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Charming Charlie and Tricky Ricky

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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 course, makes...
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Ricky Gervais and the Great Brain Robbery

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It doesn't take Columbo to uncover numerous clear examples of light-fingeredness by kleptomaniac 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 magpie and when it comes to stealing material sent in to publishers, agents or production companies in good faith, he crosses the line into criminality. Alongside the blatant rip-off of my manuscript in the making of Flanimals , there are question marks hanging over the originality of other major productions. Past thievery also includes Extras, which was directly stolen; concept, title, setting, delivery, lock, stock and barrel from Australian Director Darren Ashton's award winning 1999 short film The Extra . In fact Gervais seems to have a bit of a soft-spot for Australia. Either that or he thinks they won't notice him nicking their stuff because they're upside down. Aside from the dubious origins of Extras , he's already been suc...
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Ricky Gervais Stole my Book

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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, (now out of print). 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 i...
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