Ricky Gervais Denies Stealing Comedian's Joke After James Corden Debacle

Ricky Gervais has had to deny stealing another comedian's joke, just a day after settling a misunderstanding with James Corden over plagiarism claims.

Corden and Gervais appear to have made up after Corden admitted to "inadvertently" using Gervais "guitar lessons in a town square" joke on The Late Late Show.

Not long after that, British comedian Mike Cox tweeted a video showing similarities between his stand-up and a scene from Gervais's show After Life on Netflix.

On Wednesday morning Gervais tweeted at Cox, explaining where he got the idea for the joke from, which turned out to predate Cox's joke.

"James Corden has been caught stealing Ricky Gervais material, but is this karma coming back around?" Cox asked on Twitter on Tuesday. "Did Ricky steal my material for Ep4 of [After Life] or is this just a case of great minds thinking alike? I'll leave it up to you."

In the accompanying video, Cox describes a fat person claiming that their fat saved their life when they were impaled during an accident, as the fat protected their organs. The punchline suggested that they wouldn't have gotten hurt in the first place if they weren't so fat.

Underneath the video, a clip from After Life plays where a large woman describes an accident, and Gervais character delivers a similar punchline to Cox.

Cox told Newsweek he was deliberately vague within the tweet so people could "draw their own conclusions and enter into the debate."

He continued: "Personally, I think it quite unlikely Ricky Gervais has ever seen me at all, let alone do that joke! I think it's just a good example of how similar material can get without being ripped off."

Ten hours later, Gervais replied to Cox's tweet.

Initially the Twitter user @JonTudor refuted Cox's sentiment. "There's many many news reports way before your joke where people said 'fat saved their life' in all kinds of scenarios," they wrote, sharing an example of a news story, and tagged Gervais in the post.

The Office creator replied to both tweets. "Yes. The one I saw was on a Jonny Vaughan chat show about 30 years ago," he wrote, referencing a British broadcaster. Gervais suggested he may have even spoken about it on a radio show of his before too.

The discussion of joke "stealing" came about after Corden used a joke of Gervais' during the opening monologue of The Late Late Show with James Corden. The Twitter user @PaulFI9 put together a compilation video of the two jokes side by side to show how similar they are.

Corden used the Late Late Show social media accounts to explain what had happened.

"Inadvertently told a brilliant Ricky Gervais joke on the show last night, obviously not knowing it came from him. It's brilliant, because it's a Ricky Gervais joke," he wrote. Gervais then retweeted the message, suggesting that it's water under the bridge.

This article was updated on 11/02/2022 at 09:00 a.m. ET to add the comments from Mike Cox.