Ricky Gervais has admitted James Corden was ‘horrified’ after accidentally telling one of his jokes on the Late Late Show.
During a clip from his late night talk show, the presenter discusses Elon Musk Twitter takeover, but fans noticed the monologue was very similar to one of Ricky’s routines from his Humanity special, with the After Life creator referencing it in a now-deleted tweet.
At end of October, James said on his show: ‘That’s what I think when you see Elon Musk talk about Twitter, he says, “well it’s the town square”, but it isn’t.
‘Because if someone puts up a poster in a town square that says guitar lessons available, you don’t get people in the town square saying, ”I don’t want to play the guitar! I want to play the piano, you piece of s***!”
‘Well that sign wasn’t for you, it was for somebody else, you don’t have to get mad about all of it.’
The Office creator shared a since-removed clip and wrote: ‘The bit about the town square advert for guitar lessons is brilliant’, referencing his own joke, which is almost identical to the one James had told.
James, 44, was met with fierce backlash and later claimed the joke was copied ‘inadvertently’ without realising where it originated, and Ricky later deleted his tweet because he ‘felt sorry’ for the Gavin & Stacey star, while he has now confirmed James contacted him directly over the situation.
He told the Headliners podcast: ‘He did. I said “Don’t worry about it”, I said “if your writers were in the back of the room when I was warming up and you got it out there before I did it on Netflix…”, but whatever you think of James Corden there is no way he knowingly ripped off my joke and thought he’d get away with it.’
But the 61-year-old star insisted he has no regrets over reacting to what happened, given he has no idea how someone ended up pitching the quip.
He added: ‘No, because I’m allowed. I didn’t how it had happened. And I thought it was funny. I thought it was absurd that it was such an obvious rip-off.
‘There are some plagiarists but a lot of it is genuinely accidental. So that is clearly my routine but I don’t think he came up with it at all. I think a writer pitched that to him and didn’t tell him it was mine, or the writer forgot.’
He noted that James was ‘horrified’ over the mix-up and Ricky dismissed the idea the actor and presenter knowingly stole the joke for his monologue.
‘I don’t know. I want to be fair. But what I don’t believe is James Corden watched that and thought “I can just rip that off”. There’s just no way. There is no way James Corden watched that and thought “I can get away with this,”‘ he said.
‘It was the biggest special of the year. There is no way he thought “I can rip him off”. He was horrified. No chance.’
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