came to the UK on duty during the Second World War, where he met his wife. Raised as the youngest of four brothers, Ricky Gervais has described his childhood as "nice" and "normal".

Gervais went to UCL in 1985 to study Philosophy. See UCL News Article (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/feature/newsitem.shtml?gervais).

During the early 1980s Gervais was the lead singer of the New Romantic group Seona Dancing. The group released two singles that failed to break the top 40 in the UK. However, in 1985 their track "More To Lose" became a massive hit in the Philippines. This came as a great surprise to the band, which had broken up the previous year. Following a stint as events manager at the University of London Union, Gervais went on to briefly manage the British group Suede before taking a job at London radio station XFM where he is still a DJ on the Saturday afternoon slot.

He came to wider attention as an obnoxious persona in a slot which replaced Ali G on the Channel 4 comedy programme The 11 O'Clock Show. He later went on to present his own comedy chat show for Channel 4 called Meet Ricky Gervais which was poorly received.

He toured the UK in 2003 with his stand-up show Animals, with one show recorded for DVD release and television broadcast. Also in 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.

In 2004 he toured his second show (this time doing a full tour of Britain) entitled Politics. One show was, once again, recorded for DVD and released on November 15th 2004.

He also released a children's book, entitled Flanimals.

His upcoming BBC sitcom, Extras, will be about movie extras and will feature cameos from Jude Law and Kate Winslet. Gervais' main character will be more self-aware and intentionally humourous than David Brent, and the programme will not be made in the style of a mockumentary, as was The Office.

Gervais is also currently writing an episode of The Simpsons.

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

External links

• Ricky Gervais (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0315041/) at the Internet Movie Database