Ricky Gervais / Stephen Merchant / Karl Pilkington - The Ricky Gervais Show - The Specials (2008)

As well as the regular episodes which were released from 2005 to 2008, the trio also released a number of one-off special podcasts, collected together here for this final post. 
Fame special
A special podcast was made available as a giveaway to people who went to see Gervais' standup tour Fame, which played from January to April 2007. It was later released for free to the public in October of that year.
Do We Need 'Em? 

A feature from the middle years of the XFM series, which originally was simply called 'Pilkington', where Karl interviewed a woman who claimed to have had a ghostly experience, prompting him to ask "You're not on crack?". This morphed into Do We Need 'Em?, in which Karl would call an animal expert and argue for the extinction of a certain animal species, which he felt was useless and "getting in the way". Karl became dismayed by the opposition he faced from the experts, believing there was a conspiracy to keep every animal from extinction, and thus ended the feature. At the beginning and end of the feature, the theme tune to Michael Parkinson's chat show was played.
White Van Karl
At the time, The Sun newspaper ran a feature called 'White Van Man' whereby questions on the stories of that week were put to white van drivers across the country, just to gain an insight into the views and opinions of 'the common man'. Stephen Merchant posed the same questions to Karl, to find out more about him. The best aspect of this was Karl's bizarre beliefs and theories. Gervais and Merchant also found humour in the very mundane answers the White Van Man of the week would give (the most famous of these being a comment about Sainsbury's bringing in square tins: 'That should be interesting for meatballs'). This feature was mainly used as a way to introduce new listeners to the mind of Karl Pilkington and was only used during the earlier days of the XFM shows.

XFM Special One Off Podcast

While Gervais and Merchant were broadcasting the XFM radio shows between 2001 and 2005, they also recorded a special one-off podcast in 2004. This might have had some influence in their decision to change the format of their broadcasting the following year, with their last show for XFM being aired on 2 July 2005, after which they chose to switch from radio to podcasting.

Bonus Hour Podcast
On 25 November 2007, Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington released a special bonus podcast for free. In it Ricky and Steve continued to probe Karl with questions from Inside the Actors Studio. Originally released as an extra on the audio CD release of series one, it was later made available free through iTunes.
NME Test Broadcast

Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington recorded a two-hour radio show as part of the test transmissions for the new radio station NME Radio. The episode aired on Monday 9 June 2008, and also featured music (edited out from this file).

Track listing

01 Do We Need 'Em  (2003)
02 White Van Karl  (2004)
03 XFM Special One Off Podcast  (2004)

04 FAME  (2007)
05 Bonus Hour  (2007)
06 NME Test Broadcast  (2008)

 

Ricky Gervais / Stephen Merchant / Karl Pilkington - The Radio 2 Shows (2005)

In 2005 Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington were given the opportunity to broadcast two two-hour long specials on Radio 2, during the 2005 holiday season. The first show aired on Christmas Eve and the second was broadcast on New Year's Eve, and as well as chatting they also played music, which has been edited out of these files.

Track listing

01 The Radio 2 Christmas Special   (24/12/2005)
02 The Radio 2 New Years Special  (31/12/2005)

Ricky Gervais / Stephen Merchant / Karl Pilkington - The Ricky Gervais Show - Series Five (2008)

Series 5 consisted of four more episodes, released on 15 September 2008 through the iTunes Store. This series was released all at once as an Audiobook, almost two hours in length and split into four half-hour episodes. It differs from previous series as they were all recorded at the same time, and there are no contests or any interaction from the listeners.

Track listing

01 Episode 1

02 Episode 2

03 Episode 3

04 Episode 4

Ricky Gervais / Stephen Merchant / Karl Pilkington - The Podfather Trilogy (Series Four) (2006)

The fourth series of The Ricky Gervais Show podcasts was slightly different to the first three, in that it was billed as a trilogy, entitled 'The Podfather', and the three free podcasts were released to coincide with special days. The first was released on 31 October 2006, to coincide with Halloween, the next was on 23 November 2006, commemorating Thanksgiving, and the last was released on 24 December 2006, to celebrate Christmas. 

Track listing

01 Halloween       (31/10/2006)
02 Thanksgiving   (23/11/2006)
03 Christmas        (24/12/2006)

Ricky Gervais / Stephen Merchant / Karl Pilkington - The Ricky Gervais Show - Series Three (2006)

Series three of the podcast was released on 22 August 2006. This season saw the return of Karl's Diary as well as a new feature based on Karl's attempts at poetry. All other known features were abandoned, with the rest of each episode focusing instead on conversation. The season had the same pricing implementation as season two, although the file quality was increased from 32 kbit/s to 56 kbit/s. At the end of the sixth episode, Gervais and Merchant agreed to put the show on an indefinite hiatus.

Track listing

01 Episode 1  (22/08/2006)

02 Episode 2  (29/08/2006)

03 Episode 3  (05/09/2006)

04 Episode 4  (12/09/2006)

05 Episode 5  (19/09/2006)

06 Episode 6  (26/09/2006)

Ricky Gervais / Stephen Merchant / Karl Pilkington - The Ricky Gervais Show - Series Two (2006)

Series two of The Ricky Gervais Show podcast began on 28 February 2006, and consisted of six episodes, with the final one released on 4 April 2006. The series saw the return of Karl's Diary and Rockbusters, as well as a new, although short-lived, feature to replace Pilkington's 'Monkey News', called 'Real Monkey News', where Gervais attempted to present information about chimpanzees which was factual and scientific.
With the start of series two, the formerly free Ricky Gervais Show shifted to a pay model – and as a result the show is now classified as an audiobook. The reason for this, according to Gervais on the podcast, is because The Guardian agreed to pay for the bandwidth for the first twelve episodes, and any more shows would have to be paid for out of their personal finances.

Track listing

01 Episode 1  (28/02/2006)
02 Episode 2  (07/03/2006)
03 Episode 3  (14/03/2006)
04 Episode 4  (21/03/2006)
05 Episode 5  (28/03/2006)
06 Episode 6  (04/04/2006)

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)