Ricky Gervais - interview

How is your stand-up career going? The more I do it, the more I like it. Also, I've started exploiting the things that attracted me to it in the first place - it's the last bastion of self-censorship.

You certainly don't censor how much you mock yourself. Yeah, I always get something in about how fat and stupid I look. In my head I look like a young David Bowie. Then I catch a glimpse in the window and I go, "Who's fatty looking at? Oh..."

Why are you drawn to uncomfortable situations?I'm a white, middle-class, successful bloke. The only bad things that happen to me are social faux pas. I haven't got an ism. And comedy shouldn't be a platform. The thing I usually have a go at is bad comedy. The Office was a show about comedy.

But in the US version Jim and Pam are a couple! Isn't that going to ruin the American show? I don't know. I would never have done it. But we had completely different ambitions. Ours was finite. They've got to string their show out.

Is it frustrating when people confuse you for the losers you play?Often it's because of lazy journalism. Apparently I'm just like [Office character] David Brent - the thing is, I slip in and out of character, that's my schtick. I do always play a man who comes from Reading. If I played Genghis Khan, he would talk like me and have this haircut.

So David, what's funnier: someone falling, or a fart sound? [laughs] It depends on context. At a funeral, if it was the vicar: the second one. What would be the first? [pauses] A fireman has just caught a baby from a burning building and everyone's cheering and he gets so carried away that he just trips. And the baby falls under a bus.

What?!? Why does the baby...? You're right. Cut that last bit.

So what's on your wish list? A God. From what I've heard, he's all-powerful, so he'd sort a few things out.

Wow: a lamenting atheist? Well, yeah: A God would be great. But it's just not true. So, let's see. An individual jet pack.

The jet pack would burn your feet. Okay, my biggest wish? That everyone died in their sleep, and nothing would matter.

People would stop sleeping. No! You sound like Karl Pilkington! What I mean is, people die peacefully in their sleep so there's no pain.

I know what you mean, but people would try to find a way to cheat it.Oh, you've ruined it now. You ruined the jet pack and the sleeping. All right... world peace. No: a jet pack.

Thanks for your time. No, thank you very much. I'm going to spend the next hour going, "Why did I say that?" Or, "That came across wrong." "Oh God, did she think I was insulting journalists?" "Oh no, why did I put the baby under the bus?!?"

Ghost Town is now screening.

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