It really was a speech designed to prove and show how much better Ricky Gervais is than all his contemporaries. His hypocrisy is huge (this is the man, after all, that made a record breaking series of podcasts off the back of signing up, and laughing at, a man he himself describes as “retarded, basically”. And who engaged in dubious tactics when getting participants for his Extras series (according to at least one who dealt with him, it’s clear that if you turn him down it will *made known* you turned him down and that you obviously think yourself so-much-better than DeNiro, Stiller etc.)

The only difference between Gervais and the makers of reality television is that they do it for ratings and he does it to inflate his own sense of self-regard.

I dont know where you are from but this specch struck a particular chord here in the UK. He also hit the nail on the head when he talked about the victorian freak show never went away and that its now in the form of big brother and similar shows on TV where ‘the bewildered’ are brought out to be sniggered at by the masses. programme makers do seem to wash their hands of the fact that a lot of the time they exploit vulnerable people for the sake of ratings.

Greg UK

very good points indeed.

#99: I’m not sure I agree with that. I think Gervais seems to have perfected the ‘double blind’ style of writing and self-presentation where he presents this ‘character’ of conceited egoism and everybody laughs along, and doesn’t get turned off, because it seems to be a parody – a joke we’re all in on.

The trouble is that, after all this time and all this exposure through different media, it’s pretty clear that if you scratch Gervais’ self constructed image of conceited egoism you find… more conceit and ego.

Helen Mirren — OMG, Yes!

Vincent D’Onofrio — Maybe as a villain

Don Cheadle, Stellan Skaarsgard — I love these actors, but it’s hard for me to picture either.

My dream list for Star Trek would include Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep, Ed Harris, Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, and Hugh Jackman. (Coming up with it seat-of-the-pants style — I’m sure I could think of more.)

I’d also love to see Michelle Forbes play a part as an admiral (obviously not as Ro Laren — wrong era and Ro turns renegade in the end anyway), kind of like her role as Admiral Cain in Batllestar Galactica, but not as brutal.

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#99 – Weyoun Gretzky — I totally agree. If anything, Ricky Gervais is a master at skewering the whole “snooty Brit” image. His characters end up as unwitting parodies of themselves. It’s all pretty subtle and nuanced a lot of the time, so, indeed, one must be paying attention. That’s my considered opinion as an American fan of many BBC shows.

This makes me think you haven’t seen more than 30 seconds of his work. Don’t like him? Fine. But that is such a blatant mischaracterization of him and his work. Extras does little else but make fun of snootiness (his ***character*** is rather so). Check out the “Christmas” season finale of that show – it’ll disprove your point. Handily. With an atomic weapon.

I do remember however that Nicholas Meyer said that the original cast had the rarest of stellar qualities — charm — in abundance.