Ricky Dene Gervais (born 25 June 1961) is a triple Golden Globe-, double Emmy- and seven-time BAFTA award-winning English comedian, writer and former New Romantic musician from Reading, Berkshire. Gervais burst into mainstream fame with his ground-breaking BBC Two television programme The Office (for which he won 6 BAFTAs and 2 Golden Globes) and the series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with friend and collaborator, Stephen Merchant. Besides writing and directing the shows, Gervais also played the lead roles of David Brent in The Office and Andy Millman in Extras. As well as these, he has had three sell-out stand-up tours; Animals, Politics and Fame, is a best-selling author of his series of Flanimals books and works also with Merchant and Karl Pilkington in his world record-breaking podcast The Ricky Gervais Show. In addition to his work in films such as Night at the Museum and Stardust, he is the only British comic to write and star in an episode of The Simpsons. Prior to finding mainstream success with The Office, Ricky was the lead singer and principal songwriter for New Romantic duo Seona Dancing.

Meet Ricky Gervais was a chat show written and hosted by the comedy writer and performer Ricky Gervais. It was produced by Talkback for Channel 4 in 2000 (repeated 2003) and ran for one series on Friday nights.

The show aired throughout the time Ricky Gervais was also writing the first series of the highly successful The Office for BBC2.

Guests were 'supposedly' interviewed by Gervais in the original TV studio chairs of famous people. Gervais was seated in Michael Aspel's Aspel & Co leather chair and guests seated in Ronnie Corbett's monologue chair, and Grandad from Only Fools and Horses' armchair. The guests included John Virgo, Tony Hart, Penny Smith and Sir Jimmy Saville.

The show regularly featured Darts assistant, Tony Green who would take his place as the general stooge and gameshow assistant. On the first episode, Gervais claimed that Tony came free with the original Bullseye dartboard, which he supposedly found himself whilst building the rest of the set.

Also, the show didn't have a theme tune so at the end of each show, Gervais asked viewers to record and send in their own mixes. Few were received. Two of the episodes used a theme tune co-written and performed by Stewart Ferris.

It was produced by Iain Morris and co-written by Jimmy Carr and Robin Ince with additional material provided by Stephen Merchant and Stirling Gallacher (VT clock voiceover).

To this day, Ricky Gervais admits that this show was an embarrassment and has since been mocked even by Gervais himself. He was quoted as saying that there was no second series as Channel 4 wanted to see some changes, "ratings mainly".

"It was a mistake to use my own name," he says now. "I thought people would understand that I was playing a character. I should have called myself Billy Bigot. Some people really did seem to think that I thought famine was a good thing, and so on."http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/02/09/bfdc09.xml