What is it with the critics and Ricky Gervais?

I’ve had a sense of humour failure, in that I find something funny which nobody else does, apparently. I’ve been watching Ricky Gervais’s new comedy, Life’s Too Short, and thought the first episode, in particular, was hilarious. But people really hate Gervais, don’t they? I haven’t yet read a decent review of the programme and yet it’s probably funnier than anything else on our screens that’s new. This seems to get missed.

My Sunday Times colleague, AA Gill, kicked the living hell out of the programme last week in typically elegant and cutting fashion, for example. And many of his observations (£) were right: it’s a comedy with a dwarf and therefore there are lots of hackneyed dwarf jokes and, in any case, the character is really just the old Ricky Gervais character re-touched. Most of the rest of Adrian’s review — and everyone else’s reviews — centred on what a smug bastard Gervais is, or seems to be. But the first show was very funny, especially a nicely set-up cameo with Liam Neeson being an actor without a sense of humour.

I don’t know what Gervais is like as a bloke. Maybe he thinks highly of himself, I dunno. By the same token I’d be pretty pleased if I’d come up with The Office and Extras (series one). Maybe I’m wrong about this — over to you.