60 Minutes: Ricky Gervais says nothing is off limits

In the age of offence, it’s easy for celebrities to put a foot wrong – and then face a very public backlash.

Unless you’re Ricky Gervais, who simply doesn’t care.

In a candid tell-all interview with 60 Minutes, Gervais has defended his controversial jokes and offending humour, telling reporter Charles Wooley that for him nothing is off limits.

“There’s no subject you shouldn’t joke about,” Gervais said.

“It depends on the target - people get offended when they mistake the subject of a joke with the actual target and they’re not necessarily the same.”

“When I’m doing stand-up, that’s my church. This is my house, my rules. If you don’t like it you can leave.”

Gervais gained worldwide fame at the age of 40 with The Office, a workplace comedy and hit television series that propelled Gervais, and his character David Brent, to a household name.

But it’s his stand-up sets and four year stint as host of the Golden Globes that has courted controversy in recent years.

Some of Gervais’ most eyebrow raising moments have been jokes about autism, paedophilia, transgender people and at his first Golden Globes as host, several jabs at actor Mel Gibson. His outrageous jokes have made him a bulls-eye for criticism both online and in real life.

Social media is where Gervais cops his slings and arrows, always on the receiving end of flak from the outrage brigade.

“I think there are people who are professionally offended who go around looking for it. They really do seek it out, they go back and find ten year old tweets,” he told Wooley.

“No one’s ever upset me on Twitter. It’s like no one can hurt my feelings because I’m too happy.”

But Gervais wants you to know his humour is never careless – every joke is considered and lovingly crafted.

“People think I go and host the Golden Globes and I’m just riffing and saying the worst thing I could think of,” he said.

“It’s nonsense, I want a joke to be bulletproof. I want to be able to defend it in ten years’ time.”

The comedian’s newest project is the darkest of dark comedies. The Netflix show, After Life, stars Gervais and follows a small town journalist working for the local paper while grappling with the death of his wife.

Death is a theme often revisited by Gervais in his comedy, and so an English cemetery near his home in Hampstead was the perfect spot to discuss his life and trade jokes with 60 Minutes reporter Charles Wooley.

His trademark graveyard humour is fatalistic, and he leaves Wooley with a joke that’s ‘dead funny.’

“What would your [epitaph] say?” asked Wooley.

“Here lies Ricky Gervais, he had a laugh then found a lump.”

To watch ‘Seriously Funny’ and for more from 60 Minutes, visit the official website.