Ricky Gervais

Gervais found mainstream fame with his BBC Two television programme The Office and the series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with friend and collaborator, Stephen Merchant.

Besides writing and directing the shows, Gervais also played the lead roles of David Brent in The Office and Andy Millman in Extras. As well as these, he has had three sell-out stand-up tours; Animals, Politics and Fame, is a best-selling author of his series of Flanimals books and works also with Merchant and Karl Pilkington in his world record-breaking podcast The Ricky Gervais Show.

Gervais, along with siblings Larry, Marsha, and Bob, were raised in the suburb of Whitley in Reading, Berkshire. Gervais's father Jerry emigrated whilst on foreign duty during the Second World War from Ontario, Canada. Jerry met Gervais's mother, Eva, during a blackout, and both settled in Whitley.

Gervais subsequently worked as an events manager for the University of London Union (ULU),[6] where he continued working until he was offered, and accepted, a similar job as "head of speech" at XFM London.
Gervais and Merchant returned to XFM in November 2001, for a Saturday radio show. The show ran intermittently until January 2004 with breaks of 1-3 months between new shows. This was the first time both worked with Karl Pilkington. Pilkington produced the shows and later collaborated with them on their series of podcasts.

He returned to the airwaves on 28 May 2005 to host the show once again with Pilkington and Merchant. He was also heard on BBC Radio 2 during Christmas 2005, sitting in for Jonathan Ross for two weeks.