On September 18, 2002, David Bowie played an exclusive gig for an invited audience of less than 100 people at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios in west London, for broadcast the following month on BBC Radio 2. Among those in attendance at this special 'Back To The Beeb' performance, was English comedian Ricky Gervais, who'd recently become a household name in the UK thanks to the huge success of his 'mockumentary' sitcom The Office.
The evening would set in motion a chain of events which would result in Bowie making an unforgettable cameo in Gervais' post-Office sitcom Extras, as Gervais explains during an interview on The Overlap's Stick To Football podcast.
"We were in the Green Room after - I was with my girlfriend Jane [Fallon, author and TV producer] - and there's people milling around, and Greg Dyke, who was in charge of the BBC then, bounced over said, 'You're a massive Bowie fan aren't you?'," Gervais remembers. "I went, Yeah. 'Do you want to meet him?' I went, Um okay, and he went, 'Come on, come and meet him...'
Gervais contines: "We're on the way to Bowie's dressing room, and on the way he went, 'Salman!' and [novelist] Salman Rushdie joined us. So there's me, Jane, Salman Rushdie, and Greg Dyke and he went [knocks, as if knocking on Bowie's dresssing room door]. And Bowie opened [the door], and he went, 'Oh hello'... he was eating, and he went, 'Hello Salman', and [Greg Dyke said] 'Oh, this is Ricky'... 'Oh, hello', and he didn't know who I was, of course. and that was it."
"Then about a week later I got an email from David Bowie. Someone had given him The Office DVD: he must have said, 'Who was that fat little bloke with Salman Rushdie?' 'He's in The Office.' 'What's that?' And he got the DVD and watched the DVD, and he sent me an email, and it just said, 'I watched. I laughed. What do I do now?' And we sort of became pen pals."
Gervais went on to tell the Overlap team - ex-Manchester United stars Roy Keane and Gary Neville,. former Liverpool captain Jamie Carragher, Arsenal legend Ian Wright and former Man City star - and 2002 'Queen Of The Jungle' / I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here winner - Jill Scott, that Bowie's appearance on Extras was "one of the best days of my life."
He also revealed that he feels that he inadvertently insulted his hero when asking him to write the music for his guest spot.
"I sent him the lyrics and I called him, and said, Did you get the lyrics? He went, Yeah yeah', and I said, Give me something sort of retro [music], you know, like Life On Mars. And he went, 'Oh, yeah, I'll knock off a quick fucking Life On Mars for you'. And I and I realised that was so insulting."
Watch Bowie's Extras scene below:
And you can watch the full interview with Ricky Gervais below:
