Stephen Merchant & Ricky Gervais Aren’t Actually Friends | Full Interview | Alan Carr: Chatty Man

one of them is six foot seven, the other is four foot two, but they are both giants of the comedy world, you couldn't write it, they are Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, oh oh, it's good to have you back and welcome to the show, many thank you. for inviting me yes, I'm in the right place oh yes, would you like to have a drink? oh what is it, but is this like a challenge? Do we have Lee Brown milk? Oh, you are so common. What is that cinnamon? It's easy for you to say. He just knocked my tooth out.

All. I would love a pink lady. Honestly, no lady will be okay. There you go, oh, thank you. which for him is a lot of weight, thank you, you have done it, tell me a secret, steroids and AIDS, especially if you say we have AIDS, yes, they cut it, they are cutting a lot of work, honey, fat burning and lettuce, yes. um, yeah, I've been working out, I've been, um, yeah, trying to uh, I guess I got to the age of like, um, I got fatter and fatter from 29 to 48 and I was like this is never going to end.

I'm going to explode. yeah I'm still gaining I made a chart so I thought that's enough oh were you worried about him gaining weight? I was worried about him losing weight, if I'm honest, because I always thought being fat was more fun. You know a lot, you know, I've hitched my cart to this particular fat horse, lol. You know, and you see, I'd like to just milk him for, say, another 10 years and then he might have a massive heart attack, but by then, yeah. when he says milk me, that's not English, I've never been milked, yes, clarify that you haven't been milked now, not by Stephen Merchants, no, yes, I mean, you always work together, do you ever go on holiday together?

Can you imagine that? Oh, that would be horrible. just think about the pictures where I look great and a little tanned and the naked thing, it looks like one of those baby fish that you can see through its body, sorry, yeah, and it's a mate, yeah, not all It is in proportion, it is a little to the left. band, yeah, oh mine is small, but that's to be expected, right? I know, but mine is embarrassing, yeah, no, it's humiliating and it's, uh, it's annoying because every time you know, I mean, I have glasses, you know, like you, eyesight doesn't. working, I have the asthma basket, yeah, you know, I mean, it's like giving me a break sometime oh no, no, no, no, no, no, pray, how's yours?

What is the situation? Oh wait, it's a bit like a slug on two cherry tomatoes, yeah. I read somewhere that you only have six

friends

. It's true? I'm not surprised you're talking to him. No, my point is that I've kept my old

friends

. You'd know I was a guy who didn't I really don't do this to be popular you know you have you if you have your last job yeah put your friends on it doesn't matter because yeah people think they know you but they don't if you keep going worrying about how. you meet, that's your reputation, but your character is who you really are and I just said, you know, all you need is six good friends, you know, and I think that's all you really need, is very close friends.

That's all you need, would you consider him as one of your friends? Is he one of the sixth, seventh, seventh foreigner? To be honest, I have about 200 friends and, you know, I'm mostly superficial and I had a party. Recently at my birthday party I invited Ricky to the 35th birthday party and I said um, so he remembers that he invited you. I seem to remember, yes, he still invites me, he still invites me, he has never appeared at any of my parties, he has never come to my house. See right, the point is this, right, he started inviting me to parties when we met, but when we met he was 22 and I was 35.

So he's like discovering hip-hop and parties and I'm discovering that I have a favorite chair, so of course a middle-aged man was hanging out with a lanky 22-year-old who looked like he was 10. Yeah too, but a bit like a pedophile when we went for a walk, oh yeah, especially when you took my hand hand. I'm afraid. from London when I first moved to London, he held your hand because you were scared. I was afraid of London. I didn't know this hand, of course, he meets me. Come on, come on, it's 22. I don't know the ins and outs of your relationship, it's good and we

actually

met when I offered him a job at Xfm.

I went to work for this local radio station and I was like, oh, you can have an assistant and, um, his was a CV first, it was definitely the best, yeah, and I was like, "Yeah, I think so, but he was kind of down to earth because I was doing this job and I was a little black and a little lazy. I think you were. And when we were in the office, he would often wake me up and say come on, we have to work and um, I remember very often in the office. BBC canteen that said Rick, you don't have three giant sausages, you'll go back to sleep, that's not a companion, that's a caretaker I'm like, you know, I'm like a caretaker that way, you know, he won't eat, he probably eats.

When we remember when we were at the Golden Globes, oh yeah, yeah, we were on our way there, we're in a limousine on the way to the Golden Globe it's a pretty glamorous affair because the movie stars are there too and uh. we're there, we're all bundled up, you know, looking good, you know and uh Eagles, I'm hungry and I was furious. with him because I told him to eat before he left, yeah, so we're in he makes the limo stop, yeah, like at a gas station, right, um and go in, get something to eat and come back with a giant. bag of what they call Cheetos or chews, they're like clocks, yeah, yeah, yeah, so he's just eating a big bag with orange powder all over his face.

It was really horrible. They were literally glowing orange on my toe as well. It was all on my teeth, it was just orange, so we stopped and I said let's get out now and I was like, "Oh my God," and I was rubbing my teeth like that. I was putting my hand in the ice bucket with champagne. in the car and I was trying to get it all right, I had some tissue trying to wipe it off, I got it, it's horrible and, um, and in front of us with some desperate housewives together, there's no way that was happening in that. car now Terry Hatcher is a little nervous although they were Orange laughs, let's talk about Cemetery Junction, which is our DVD like this month, it's about you, uh, growing into yourself, no, it's not about you, just no, no , everything you do is kind of semi-autobiographical, you know, but I guess it's kind of a love letter to England and, yeah, it is, you know our memories of what it was like growing up in a small working-class town and you .

I know the family members are kind of like that, I mean the mom and Nan are based on my mom and Nan and they became the same person anyway, yeah it was like that lineage and um there's a line in it that my mom told me, um, when I was 18, I said I was going to France just for the day it was and then she said: what do you want to go there? There are red innuendo parts, yes, sweet, yes, but I like them, they just say what they think, they say. I remember I went to college and I came back and opened it, mom opened the door and she said, "Oh, damn, you're gone, thank you very much, oh, it's horrible, I know, yeah, yeah, I like it, I like it, that one sweet way of speaking frankly." honesty in them, I guess we left behind that veil of irony that we had with the office, this was yeah, it's more direct, you know, it's dramatic, I think we described it as a feel-good drama, there's humor in there. and there are laughs in it, but we also wanted you to know, hope

full

y make it quite moving in a way that you know and maybe even bring tears to your eyes.

I don't know if it was like that towards the end, oh yeah, what I wanted. I say okay at the end, but yeah, we have a clip from Cemetery Junction, so yeah, I remember I remember that day we filmed that, um, right outside, I think it was Shepstone or Pinewood, was it the studio? It was on a public road that we had. put up an advertising billboard so that from time to time, like women with children, they would pass by and look at it and say what's going on here and I would hide and say that it's just a movie that goes in the movie that I don't know, I don't know.

I know, I don't know, I know, that's a knob eater, soul movie, oh, don't draw and balls like graffiti anymore, right? I don't know, this reminds me when I was a kid where it came from. When I was about 14 or 15, I remember in French class, do you have that other thing where you used to put your headphones on and they say something in French? You have to say it again and the teacher found out that we people were just swearing about it and he went crazy and took people out, he said: I'm sick of this, you don't want to learn and also these exercise books, look at this, he's doing well and caught this kid.

I went to look at that. his exercise book what is that and this book was drawn like a penis with a size like big but what is that and he said it's a snail sir okay it's not a trap it's a penis he went and what is this and he drew this classic knob with balls and wings on the right and said oh look at a penis with wings what is that and said Dicky foreign bird thanks Stephen Merchant Ricky that was great that's it for tonight's show a huge thanks to the mini driver and, of course, Ricky Gervais and Esteban Merton