Ricky Gervais / Stephen Merchant / Karl Pilkington - The Ricky Gervais Show - Series One (2005)

I've been listening to the new Alan Partridge podcast 'From The Oasthouse', and while I'm enjoying it a lot, it did remind me of the person who introduced me to podcasts back in the early 2000's, the Podfather himself Ricky Gervais. Gervais and Stephen Merchant first worked together in radio on the London-based alternative radio station Xfm London, and their show was broadcast from January to August 1998. The show just featured Gervais and Merchant, and was more interactive, with features, guests, phone-ins, and audience interaction through listeners' letters. They returned to Xfm in August 2001, after the first series of The Office had been broadcast, and Karl Pilkington was brought in as producer, although his presence was not acknowledged on posters and other advertisements. Gervais and Merchant would speak to him about his thoughts on whatever they were talking about, and by 2003 he was officially added to advertisements for the show. Their last show for Xfm aired on 2 July 2005, after which they chose to switch the show's format from radio to podcasting. According to Emily Bell, editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited, Gervais and Merchant had approached the Guardian with the idea of the show, and she believes they switched to a podcast format for greater control over content and access to a larger audience. The first series of podcasts began on 5 December 2005, and a new episode was released each Monday for the next twelve weeks. The show relies heavily on the wit and bizarre theories of Pilkington, who was now unemployed, having left his job as radio producer at Xfm, and focused more on him as a primary figure of humour in the show in various ways, including questions directed at him that have been emailed in, either by fans of the show or by Gervais and Merchant themselves. Having listened to a few of these after digging them out, they certainly stand repeated hearings and are still hilarious, so I thought that I'd post them over the next few weeks to try and bring some welcome laughter in these dark times. 

Track listing

01 Episode 1   (05/12/2005)
02 Episode 2   (12/12/2005)
03 Episode 3   (19/12/2005)
04 Episode 4   (26/12/2005)
05 Episode 5   (02/01/2006)
06 Episode 6   (09/01/2006)
07 Episode 7   (16/01/2006)
08 Episode 8   (23/01/2006)
09 Episode 9   (30/01/2006)
10 Episode 10 (06/02/2006)
11 Episode 11 (13/02/2006)
12 Episode 12 (20/02/2006)