Ricky Gervais had to contend with a stony-faced response to a joke about Bob Geldof on The One Show.
The comedian appeared on the BBC One chat show earlier this week following the announcement of his new tour Mortality, which will take place in October 2025.
Gervais cracked the joke at Geldof’s expense in the wake of Band Aid 40– a fresh attempt at making the hit song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” the festive No 1 despite protestations from some stars, including Ed Sheeran and listeners, who have branded the new version “horrific”.
When hosts Alex Jones and Angellcia Bell asked Gervais about pursuing comedy when he was younger, he replied: “The funniest people you know aren’t a professional comedian – they’re your grandad or your mate, because you’ve got that knowledge of them.
“And I was always mucking around. I was always cheeky at school. It was just that I didn’t think it was a possible vocation until I was about, I think about 37.
Gervais said he made the decision to embark on comedy as a profession when he “was made redundant”, following which the Office creator gave himself “six months to give this a go and it sort of worked out”.
He told them: “I mean, I could be sleeping in a car now, you know what I mean? Like him.” After saying this, he pointed at Geldof, who was sat next to him on the sofa, prompting Bell to place her head in her hands, laughing.
Gervais added: “But it all worked out well.” The comedian then looked at Geldof to gauge his reaction, and was met with a stony-face, which slowly turned into a smirk – but Geldof swiftly brushed over the joke despite Gervais, Jones and Bell’s laughter.
Geldof defended the new version of “Do They Know It’s Christmas Time?”, stating in a Sunday Times interview that it “has kept millions of people alive”.
He continued: “Why would Band Aid scrap feeding thousands of children dependent on us for a meal? Why not keep doing that? Because of an abstract wealthy-world argument, regardless of its legitimacy? No abstract theory regardless of how sincerely held should impede or distract from that hideous, concrete real-world reality.
“There are 600 million hungry people in the world – 300 million are in Africa. We wish it were other, but it is not. We can help some of them. That’s what we will continue to do.”
