RICKY GERVAIS
Despite being a 47 yeard old,short,fat bloke brought up in a council estate in Reading,Berkshire,Ricky currently has under his belt,2 EMMY's,3 Golden Globes and 7 BAFTA's.
Ricky is undoubtedly best known for co-writing,co directing and starring as David brent in the BBC 2 smach hit The Office,however,Ricky's first break into show buisness came when he finished his degree in 1983 at the University College of London(UCL) and formed the pop band Seona dancing with his uni mate Bill Macrae.They released two singles which took the chart by storm by crashing in no.117 and 70 respectively.He then landed a job London radio station Xfm as " head of speech " and in his search for an assistant he picked the first CV he came across and arranged an interview in a local pub.The CV belonged to Stephen Merchant and after agreeing to help ricky as he didn't know what he was doing and needed someone to do the boring sruff while Ricky could mess about,he was soon starting his new carrer side by side with Gervais.When Xfm were taking over by Capital Radio Group,the pair were let go and continued to work on various projects together and alone,before being snapped up by the BBC to write The Office,which ran for two series,plus a two-part christmas special.This made Ricky an instant household name and was soon appearing on various TV shows winning people over with his sarcastic opinions and manic laugh.After this success,the pair were asked to return Xfm to present a saturday show from 2001 - 2005 and this is where they met Karl Pilkington who was their producer.As Karl explains in the lastest show for NME the first meeting was like a triangle as Ricky was staring Karls head and Karl was staring at Steves goggley eyes.Ricky took a break from this for an hectic 18 month period where he wrote childrens book Flanimals,toured the UK with his live stand-up show Politics and wrote and starred in Extras,screened again on BBC2.After the success with television,the team moved into podcasts after being asked by The Gaurdain to perform twelve podcasts.Although it was meant to be twelve free podcasts giving away weekly with The Gaurdian,to date,the teams podcast back catalouge amounts to - 3 seasons(12 free,6 with season 2 and 6 with season 3) for a nominal fee to download,the Podfather trilogy( 3 one hour shows) which were,Haloween,Thanksgiving and Christmas,a one hour bonus show and more recently a one off 2 hour special to launch NME radio.Due to his now legendary status,while filming Extras,Gervais was now able virtually anyone he wanted and by the time extras had finished two series and a christmas special,stars such as Samuel L.Jackson,Kate Winslet,Vinnie Jones and Robert De Niro to name but a few had appeared on the show.After writing TV shows,breaking records with podcasts and appearing in cameo roles in films,Ricky has now moved onto writing,directing and starring in his own hollywood movies.His first two,due for release 2009 and onwards are Ghosttown and This side of the truth.By the time you have read this,Ricky will probably have his finger another pie and be breaking records in another media.
SEONA DANCING - BITTER HEART
A short clip of Ricky's 80's band Seona Dancing on Room 101 with Paul Merton.Enjoy