The idea and ongoing thesis for Gervais' Extras were taken from the 1999 award winning Australian 'mockumentary' short film The Extra starring Peter Phelps and Julia Zemiro: Gervais' former friend , actor/writer/comedian Robin Ince   - (who appeared in Gervais' The Office (copied from The Day Today ) - and Stephen Merchant met with The Extra's Australian director, Darren Ashton , in early 2000s prior to Ince and Ashton co-writing the upcoming Ashton helmed feature, Razzle Dazzle .   In Elm St, Berkhamsted, 30 miles north of London, Ashton screened Merchant and Ince his short film The Extra - about a hapless wannabe TV extra who dreams of the big time and becoming a 'real actor'. The original idea came from the film's Producer, Adam Wells and TV ad-man Mark Sharman during a ruinously long 22 hour shoot for a McDonald's breakfast burger. The hopeful extras had to endure a seemingly endless night of filming while waiting in a makeshift, seedy and...

    Original Work Gervais Submitted manuscript:  Good Grief , Ben Russell 2017, Pre-action litigation initiated.   Afterlife, 2019 Pilot: The Extra ,   Adam Wells, Darren Ashton, 1999   Extras,  2005 Children’s book:  Captain Pottie’s Wildlife Encyclopaedia ,  John Savage. 2000.  Legal challenge  stalled due to funding.     Flanimals, 2004 The Office , The Day Today , Armando Ianucci, Chris Morris , BBC2 1994   The Office, 2001 Book: David Thorne The Internet is a Playground ,  2010   Article title & content: The Internet is My Playground , Huffington Post 2013 Jokes : Stewart Lee. See Plagiarist’s Corner     Various stand-up routines. Specific Lee Jokes    A...

  Afterlife Stolen from Submitted Manuscript In yet another case of mind-burgling robbery from your favourite celebrity thief it can now be revealed that aside from Extras , Flanimals , The Office and all the  other examples ,  Afterlife is also a rip-off. Back in 2021 during a relaunched plagiarism claim  against Gervais for his awful Flanimals imitation, it came to our attention that Afterlife  had also been stolen from a submitted manuscript. As the unintentional collator of Gervais’ thievery, aspiring scriptwriter known Ben Russell from Holmfirth in West Yorkshire, contacted me via my lawyer with a similar account of how he had submitted a work, only to have it re-appear without permission as major Netflix production  Afterlife,  supposedly 'authored by Ricky Gervais’.   Yes, you read that correctly, we are talking about Afterlife . At first this seemed too crazy to believe. Another one? Must be some crank jumping on the ‘ripped-off...

Commenting on sexual harassment allegations against Noel Clarke in an interview with  Variety  earlier this year, After Life producer Charlie Hanson said that abuse of power in the entertainment industry is “learnt behaviour that is not confronted enough”. So let’s confront it now: According to widely published reports at least eleven women have claimed that 'hands-on' Hanson has “promised them a starry career under his wing, and then exploited their trust in creepy and illegal ways”. Among the alleged victims is a woman who says she met Hanson in 2008 to discuss a script   and ended up having non-consensual sex with him - in other words, that he raped her. Another accuses him of plying her with drinks and then molesting her when she was semiconscious on a sofa after they met to discuss a script she had written. The pattern repeats itself. A foot in the door in exchange for a hand down the pants seems to be the  modus operandi. The lack of witnesses, of cours...

It doesn't take Columbo to uncover numerous clear examples of light-fingeredness by disabled-mocking TV unfunny-man Ricky Gervais. Far from writing and producing all of his own material, as he claims, Mr. Gervais appears to be a bit of a kleptomaniac. Taking inspiration from past works happens, sometimes with a respectful nod to the original but this is ridiculous. He's been directly and deliberately stealing original material submitted to publishers or production companies . Alongside the blatant rip-off of my manuscript in the making of Flanimals, question marks hang over the originality of virtually all of Gervais' productions. Past thievery includes Extras, which was directly stolen ; concept, title and setting from award winning Australian pilot The Extra , conceived by Adam Wells and directed by Darren Ashton in 1999, and pending pre-action litigation it has also emerged that Afterlife was also stolen from a submitted script . ...

I  will never forget that morning back in 2004 when my phone started ringing with calls telling me that Ricky Gervais had ripped off my book,  Captain Pottie's Wildlife Encyclopaedia . ISBN 954820827X, 2000. He'd been on TV plugging the upcoming release of   Flanimals  but I had no interest in him so hadn’t taken much notice. It sounded crazy. Why would someone who'd just had massive hit TV series need to steal someone else's work? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing so headed down to the nearest bookshop to check it out for myself. At first glance the packaging and style were very different. Mine a pocket-sized mock-Victorian Encyclopaedia, understated and slightly bonkers, his, big, brash, noisy and garish, the only similarity being that they were both bestiaries, collections of bizarre imaginary creatures. Then I opened it up and had a look inside: I felt physically sick, it was like a kick in the stomach. I'd put a lot of love into my book. In the ...