Ricky Gervais: SuperNature

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Please welcome to the stage

a man who really doesn't need to do this.

Ricky Gervais.

Hello.

Hello. Thank you.

Shush. Thank you very much. Shush.

No, shush.

Thank you, but shut the fuck up.

No fucking whooping or... Just laugh.

No, but thank... Shush. Everyone calm down.

Shush!

I'm filming this. Shut up, you cunts!

Thank you very much.

Um...

Welcome to my show. Uh...

It's not a show. There's no dancers or jugglers.

It's basically a bloke talking,

um, which is essentially what stand-up comedy is.

A bloke talking.

Sexist.

Um...

What about all the funny female comedians?

Like, um...

No. No. No.

Right. No, no, no, no, no.

I'm not doing that. Okay, right. That was irony, okay?

There'll be a bit of that throughout the show. See if you can spot it.

Now, that's when I say summat I don't really mean for comic effect,

and you, as an audience, you laugh at the wrong thing

'cause you know what the right thing is. It's a way of satirizing attitudes.

Like that first joke,

I used the old-fashioned sexist trope that women aren't funny.

Now, in real life, I know there are loads of funny women.

Like, um...

I did it again. Well spotted. Good.

No, but there are. Um...

Dame Edna Everage. She's...

Uh...

Eddie Izzard.

She's brilliant, in't she?

She's not only a great comedienne, she's also a great actress, isn't she?

She was brilliant in that thing as that man, weren't sh...

It's good to be back. Um...

I fell back in love with stand-up on my last tour, Humanity.

I played arenas around the world. Netflix bought it for a record amount.

It was the most-watched special of the year.

I thought, "Everyone loves me now. Everyone loves me now."

Then I got this tweet.

A real tweet, right?

"Call yourself a comedian?"

He knows I do.

Literally says the word in my Twitter bio.

"Call yourself a comedian?"

"You're about as funny as..."

Now, I thought he was gonna go for the jugular and say, "Miranda," or...

Come on!

Come on, guys. Don't...

I'm joking. Right.

"Call yourself a comedian?"

"You're about as funny as a fart at a baby's funeral."

Yeah. He was trying to hurt my feelings.

But his big mistake was choosing summat that'd be fucking hilarious!

As if that would...

A fart at a baby's funeral?

Big, echoey church.

Everyone just silently sobbing like that.

Tiny little coffin. Tiny little coffin.

And someone farts?

You'd laugh.

Even if it was your baby. You know? No.

If you're at the funeral, it's been dead a week.

You're probably up for a giggle.

Particularly if you're the father.

If you're the mother, you probably still find it hard

seeing "the funny side of things."

Oh, women!

Not all women.

I mean, the old-fashioned ones. The old-fashioned women. Oh God!

You know, the ones with wombs.

Oh.

Those fucking dinosaurs.

No, I love the new women. They're great, aren't they?

The new ones we've been seeing lately.

The ones with beards and cocks. They're as good as...

They're as good as gold. I love them.

It's the old-fashioned...

And now the old-fashioned, they go, "Ooh, they wanna use our toilets!"

"Why shouldn't they?"

"For ladies!"

"They are ladies. Look at their pronouns."

"What about this person isn't a lady?"

"Well, his penis."

"Her penis, you fucking bigot!"

"What if he rapes me?"

"What if she rapes you?"

"You fucking TERF whore!"

But that tweet sums comedy up, doesn't it?

How subjective it is. How one person, some people can find them hilarious,

some find them the least funny person in the world.

When someone says to me about another comedian,

they say, "Oh, they're not funny,"

even if I agree with them, I stand up...

I say, "You can't say that. You gotta say you don't find them funny."

I hate it when people say, "That joke was offensive."

I say, "No, you gotta say you found it offensive."

It's about feelings, and feelings are personal.

And there's loads of types of comedy, and comedy evolves.

There's a new type of comedy at the moment called woke comedy, right?

No, it's very progressive, you know?

There are clubs where the comedian has to sign a thing

saying he won't say anything contentious or anything that could offend anyone.

It's a safe space for the audience. Woke comedy.

And, uh, I tried to watch a bit of it,

and I decided I'd rather watch Louis CK masturbate.

Can't mention him anymore. He's canceled. Uh...

Not enough to apologize and move on. You gotta...

Like poor Kevin Hart. See, Kevin Hart, he got the job hosting the Oscars.

His best day ever. He was on Twitter, "I've wanted to do this all my life."

And then someone found these ten-year-old tweets.

Look, they were sort of childish, sort of shitty homophobic tweets.

It was about his son. He was mucking around.

He said, "Oh, my son's doing so-and-so. I hope he's not gay."

There was a massive backlash. He went, "I'm not homophobic, sorry."

He deleted 'em, right, and said, "I'm really sorry."

Ten years later, someone finds a screen grab

and goes, "Look, he's done this."

And the Oscars go, "You gotta apologize again."

He went, "No, I've apologized. I can't keep apologizing."

And he's right. If there's no value to saying sorry and evolving,

he might as well just tweet 'em again.

That's how I deal with shit anyway.

But if you're the type of person to revel in someone getting canceled

for summat they said ten years ago,

you're just ensuring that one day you'll be canceled

for summat you said today.

You can't predict what'll be offensive in the future.

You don't know who the dominant mob will be.

Like, the worst thing you can say today,

get you canceled on Twitter, death threats,

the worst thing you can say today is, "Women don't have penises," right?

Now, no one saw that coming.

There are no ten-year-old tweets of people saying...

You won't find a ten-year-old tweet

of someone saying, "Women don't have penises."

Do you know why? We didn't think we fucking had to.

Liam Neeson. Oh.

He nearly got canceled, didn't he?

Liam Neeson. Now,

I don't know why he told this story.

But he did, at a press junket to a journalist, right,

and he just started saying, uh,

"It was 30 years ago,

and, uh, my friend came home,

and, um, she'd been raped," right, and...

That's not the funny bit.

He said, "She'd been raped." I said, 'What did the guy look like?'"

"Said it was a Black guy."

"So I got my cosh and I went out looking for the first Black guy."

"Nothing happened. I came to my senses."

But the weird thing about that story is, who has a cosh?

Who has a...

But it was touch and go.

They canceled the premiere 'cause of the backlash.

People wanted the film to be deleted, and I get it.

Some people can't separate the art form with the artist's personal life.

I know Liam. I've worked with him. He's a lovely man. Definitely not racist.

But when that broke,

even I was like, "Oh, will I ever be able to find Schindler's List funny again?"

I... I... I do still find it funny, obviously.

But now there's so much outrage,

and we hear about it, and it's taken seriously, you know?

There's Oxbridge comedians writing for the posh papers,

the rules of comedy,

they're laying it down, laying down the law.

And it's all stuff like,

"Comedy should punch up. You should never punch down."

Sometimes you've gotta punch down,

like if you're beating up a disabled toddler.

Know what I mean?

If you punch up, you'll miss the little cunt. He'll win.

I like that joke 'cause it highlights the difference

between metaphorical punching down in jokes

and actual punching down.

But people nowadays want you to believe that words are actual violence, right?

Now, you laughed at a joke about beating up a disabled toddler.

No one got hurt. If I'd have actually dragged out a disabled toddler

and started beating him up, you wouldn't laugh, right?

That's why I dropped that bit.

Um...

But these people are virtue signaling.

They're trying to bring people down to raise their own status,

and they say, "No, we're protecting minorities."

They're basically saying minorities haven't got a sense of humor,

which is so patronizing.

And I get that as well, what it's like to be outnumbered.

In this country, we're still only 5% Black, 5% Asian,

5% LGBTQ, you know? Tiny numbers.

Now, I'm a white, heterosexual multimillionaire, right?

Um...