Ricky Dene Gervais (born 25 June 1961 in Reading, Berkshire) is an English actor, writer, comedian, singer, presenter, director, and children's novelist.
Gervais first appeared in the public limelight in 1983 where he and Bill Macrae, a university friend, formed Seona Dancing, a New Wave/Synth-Pop/Electropop duo that released two singles, "More to Lose" and "Bitter Heart"
, which respectively reached #117 and #70 in the UK charts.
Soon after, Gervais joined the radio presenter ranks of the unlicenced radio station XFM doing daily night-time sessions. This entailed a lot of effort, and he decided to get an assistant. He hired the first person to turn up after he agreed to do "all the boring stuff"; that person was Stephen Merchant, who has since co-written with Gervais on multiple projects. After Capital Radio took over XFM and made Gervais redundant, he ended up working on several projects for The BBC on both the radio and TV.
He then appeared a lot on Channel 4 in shows including Golden Years, The 11 O'Clock Show and Meet Ricky Gervais. In 2001, a mockumentary sitcom he starred in, co-created, co-wrote and co-directed with Merchant premiered on BBC Two under the title The Office. It has since become one of the most successful British comedy exports of all time, being sold to broadcasters in over 80 countries and inspiring the massively successful American remake. Following the show's popularity, Gervais started the first of his stand-up comedy tours, along with writing his first book Flanimals.
After this point, it seems hard to keep track of all his projects, which include Extras (also co-written with Stephen), the podcast The Ricky Gervais Show with Merchant (and their long-suffering former XFM producer Karl Pilkington, who was also in An Idiot Abroad, which Gervais and Merchant produced), several more stand-up tours with new material, co-writing/directing and starring in several films and shows, voice-acting, and making countless cameos. Most notably, he's creating his own animated show for Netflix called Alley Cats.