The gig of the film of the TV sitcom...Ricky Gervais just can't shake off David Brent. He has announced more dates since this show but they sold out immediately. It wouldn't surprise me if there are even more but Gervais is also working on a new stand-up show called Humanity. Take your pick...
This review first appeared in the London Evening Standard.
Tickets for these two music shows featuring Ricky Gervais’ alter ego David Brent sold out in twelve minutes. It is amazing to think how many people were prepared to pay good money to see a fictional middle-aged sales rep being uncool. The first night was no disappointment on that score. Brent was excruciatingly uncool.
From the opening blasts of Ooh La La to the closing Free Love Freeway via further tracks from the album of the film Life on the Road Gervais kept a straight face and mostly stayed in character.
Even when Brent attempted the wince-making “biddly-biddly-bong” reggae of Equality Street with rapper Dom Johnson (played by Ben Bailey Smith) the white-shirted star carried the performance off with De Niroesque conviction.
It helped that the songs, enhanced by a slick backing band, were infectious and very funny as well as supremely naff.
Please Don’t Make Fun Of The Disableds almost sounds like a rejected Morrissey title and contained some stupendously tactless lyrics: “hold their hand if they’ve got one”. Elsewhere Slough, an anthemic ode to Mondeo Man, boasted the distinctive couplet “hard shoulder, coffee holder.”
The problem is the slippage between Brent here and on film. Onscreen he is a deluded front man playing flop gig after flop gig in Berkshire.
So how was he now confidently holding court in this packed iconic venue? Something does not compute. One can only suspect that his creator, who had a brief flirtation with pop fame in the 1980s, is living out his own rock fantasy here.
Maybe this event should simply be enjoyed rather than scrutinised.
Gervais has proved that fifteen years after he first appeared, his hapless, hopeless bore still has legs.
Just don’t say it too loudly or he might be tempted to release a second album.
