I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

That author on Slough,

> Ricky Gervais encapsulated its brutalist new town grim with ‘The Office’ before giving up and writing lame punching-down anti-woke “gags” for the educationally subnormal

That's a very strange reading on Gervais' post-The Office career. After The Office he did things like Extras, a sitcom about extras on TV and film sets, Derek, an emotional series about a well-meaning care worker who thinks it's more important to be kind than popular, and After Life, a series about a man who loses his wife young and how he deals with grief.

There’s also his standup career of being extra atheist as if the world has never seen a famous lapsed Christian Brit

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!

It isn't fit for humans now,

There isn't grass to graze a cow.

Swarm over, Death!

John Betjeman (1906 - 1984)

I concluded Noah's Arc was bollocks when I was 8 so I don't know why he goes on about it at his age

Because people in power of a similar age still go on about how they think it’s true?

He also did The Invention of Lying, which, 16 years since I watched it in the cinema, is still the answer I give without hesitation to "what's the worst movie you've ever seen?"

There's good money in it, I expect.

Plus, there's no harm in making a career (or a joke) out of being vaguely anti-nonsense.

For me that has to be High Life. Pitched to me as "Robert Pattinson has to to take care of a baby in space", in reality it was basically a side plot to "serial killers and rapists are stuck on a spaceship together" and all that implies.

Charlie Hebdo's publishers might disagree.

Have you not been following the news this week? A tremendous number of people still put a huge amount of stock into their silly superstitions.

Who?

I know there is the odd biblical literalist in power in the US, but have never come across one in the UK. The biggest group of Christians in the UK are Anglicans (who are not usually biblical literalists, although there are evangelical groups within it that might be) and Catholics (church firmly against Biblical literalism, although there might be odd individuals).

I think the reason atheists argue with Bibilical literalists is that its easy. It is somehting of a straw man: you pick a sub-group that is easy to debunk/discredit and then discredit the whole group by association. This has always been a problem: St Augustine talked about the damage done by people who interpreted the scriptures as contradicting what is known to be true in the 4th century.

Because it was edgy and transgressive when he was doing it 15 years ago.

Nowadays not so much.

To be honest, like most of his subsequent attempts to be edgy and transgressive, it wasn't really 15 years ago either. His entire career as a standup and Twitter commentator feels like an extension of the Brent "I don't live by The Rules you know" persona

> lapsed Christian Brit

I don't think he is a lapsed Christian though?

Yeah I don't know, you're selling it well. I kind of want to watch that.