Ricky Gervais Reminds Us of When He Punched Up With Hilarious Throwback Post

There once was a time when U.K. comedy legend Ricky Gervais directed his most vicious and vitriolic jokes toward the sanctimonious and self-righteous members of the high A-list. Today, he much prefers going after people like Suzy Izzard.

Though it’s only been a little over four years since Gervais last hosted the Golden Globes, it feels like it’s been ages since the awards show’s most hostile and cutting presenter went viral for insulting a celebrity (or many celebrities) who deserved to go down a few pegs. In the 63-year-old Gervais’ most recent project, the Netflix special Armageddon, which was released on Christmas day, the comedy icon came off as a grumpy old man, desperate to be controversial once again, trying to manipulate the machinations of the ever-nebulous and, apparently, all-powerful “Cancel Culture” into making him trend on Twitter. Like so many recent works from so many internationally adored and massively compensated comedians in the upper crust of the Netflix stand-up scene, the conceit of Gervais’ last show was that millionaire artists like him “can’t say anything anymore” in sold-out arenas and atop streaming charts.

We remember a time when Gervais was always the first one on the scene whenever a celebrity tried to score easy publicity off of a viral tragedy without lifting a finger to help the affected. Gervais remembers that era, too, and, in a recent Twitter post, he reminded us that he used to treat powerful, entrenched entertainers like Beyoncé and Rihanna with the same fire that he currently saves for transgender teenagers.

The 2013 Moore tornado that Gervais mentioned (and which inspired him to donate to the Red Cross instead of crossing his heart and hoping someone else will) caused 24 fatalities, 212 injuries and $2 billion in damage, which, despite their popularity, couldn’t be covered by Beyoncé and Rihanna’s public prayers. While the practice of attaching one’s name to a humanitarian issue without directly affecting change certainly hasn’t disappeared, back when Gervais called out the pop stars, “awareness”-posting was at its peak and “thoughts and prayers” was still an earnest hashtag and not a darkly sarcastic indictment of performative inaction.

After the two singers’ rabid online fanbases began to attack Gervais’ snarky criticisms of their queens, Gervais followed up with another side-eye at the popular hashtag #PrayForOklahoma with the tweet, “You can support #Moore response by txting REDCROSS to 90999 to give $10, or online at redcross.org #ActuallyDoSomethingForOklahoma.”

“Praying for something but not doing anything to make it happen has the same effect as writing to Santa & not letting mummy read the letter,” Gervais later concluded of the controversy-stirring Twitter storm. 

It’s too bad that, this past Christmas, Gervais rewarded our own wishes for fresh takedowns of the celebrity class by dumping a critically panned, downward-punching hour of complain-comedy down our chimneys. We would have preferred coal.