How Ricky Gervais Became a Comedy King

The British comedian Ricky Gervais, known to his fans as "the funny little fat man," created the original version of the TV sitcom "The Office" for the BBC. He based the series on his own experiences doing drudge work in cubicle jobs.

The show was such a huge success that Gervais became a celebrity. And now at 48, he's all over the place: in movies, starring in comedy specials on HBO, and a frequent guest on Letterman and Jon Stewart. The Golden Globes announced he'll be the host of their big award show in January.

Gervais is an inspiration to late-bloomers everywhere - he didn't even begin his comedy career until he was 40, just eight years ago when the first episode of "The Office" was broadcast.

Gervais wrote, directed and starred in the British "Office;" his character is a cringe-inducing loser of an office manager. It's a comedy of embarrassment.

Photo Essay: Ricky Gervais
Web Extra: Ricky's Office
Web Extra: A Visit to 60 Minutes
Web Extra: Elmo & Ricky

It's "watch and wince," as he explores the squirmy awkwardness of real life situations. Take for instance the episode where Gervais mines the misery of being fired: "There's good news and bad news. The bad news some of you will lose your jobs, yeah. Yeah. The good news is, I've been promoted. You're still thinking about the bad news, aren't ya," he told his staff on the show.

Gervais says there were no ad-libs in "The Office." In writing the show, he worked on playing up his character's lack of self-awareness.

"There are a lot more important things than jokes in a comedy. Jokes aren't the most important things in a comedy," he told 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl. "Character. A situation can be funnier than a line."

Gervais' innovation in "The Office" was heightening the sense of reality by shooting it like a fake documentary, with awkward pauses and no laugh track.

One of Gervais' specialties is dead-pan handling taboo subjects.

Gervais has come up with a formula for what's funny that seems to have people laughing all over the world. "The Office" airs in more than 100 countries. Local actors were hired in France, in Chile, and five other countries to play the parts.

In the United States, his character is played by Steve Carell.

"I think that was part of the success of 'The Office.' Everyone knew what they were watching. Everyone worked in an office," Gervais told Stahl. "We weren't explaining things about law or order or, you know, everyone got it straightaway."

With all his success, there was little evidence of the wealthy man he has become when 60 Minutes first met him at the Central Park Zoo in New York City.

"Apparently all polar bears are left-handed," he joked.

He's the one who chose the zoo, telling us it's one of his favorite places in the world.

"So in other words, if they fish, they go with their left paw, or are you making this up?" Stahl asked.

"Well, they'd put the fork in their left hand and the knife in their right. That's what I heard," he replied.

He came dressed down and without a big star's entourage. But right away, he began telling our cameramen what to shoot, and when to shoot. "Turn the camera off, let's not talk, let's just find the red panda!" he instructed.

And then, ignoring Stahl, he totally took over, and began doing his shtick right into the camera: "Look you see, two penguins up there, gone behind a rock. I don't know why they've gone behind there together. But they're both male which is fine, but a hundred years ago that was frowned on in penguin circles," he joked.

Gervais invited us to his office in London, his comedy headquarters.

In his office you can see the evidence of just how driven and successful he has become, like a life-size "Simpsons" character from the episode he wrote, the desk where he writes his movies, a poster from a blockbuster he co-starred in, and children's books he has authored.

"It's a children's book for existentialists. Life is pointless and futile and then you die," Gervais told Stahl.

"And it's going to be a huge bestseller," she predicted.

"Merry Christmas!!!" he replied.

It made Stahl wonder if he is - like a lot of comedians - at heart a dark and angry man.

Asked if there's a little bit of anger in him, Gervais said, "Yeah, but I'm not angry at the world. I'm not angry how my life turned out. I've had a good life. Even growing up when I was poor, I enjoyed it."

Growing up, he was poor. He was the youngest of four children. His father was a laborer, and they had to live in public housing. Gervais says he still feels like an outsider.

"I still feel it, a little bit sometimes if I'm with very, very over-privileged people, I still think they're waiting for me to make a faux pas, to pick up the wrong fork. I don't care. I quite like it, 'cause I'm not gonna pick up the wrong fork," he told Stahl.

Gervais stuck a fork in the British class system when he got a scholarship to the University College London. There, his lack of polish turned out to be a plus.

"I think the lecturers liked me," he remembered. "They thought I was like Eliza Doolittle."

"They were going to mold you," Stahl remarked. "Pygmalion."

"'You know, he has brains but he talks like a guttersnipe. I think we can change this lad,'" Gervais joked.

It's not entirely clear how they changed the lad. Right after graduation, he was singing in a band, sporting David Bowie hair. It was his first try for show business fame. It didn't work out.

"We failed miserably. But at least I tried," Gervais remembered.

"You were in the top 5,000 or something like that," Stahl joked.

"We did a little better than that. I think we were in the top 75 or something," he replied.

"Well, that's not bad," Stahl said.

With his music career tanking, Gervais took off the makeup, put on a suit and tie and a few pounds, and worked in obscure office jobs for the next decade, where he met Stephen Merchant, his writing partner.

Asked how "The Office" came about, Merchant told Stahl, "Well, Ricky had never acted, he had never done stand-up comedy, he just had this sort of innate understanding of people and he was able to observe them and to sort of reproduce that and he would just do it in the office to amuse me. He would play little characters."

"Just as friends sitting in the office?" Stahl asked.

"Amusing ourselves, yeah," Merchant replied.

And so Merchant asked Gervais to help him write and star in a student film about an office. The BBC loved it and, at the age of 40, Gervais turned it into "The Office."

Now he and Stephen Merchant make money from all the re-runs and spin-offs, including $50,000 an episode from the American version alone.

"I remember saying to my girlfriend, when it all started going really well, 'Oh, why didn't I do this before?' And she went, 'Because you wouldn't have been any good,'" he remembered.

"You needed to do the observing and living," Stahl remarked.

"Of course," Gervais agreed.

He and his girlfriend now live in a $6 million house in London with a pool in the basement; they also live in a luxury apartment in New York. But the poor boy from the housing project is having a hard time counting his money.

"'Cause I'm not proud of being rich," Gervais said.

Asked what's wrong with being rich, Gervais told Stahl, "There's nothing wrong with being rich. But, it's nothing to be proud of. I was lucky. Why am I paid a million times a nurse's wages? 'Cause I came up a formula that sold."

"Well, you could give it all away," Stahl said.

"Well, I could give it all away," Gervais said. But he added, "I like the freedom it gives me, and I like having, you know, a nice house."

"But you're ashamed of it," Stahl remarked.

"I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not ashamed of it," he insisted.

"You seem to be," Stahl pointed out.

"Because there are people who work as hard as me, and they haven't got that 'cause they don't do what I do. They don't do show business. They build walls," he replied.

"There's something about your family involved here, something about your father," Stahl noticed.

"Well, it was the way I was brought up, yeah. I mean, I was poor. I didn't even know I was poor till I went to university and everyone spoke differently to me and spoke like the queen. And poverty is bad, poverty is horrible. But, when I did 'The Office' I was so proud. Then the check came in, and it ruined it a bit, 'cause I didn't want people to think that that was mixed in with my pride, I suppose. But, as you say, I got over that," he explained.

He did get over it, and the checks keep on coming from his movies, and now sold out stand-up tours. It's where he can be his most outrageous

AIDS, the Holocaust, kids with cancer: there isn't a cringe-inducing subject he won't touch. He aims to offend.

"So there's no subject that's taboo, nothing. Could you make a joke about the queen?" Stahl asked.

"Oh God, of course," Gervais replied, who has made jokes about the Holocaust and race.

"But the thing is, the target is prejudice or myself. I play a man who says the wrong thing. So I'm the idiot," he explained.

He's certainly the idiot in the HBO series "Extras," the comedy he wrote and starred in after "The Office." He plays a struggling actor.

In other words, Gervais was the same overweight, middle-aged schmo he was in "The Office."

"Some people say you keep playing the same guy," Stahl pointed out.

"I do," he admitted. "Just like Laurel and Hardy did. Just like Woody Allen. Just like Bill Murray. Just like all my favorite people."

But his character in "Extras," while still a loser, reflects the change in Gervais' own life.

Ask Gervais how success has changed him and he says not at all, "I'm the same person I've always been."

But now he has fame, the spotlight and gobs of money.

He clings to his old life, from which he draws so much of his humor, worrying about what will happen now that the loser is a winner.

Produced by Richard Buddenhagen and Shachar Bar-On