Ricky Gervais and the Great Brain Robbery
It doesn't take Columbo to uncover numerous clear examples of light-fingeredness by disabled-mocking TV unfunny-man Ricky Gervais.
Back in 2004 he riped off of my manuscript in the making of Flanimals, and it turns out I'm not the only one. Question marks hang over the originality of all of Gervais' productions. Far from writing and producing his own material, as he claims, Gervais appears to be a pathological kleptomaniac.
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,
but by far the worst and the most recent known example of theft is from a script entitled Good Grief from writer Ben Russel in the making of Afterlife .
Prior to all this Gervais is no stranger to a life of crime. Before his involvement in bigtime script robbery he pilfered The Office from er...The Office on The Day Today (BBC2 1994),
Aside from the dubious origins of all these major productions here are numerous other examples of plagiarism flying around. I guess we could call this the shoplifting stage before moving on to armed robbery. Here are a few:
He's been sued for stealing Aboriginal art:
He lifted the title of David Thorne’s hysterical compendium of online mischief; The Internet is a Playground for an article he wrote in the Huffington Post, changing one word of the book's title toThe Internet is MY playground :
Stewart Lee refers us to copying of routines and mimicking of style resulting in public confusion as to who had copied who.
The Invention of Lying is a Hollywood sugar-coated amalgamation of two Moliere plays; Tartuffe and the Misanthrope
etc. etc. etc.
Do you have a single original idea in your head Ricky? A title here, a gag there, a nod, a wink, a borrow from a dead playwright, misappropriation of indigenous art, a rummage in the submissions cupboard?
Savage: Gervais