Politics
Politics is the second solo stand-up show by Ricky Gervais released on VHS and DVD on 15 November 2004. It was filmed at The Palace Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue in London.
Tour
The show ran from April to September in 2004. It played in 9 different cities, including, Newcastle at the Opera House, Birmingham at the Alexandra Theatre, York at the Opera House, Oxford at the New Theatre, Glasgow at the Pavillion, Manchester at the Royal Opera House, London at the Bloomsbury Theatre, Palace Theatre, and Apollo Hammersmith, Edinburgh at the Playhouse, and Dublin at The Point.
Themes
Like Animals, this show begins with a video introduction where Gervais approaches a man in a wheelchair on the street. He comments about how “political” he is, then patronizes him and puts him in a fez and plays with his wheelchair. Gervais is featured in the video along with Ash Atalla, the producer of The Office.
The show is loosely centered on political observations with jokes about Hitler, Nazis, pedophilia, racism, and disability. At one point, Gervais reads from his “favourite leaflet” which suggests 10 tips for homosexual men to avoid contracting HIV. The leaflet is entitled, “You know, you don’t always have to have anal sex.” Through breaks of laughter, Gervais reads 5 out of 10 of the suggested alternatives.
Quotes
- Ricky Gervais: I don't do enough for charity - I do it a bit, but you can always do more. But I look at it like this - it's a pain, isn't it?
- Ricky Gervais: I think Schindler's List is a fantastic film. And I didn't watch it at the cinema actually. I got it out on video, about a year later - by mistake - 'cause I'd never heard of it and I was in Blockbuster sort of late one night. I was a bit drunk, and I thought it was a porn film. No, 'cause I saw 18 certificate, top shelf. I thought, oh, black and white - dodgy home movie, German sounding - they're the best, and what swung it was that quote on the back from Barry Norman: "Have a box of Kleenex ready". Rubbish, I used about two. There was a shower scene.
- Ricky Gervais: [in the summer drought of 1976 in Reading, where Gervais grew up] There was a government advert at the time that said, "Save water: have a bath with a friend." Which I did. I say "a friend"; he was more a friend of my Granddad's. Ten quid's a lot to a kid in Reading. We used to call him "Granddad Charlie", actually. He wasn't our Granddad, he was just an old bloke who used to live across the road from us and used to always come round to play with us whenever he saw our parents go out.
[audience laugh]
Ricky Gervais: What? Lovely old man. He used to play with us. He taught me to wrestle.
[audience laugh again]
Ricky Gervais: What? Lovely old man. Lovely old man, old Granddad Charlie. And he used to do magic tricks. Oh, it was great. And he used to have a magic hat and he used to sit down and put the magic hat on his lap. And he'd show us there was nothing in it. There was nothing in it. And he'd put the magic hat on his lap, and we couldn't tell our parents 'cause it would stop the magic. I think that's how it worked. We were only little. And we used to queue up with our eyes shut and take turns in feeling the little rabbit in the hat. Whenever it got to me it was scared stiff, poor little thing. And it was always in a bad way, didn't have any ears or any fur, poor little thing. I made it sick once!
DVD Special Features
Karl Pilkington appears in Meet Karl Pilkington where he is interviewed by Gervais. He gives his views on some of the features touched on in the stand up show, including, race, disability, and the elderly, as well as some of his own favourite topics such as freaks, the concept of infinity and the Chinese.
Also featured on the DVD is The Making of Politics Featurette, a short video called Living with Ricky and an audio commentary by Gervais and his friend Robin Ince who toured with Gervais as the opening act. The commentary fails to address the stand-up, however, and instead involves Gervais tormenting Robin by reading from a diary he kept that supposedly documents all of Robin’s actions. This was released as a free download on 26 April 2008 through Gervais’ podcast which is available from iTunes.