Ricky Gervais recalls meeting David Bowie for the first time

Ricky Gervais has reminisced about the first time he met the late David Bowie, as fans around the world celebrate what would have been the musician’s 74th birthday.

Gervais collaborated with Bowie on a number of occasions, during a friendship that began shortly after the comedian’s breakthrough sitcom The Office debuted on the BBC in 2001.

“I was invited to a special performance by Bowie at BBC TV Centre,” Gervais told The Telegraph of their first encounter.

“In the green room afterwards, then director-general Greg Dyke bounced over to me and Jane [Fallon, writer, TV producer and Gervais’s long-term partner] and said, ‘You’re a big Bowie fan, aren’t you? Do you want to meet him?’ I said, ‘Oh, I don’t want to pester him’. He said, ‘No, come on’. Then he shouted ‘Salman! We’re going to say hello to David.’ So there I was, with the head honcho of the Beeb and Salman Rushdie, chatting to Bowie in his dressing room.”

While Bowie was apparently unfamiliar with Gervais’s work when they met, he later emailed him to say he’d greatly enjoyed watching The Office.

“I don’t know how he got my email address,” Gervais said. “He’s like the FBI. But he said: ‘So I watched The Office. I laughed. What do I do now?’”

From there, the pair began a penpal relationship and would often hang out together at Bowie’s concerts, or whenever Bowie came to England.  

Bowie made a famous appearance in Gervais’s sitcom Extras, while the comedian performed a stand-up set at the Bowie-curated High Line festival in New York in 2007.

“I went over and Madison Square Gardens was sold out,” Gervais said. “I thought it was just going to be this little benefit gig, so I asked Bowie: ‘What sort of stuff shall I do?’ He said: ‘Anything you like as long as it’s delightfully offensive.’”

Bowie ended up introducing Gervais by walking on stage as he played a harmonica, beginning: “Chubby little loser.”

The intro was a reference to Bowie’s appearance in Extras, in which actor Andy Millman (Gervais) bumps into Bowie at a bar, and shares his concern that he’s lost his integrity.

However, Bowie responds to him with contempt, and goes to the piano to make up a song ridiculing Andy, the “funny little fat man”.

Gervais wrote the lyrics to the song himself and sent them to Bowie, asking him to do “something retro like ‘Life on Mars’.”

"And he went, ‘Yeah, I’ll just knock off a quick f***ing ‘Life on Mars’ for you, shall I?” Gervais recalled.

He noted that this was “technically [Bowie’s] last show”, while Extras was his last filmed appearance, branding the fact “surreal”.

The Office star was among the famous names to take part in A Bowie Celebration this weekend, an event that paid tribute to Bowie’s extensive catalogue of work.

In a review for The Independent, critic Mark Beaumont praised Bowie’s former bandmate Mike Garson for curating “an impressive array of guest stars and Bowie backing musicians” for the event.

“In almost impossible circumstances, Garson pulled off a Herculean task; doing Bowie proud, at a distance,” he wrote.

Read the full review here.