Comedian Ricky Gervais has caused a storm in the USA thanks to an array of jokes about Hollywood’s acting fraternity.
While presenting Sunday’s Golden Globes, the 49-year-old creator and star of The Office made jokes about Scientology, award show organisers Hollywood Foreign Press Association and actors Robert Downey JR, Tim Allen, Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen.
Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp’s film, The Tourist, was also on the receiving end of the star’s acid tongue – which made for uncomfortable viewing for Hollywood’s elite.
His performance has been praised and criticised with the HFPA rumoured to have been on the receiving end of a number of angry phone calls from agents representing their furious clients.
Tom Hanks even joked he can remember Gervais from the time he was a “kind comedian”.
However, the 49-year-old was anything but soft when he first started appearing on British television at the end of the 1990s.
Before he starred in The Office and Extras, Gervais was a regular on Channel 4’s The 11 O’Clock Show – the programme where Ali G star Sacha Baron Cohen also made his mainstream TV debut.
On the popular comedy series, Gervais would play a bigoted, xenophobic and ignorant reporter who would deliver an irreverent take on the day’s news as well as report on famous historical events.
Here he is delivering an alternative report on World War Two – from 1998. (Warning: don’t watch if easily offended)