Picture this. You are Ricky Gervais. Not David Brent, the immortal boss he created in The Office, nor Andy, the unfulfilled actor he became for the BBC comedy series Extras. No, you are Gervais himself. You are at the peak of your power. Hollywood stars give each other DVDs of your work as presents, and the world returns your call. The public gawps as you buy your underpants, while the most powerful executives in film, TV and publishing will agree to any project you desire. You have absolute freedom. What do you do with it?
How about putting your energy into some strange animal characters you dreamt up for your nephew when you were 18? Characters that have, as yet, no real world and little story, even though they have reached their second book? You wouldn't? Neither would I. But then, we're not Ricky Gervais.
We are in a five-star hotel in London, in a suite that costs £4,000 per night. Gervais, who not so long ago was poor enough to make a pint of beer last all night, is full of wonder at the fittings. The suite has been booked for photography, and a young woman is putting on costume to become a Clunge Ambler, one of 56 Flanimals in Gervais's new universe. We're in Beckett territory. The Clunge Ambler is "a sweaty little waddle-gimp" that shuffles around trying to cuddle things. It has a cruel existence. "He is weird and smells, so is constantly being beaten up and buried. He never learns his lesson and always tries to find and cuddle the Flanimal that buried him. The Flanimal usually buries him again." On Gervais's website, a Clunge Ambler is pictured at London zoo, trying to cuddle a zoo keeper. The website says zoo staff have been trained not to beat up and bury Clunge Amblers, tempting though it may be, but to try to send them back to wherever it was they came from.
Which was a book — and on the next page, the Wobboid Mump (illustrated by a sad, life-battered eye) is "one of the most useless organisms in the universe. It is basically an eye in jelly. It spends most of its time looking around, trying to find reason in its existence. It never finds it, as it is blind". With two Golden Globes and six Baftas, Gervais is our most garlanded comedian. His inner layers are a mystery. What do his children's books tell us about them?
Britain's Woody Allen has two modes for talking to interviewers. There are practised answers, which flow rapidly and work beautifully on the page, often using comic manipulations that are very funny. Or there are misunderstandings, opaque sentences and periods of silence, in which he confronts the unexpected with goodwill, but explains himself mainly through body language. This is what we want. The word trips have been heard before, so we must interrupt them. It is unpolished thought that opens a window into this increasingly private figure.
Do not underestimate Flanimals. Gervais says it is a labour of love. The supermodel Linda Evangelista once said she would not get out of bed for less than $10,000; Gervais gets out of bed to work, and turns down dazzlingly lucrative projects to make space for what matters. Right now, that's the second series of Extras, which explores similar themes of futility and misunderstanding. And Flanimals.
Why Flanimals?
He would have you believe it is just a laugh. He feels joy to think that children will ask how to say a ridiculous name, and parents will have as little idea as the child. And joy at sending up science. The style is that of an educational book on wildlife, but the education is illogical. Take the Edgor, slowest of the Flanimals. At its slowest, it can actually move more slowly than some Flanimals that don't move at all. "I love the idea of this being taken as a document, as a reference," says Gervais, picking up his book to read the description of the Dweezle Muzzgrub. "This screamy beedle," declares the voice of David Brent, "runs around wishing it could fly. Angry, tired and fed up with using its legs to get around, it sheds them so it can rest. Unfortunately, legs falling off is one of the most painful things ever and it screams itself to death in agony. Hardly a rest, is it? So be careful what you wish for." He cracks up. "That was just, like, the idea! That there's a moral!" Gervais is almost helpless with laughter.
He says he developed Flanimals because "I like coming up with stupid stuff... some things are intrinsically funny. But mainly I'm laughing at the idea of it being imposed upon the world." Which is funny, if self-indulgent. But there's more to it than that. And Gervais is not self-indulgent.
The first "fact" to know in the spotter's guide to Gervais is he thinks like a biologist. He approaches art as if it were science. Your responses to his work are planned long in advance, using the logic and workings of an emotional mathematician. The second fact is that, for all the awards and acclaim, he is a humble creature. He is proud of The Office, but knows it gives him no licence. Each new joke must be justified — a cheap gag, he says, deserves no mirth. It would be like winning money instead of working for it. In fact, every project has to be justified. There will be a feature film of Flanimals, but not yet: that would be trading on celebrity. First there must be this book, More Flanimals. Then a talking book, lasting "just half an hour, so we don't want to do a big sell on it". Then merchandise and a short film. Only then is a feature film possible.
"I want to earn it," says Gervais of the eventual film. "You know, it's not Spider-Man — it hasn't been around for ages." Over time this strategy will make a lot of money, but that is not the motive. Although he has been with the same girlfriend for 20 years, Gervais has no children, and he shows a single man's (more accurately, a single hypochondriac's) obsession with his legacy. He wants Flanimals to outlive him. This is not a tease: he's sincere.
He has passed on his genes to the Clunge Ambler.
His subjects are our emotional landscape and the meaninglessness of existence, which he contemplates with pitiless logic. According to Gervais, there are only two reasons to turn these subjects into comedy. One is to have fun: there is a scene in The Office — in which Brent gives Tim an appraisal — that needed 74 takes, because the pair kept laughing. The other is to make a connection with the 4m people in Britain who are his audience. "I always do stuff because I want to make some sort of connection," he says. "There's nothing else in the world than a connection."
