Six years after hosting the Golden Globes, RIcky Gervais has received a nomination for his new Netflix show Mortality.
He made fun of Leonardo di Caprio’s ever-young girlfriends and joked that Martin Scorsese is too small to ride in theme park carriages as the 2020 LA ceremony’s host.
Now in the running for Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy at the 2026 Golden Globes on January 11, he makes no apologies for his controversial jokes.
He recalls the ceremony, saying, “I love that they put a lot of booze on the table. They make an effort to hammer everyone out, making it interesting for them to go there. The Golden Globes have both good and bad things going for them.
Now at 64 and at the top of his game, Ricky reveals that he has a new ‘self-parodying’ TV show up his sleeve. He says: “There is something that’s close to parodying myself. I’ve got the title, I’ve got the idea, but I can’t even discuss it now. We are maybe shooting in the next 12 months.”
READ MORE: Wuthering Heights to Lily Allen tour: The best music, TV and film for 2026
Fans are also eagerly awaiting the release of his adult animation Netflix series, Alley Cats, following the lives of a group of feral British cats. He says: “It’s like two years and it still isn’t quite finished. It won’t be out till the end of next year. Doesn’t animation take a long time? But it is a six-part thing.
“It’s called Alley Cats and we’re a group of sort of feral cats living in a disused basement and we watch TV and go out and cause havoc. A lot of it is improv as well. They’re the sort of, you know, the meanest, sweariest cats in the world. They’re the bottom of the pile. It’s all about sort of like survival.”
The show is close to animal lover Ricky’s heart. Reported to have given £2.43 million to animal charities this Christmas alone, he says helping animals is in his blood, after being surrounded by pets growing up in Reading. He says: “Pets were like a member of the family. I’ve always thought animals were unconditionally sort of perfect and beautiful and should be treated well.
“It’s about empathy, isn’t it really? I’ve never understood animal cruelty. And then the older you get, the more you find out, well, there’s so much animal cruelty you didn’t know was going on. You’re cashing in on it without knowing. That’s why I became vegan as well, because the terrible cruelty in this sort of farm industry. And I thought, ‘I can’t really be saving dogs and eating sheep.’”
Ricky is thought to be wealthy, with an estimated £130 million. He can also afford much more leisure time on the tour, preferring to travel by private jet whenever possible. He claims, “I take the most lavish tour I can.” I typically stay four nights at home and two or three nights away.
His 43-year-partner, Jane Fallon, accompanyes him wherever possible. She arrives in all the desired locations, he says. She visits all the lovely places in Europe, including America and Canada. I take a weekend off. So I’ll play at Prague Arena, we’ll go the night before, have dinner, and then walk around the neighborhood all day, then I’ll head over there to play a gig before returning home. It’s basically 46 hours of vacation and two hours of work, then.
Ricky claims that he even makes jokes past her after the two met while attending University College London in the early 1980s. He states, “I typically jog while thinking, Oh, that’s a good joke. I then leave and tell Jane. I say, “Look, I have an idea.” When I tell her, she says, “Please don’t say that in public.” And I am aware that I can work on something with it.
However, Ricky is not let down by cheesy jokes, which is largely attributable to his newfound affection for taking naps or “taking a Churchill.” He claims, “I’m a big napper.” I once received a job playing Winston Churchill. It would have been awful if I had rejected it. Make-up and puffing a cigar would have taken three hours. Funny enough, Churchill was renowned for taking a nap every day even during the war when the sheets were stuffed full. We refer to it as “taking a Churchill.” This morning, I took a Churchill.
Ricky, who turns 65 in June, claims that he tires more these days and that he is unsure of what it will be like for people to see him at 70. I shuffle around already a little bit grumpy. He just wrapped up one tour, and he’s scheduled to go on another one this month. He doesn’t seem to be having any problems with his output. For the upcoming two-year tour, he continues, “I’m doing warm-ups.” Alley Cats is just finished, but I’ve been taking a nap every day as well.
Ricky still manages a lot of different projects, but he does them more leisurely because he doesn’t fly to the US to attend chat shows whenever new content is released. He asserts that “some things have changed since COVID, not just because of COVID.” Everything is possible at home. Additionally, Netflix has a subscriber base of about 300 million. An email is sent. You know what I mean when I say that I don’t need to participate in a chat show or play table tennis in a snorkel?
While he has no need for another mega hit, like The Office, he looks back on the BBC series with huge fondness. He says: “I knew it was different. I was the only one that really improvised at all. And I did that at the beginning and the end of the scenes. Or just to make the actors think a little bit and make it real. Or do something different to make them laugh or whatever. Or just put them on their back foot.”
However, it’s the simple things in life that now make him laugh, such as his mother telling him he was a “mistake” when he inquired about the 11 years that he and his closest sibling had been apart. He claims that when I was 13 years old, I asked his mother, “Why am I so much younger than my brothers and sisters?” She simply said, “You were a mistake. I also laughed. And that taught me how to be funny in life.
He also claims that British comedians are the best in the world. We are jesters, British stand-ups. We operate in a court. The other peasants are laughing at the King while we are in the mud. We have a low status. However, he claims, when everyone is aware of his well-being, keeping his low status can be challenging.
He does it by sharing all of his mistakes with them. He continues, “I talk about things that are more profitable than I do,” in contrast. I discuss getting old, going to die, going bald, and having bad hair. That’s what I want to do. I want the world to fight us.
Source: Mirror
Leave a Reply