James Corden nearly apologizes for “inadvertently" stealing a Ricky Gervais joke
He won't apologize for the egg yolk omelet and he won't apologize for taking Ricky Gervais' joke from 2018
James Corden can’t catch a break this month. First, he’s denied his egg white free egg yolk omelet at Balthazar, and now he can’t tell a Ricky Gervais joke from 2018 on his talk show. During Corden’s Late Late Show monologue last night, the beleaguered host poked fun at Elon Musk’s recent Twitter buy-out. Can you blame him? Everyone can’t stand that guy!
“When you see Elon Musk talk about Twitter, he does this thing where he goes ‘Well, it’s the town square,’” Corden said. “But it isn’t. Because if someone puts up a poster in a town square that says ‘guitar lessons available,’ you don’t get people in the town going ‘I don’t want to play the guitar! I want to play the piano, you piece of shit!’”
“That sign wasn’t for you, it was for someone else. You don’t have to get mad!”
Unfortunately, while Corden was making light of one of the world’s great free-speech defenders (and by free speech, we mean speech that costs $8 a month), he was disrespecting another: Ricky Gervais. Taking time out from demeaning and humiliating trans people, Gervais noticed that Corden’s joke is curiously similar to one featured on his 2018 stand-up show Humanity:
“That’s what the world is like, people take everything personally. I think the world revolves around them, particularly on Twitter. I’m not tweeting at anyone, I’m just tweeting. I don’t know who’s following me; they can be following me without my knowing, choose to read my tweet, and then take that personally. That’s like going into a town square, and there’s a notice for guitar lessons and you go, ‘But I don’t fucking want guitar lessons!’
Nevertheless, never one to take things personally, Gervais didn’t hold the joke against Corden. “I reckon one of the writers ‘came up with it’ for him,” Gervais tweeted to a fan asking about the joke. “I doubt he would knowingly just copy such a famous stand up routine word for word like that.”
Now well-acquainted with the art of the public controversy, Corden wrote on Twitter that he “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,” Corden tweeted. “You can watch all Ricky’s excellent specials on Netflix.”
What’s missing there are the words “I’m sorry,” “I apologize,” or even “I regret.” The art of the non-apology apology is Corden’s secret weapon. For example, he recently “explained” but did not apologize for acting like a “tiny cretin of a man” toward the staff of the New York City restaurant Balthazar. Still, he did say that he has “such respect” for anyone who does “such a job.” We assume the “job” he’s describing is “waiting on an apology from James Corden.”
[via Insider]