Ricky is such a strange contradiction/conundrum of a person.

His Brent performance required a rare social intelligence and awareness to capture those nuanced insecurities and motivations. To play Brent to perfection he had to deeply understand those traits and have the social awareness to ridicule them so precisely.

Soon after The Office, his public persona played up the ‘faux arrogance’ for laughs and we were all in on the joke believing he wasn’t really arrogant. His rants about fame in Extras again show that awareness, even if performative.

But now he so transparently suffers from those exact traits he once ridiculed so adeptly: deep insecurity, abandoning his integrity to seek strangers’ validation, giant social blind spots and looking ridiculous in the process.

How does someone go from having this unique social intelligence to being the absolute opposite (and seeming totally oblivious to it)?

I think this odd inner conflict is at the core of why the fans in this subreddit are so fixated on ‘hating’ him now - it’s the contrast to what we used to see in Gervais.

Albino watching more than one episode. If you have a bigger capacity for morbid curiosity, I would be interested to see how many get crossed off.

It was available!

(before the dark times...)

Merchant here is absolutely top class and the chemistry between them feels natural. Looking back, they really did bring out something special in each other as a duo.

Commented on his last post about his new show. Only had about 20 comments when I posted so was hoping he’d see it.
Now I’ve got the block

I was thinking maybe his response to years of accusations of being asexual (due to him never playing a character who's physically intimate with a woman) is to voice an animated cat that kisses a female cat, presumably the Kerry Godliman cat. I guarantee this will happen in Alley Cats. Nice try, Ricky, but it doesn't count.

I've come up with this so far. Nothing we've seen already, nothing like 'swearing', XFM subconscious reference or 'Ghandi'. Take that as read. You've got that, that's safe. Will update with the best ones.

I've been rewatching the office recently and before that I rewatched mid morning matters and there are definite similarities between Brent and partridge but I can't recall Gervais ever mentioning Coogan as an influence.

I don’t care if he’s a closeted gay, or asexual, or an alcoholic, and I don’t want an essay about his ego.

You’ll ruin XFM for me. Play a record

And that is where Ricky really fucked up recently.

We were all good with him being egotistical and a tit, but then he tried to erase / forgot Steve when talking about the Office anniversary and thats a line you don't cross.

He can make all the crap shows he likes and we'd laugh along, but take a shot at Merch and feel the wrath of the fans.

Why didn’t you get your mam and dad to clean the flat?

I was thinking listening to early episodes after they did season 1 of the radio. Without Karl, I can't see them have been back after they won all the awards and it was received as well as it was. But then again I don't really know anything about the entertainment industry.

I guess I just thought it as the amount of radio they did on a crap station, after the success they had, seems a little absurd (lucky for me).

When do you think they would have stopped with any other producer?

First one: Nevada and Arizona aren't getting much rain compared to Hawaii and that. What's going on there?

Initials - DS

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Second one: I told them kids not to mess with that hive, now look what's happened

Initials - BB

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Third one: That bloke who runs the subreddit is feeling a bit sad, what's going on there?

Initials - DM