There are plenty of bad TV shows that aren't for disadvantaged kids."It was a little bit naughty But it's only that 'Is this OK?' moment Of course you want that moment 'Can he say that?' All these middle-class sensibilities... "The comedian Jim Davidson recently hit the comeback trail, citing Gervais as one reason his un-PC jokes might again find favour. "Ricky Gervais gets away with gags like turning to his wheelchair-bound producer during a show, saying 'He's 31, you'd think he'd be able to walk by now,'" he said."Then he's got it wrong," says Gervais "My humour isn't un-PC at all. I think it's clear there's a satirical edge to my characters, or my stand-up, even when I go under my own name It's clearly me, getting it wrong Playing the idiot. There's no hate involved."'Extras' certainly ran the gamut of emotive issues.
Every episode Andy Millman and his best friend, fellow actor Maggie Jacobs (Ashley Jensen) got themselves into a pickle over race or religion, or managed to insult someone with cerebral palsy or one leg shorter than the other."There were times when you read the script and thought 'Oh God, how am I going to get away with that?'" says Jensen, whose mother helps children with learning difficulties "But a lot of intelligent comedy does poke you a bit It opens things up. I don't know what they're going to do for the next series, though. Because, really, we didn't leave anyone out."The other source of ribbing came via Extras' celebrity guests, all playing "monstrous" versions of themselves. Rumour has it that telly tough-nut Ross Kemp took umbrage at some of the lines portraying him as a wimp and Jude Law pulled out of the last episode at the last minute (the day they discover this and the subsequent failure to reach Leonardo DiCaprio's agent via a Nokia plugged into a hotel wall is captured, hilariously, on the Extras DVD). But the show that caused most consternation was one featuring Les Dennis. Suicidal, reduced to appearing in a rubbish Aladdin panto and with a dollybird fianc?who's blatantly unfaithful, Dennis's character eventually breaks down: "Why don't people want to come out and see Les Dennis? Where did it all go wrong?"Where other actors came off as good sports for riffing on patently preposterous versions of themselves (Kate Winslet as a potty-mouthed, Oscar-eyed careerist playing a nun in Nazi Germany, for example), plenty felt that Dennis's character was rather too close to home.
The actor Gerard Kelly complained, and he was in the same episode."But it's the press perception of him we played with," says Gervais "Les isn't a sad, lonely man. Through no fault of his own, he became a whipping boy.""I knew the implications of how dark it was," says Dennis. "I watched it with some friends and a couple of them had to watch a second time before they felt comfortable with it. But it was Ricky and Stephen who said 'How far can we go?' and me who said 'Go all the way'. There've been so many people who've taken the piss out of the situation I've had; to be seen to take the piss myself draws a line under it."And anyway, Extras and The Office couldn't have built their vast audiences on provocative humour alone. In the unrequited relationship between Tim and Dawn (in the latter), and the platonic one between Andy and Maggie (in the former), there beats a big human heart."The Office is bigger than comedy," says Little Britain's David Walliams. "Look at the Christmas episode with the theme that David Brent is redeemed by love That's an incredible thing to bring in It's like the stuff Woody Allen was doing, post-Annie Hall.
