Ricky Gervais: ‘Oh, You’ll Pay, You’ll All Pay …’

… for his series of podcasts, that is.

Good lord. We’re a linguistically clever bunch here at hecklerspray. We just bet - when you read that headline - that you thought rotund funnyman Ricky Gervais had been heard embarking on some sort of murderous embittered rampage against the world, didn’t you? Well? Didn’t you?

Well… he hasn’t. Instead, Ricky has announced that his quite wonderful weekly podcasts - given away for free these last twelve glorious weeks - are to continue unabated.

The bad news? Now you’ll have to pay for them.

Don’t worry, though - this isn’t some ludicrously overpriced affair like a hand-wringing extortionate West End cinema or any shop charging more than, say, 27p for the new Babyshambles album. This is a pleasant and reasonable offering from Ricky Gervais (DVDs) - kind of like a benevolent old man handing out large tins of sweets for nary sixpence a pop. Or a particularly attractive prostitute offering ‘every which way’ for £2.50 and a bag of chips.

The podcasts - recently having entered the Guinness Book Of Records as the bestest most special most ever downloaded podcasts in the world ever - will now be available at roughly £1.10 a pop, or £4 for a ’season’. hecklerspray still isn’t quite sure how these ’seasons’ are being classified, i.e whether it’s all-too-brief collection of episodes like Peep Show or whether it’s a watch-til-you’re-seventy infinityfest like Lost. Only time will tell, we guess.

The greatest thing of all about these podcasts is the new-found fame they have afforded ex-radio-producer and Gervais acolyte Karl Pilkington. Any London-dwelling XFM listeners out there will already be familiar with The K-Man and his unique brand of storytelling - be it his recollections of the time his mother shaved a cat "because it was sick," his insistence that Chinese people "don’t age well" or his initial idea that the Diary Of Anne Frank was "an Adrian Mole sort of thing."

Karl has also found worldwide fame due to his quote "I Could Eat A Knob At Night" (don’t ask us to explain) being featured on paraphernalia from mugs to T-shirts to beanie hats.

In short - the man’s a legend.

Oh. And let’s be frank. If anyone out there has so far failed to hear Karl’s regular Monkey News feature, then your life up until this point has really not been worth living.

Still … any radio producers out there fancy sponsoring a hecklerspray podcast? Anyone willing to pay money to hear us all waffle on for sixty minutes of unbridled nonsense?

We all have an hour free next Thursday?

Read More:

Gervais Charges For Podcast Show - BBC

[story by C J Davies]