Just how edgy and dangerous is Ricky Gervais? There is no one more edgy and dangerous, we learn from no less an authority than one R. Gervais. He keeps reminding you of this at intervals in his latest stand-up special, for which he was reputedly paid $20 million (to go with the other $20 million Netflix paid him for its predecessor). Every few sketches, he’ll announce to his live audience that this one was so offensive there’s just no way Netflix is going to broadcast it. But Netflix has done just that – and yet, quite incredibly, neither it nor Gervais has been cancelled. Funny that.
What this suggests to me is that by far the most useful and bankable of Gervais’s myriad talents is that he knows exactly how far he can push it. That’ll be why, despite the massive offence he supposedly caused, he kept being invited, a record six times, to present the Golden Globe Awards. And it’s why, despite the allegedly outrageous transphobia of some of his latest skits, no one is going to mind, barring professional offence-takers such as Stonewall, which no longer has the clout it once did.
By far the most useful and bankable of Gervais’s myriad talents is that he knows exactly how far he can push it
His trans jokes – which, perhaps unfortunately for the subsequent material, he puts at the beginning of the set – are some of his strongest. In one, he imagines a debate between a trans activist and a concerned woman.
TA: ‘They ARE ladies, look at their pronouns. What about this person isn’t a lady?’
CW: ‘Well, his penis.’
TA: ‘HER penis, you bigot.’
CW: ‘What if he rapes me?’
TA: ‘What if SHE rapes you.’
Possibly it’s funnier, the way he tells it, with all the extra swearing added.
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