Make Ricky Gervais Laugh

Make Ricky Gervais Laugh is a feature that premiered during Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s Xfm radio show during the Pre-Capital era.

Origins

Steve came up with the idea after their producer at the time, Emma, brought some bottles of beer that had an image on the label that Steve was confident would make Ricky laugh. It did, and Steve decided to turn this into a competition where listeners would fax in pictures or jokes to try and make Ricky laugh. If they succeeded, they would win a prize. Ricky was skeptical about the feature, and often mocked Steve about how uninteresting this feature must be for listeners who could not see the pictures.

Pre-Capital Xfm

This feature appears on the Pre-Capital tapes provided by Jezoc which were most likely broadcast in mid to late June of 1998. The origin of the feature can be found on Tape 3 Side A. In these early tapes, Ricky and Steve would not explain or describe the pictures to the listeners. The picture used for this feature on Tape 2 Side A reminded Ricky of one of his nephews that had mumps. The picture from Tape 2 Side B was not sent in by a listener, it was a drawing done by Steve.

Xfm

After the Capital takeover, Ricky and Steve revisited this feature twice on their new show with Karl Pilkington. The first was on 06 April 2002 and featured a photo from The Sun that was found by Steve. It is a picture of Michael Stipe of R.E.M. The second time was on 01 November 2003. It comes from a news story with the title, “Mother, 48, Seduces Boy, 14.” After Steve sets this up, he shows Ricky the picture of the woman who the 14 year old describes as “Every boy’s fantasy.”. In both of these instances, Ricky did, in fact, laugh.