When the 2016 Marmite shortage hit the news, with Tesco briefly pulling Unilever products in a price row, most people panicked or made jokes about hoarding. Ricky Gervais did the arithmetic. “How can there be a Marmite shortage”, he asked his millions of followers, “when one jar lasts most families two years?” It is a small thing, but it is a perfect Gervais line, and it puts him on this list as the patron saint of people who keep a jar going for far too long.
Does Ricky Gervais like Marmite?
He is gloriously non-committal. During the shortage he also posted that he did not have any strong feelings either way about Marmite, which is funny precisely because Marmite is the one food you are supposed to have strong feelings about. So Gervais is neither a lover nor quite a hater. He is the man holding up the middle of the love-it-or-hate-it graph that the brand insists does not exist, and making a joke out of it.
Who is Ricky Gervais?
Ricky Dene Gervais was born on 25 June 1961 in Reading, Berkshire, the youngest of four children, and grew up in the Whitley area of the town. He studied philosophy at University College London. There is a neat coincidence here for Marmite fans: Reading is also where a young Daniel Craig once worked as “Mr Marmite” handing out samples, so the town has quietly produced both a Marmite promoter and a Marmite sceptic.
Ricky Gervais before fame
Gervais came to comedy late and by an odd route. In the 1980s he was briefly a pop musician in the new-wave duo Seona Dancing, and he managed the band Suede before they became famous. He then worked in radio at Xfm, where he hired Stephen Merchant as his assistant. The two went on to write together.
Ricky Gervais’s breakthrough: The Office
In 2001 Gervais and Merchant created “The Office”, the mockumentary sitcom in which Gervais played David Brent, the painfully self-deluded manager of a Slough paper company. It was remade around the world, most successfully in the United States, and Brent is still the part most people reach for when they want to describe a bad boss.
Ricky Gervais after The Office
He has stayed prolific and deliberately divisive. With Merchant he made “Extras”, and on his own he created “Derek” and the widely loved “After Life”, about a grieving local newspaper journalist. He has toured huge stand-up shows, hosted the Golden Globes five times with a brief that seemed to be to annoy the room, and become known as an outspoken atheist and animal welfare campaigner. He is, in other words, a bit Marmite himself, though on the actual jar he refuses to take a side.
Ricky Gervais’s notable work at a glance
- The Office (2001-2003), as David Brent
- Extras (2005-2007)
- Hosting the Golden Globe Awards (2010-2020, five times)
- Derek (2012-2014)
- After Life (2019-2022)
