Corden Apologizes For Stealing Gervais Twitter Joke

[PGage]

Not to pile on James Corden, about whom I have few strong feelings pro or con, as I have seen very little of his work (mostly the clip of him driving through Liverpool with Paul McCartney, which I like). But he was caught telling a monologue joke about Twitter that was almost word for word from Gervais’ 2018 Netflix Special.

Gervais’ speculation that Cordon had no idea, and just approved and used a joke brought to him by his writers, sounds right. Unaddressed in this article is, was the writer fired? Isn’t something like this about as bad as it gets for a late night comedy writer?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/02/james-corden-ricky-gervais-joke/

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[Adam Bowie]

I always tend to give writers the benefit of the doubt in these things. Twitter being called a Town Square is a widely used (and bad) analogy. But the "guitar lessons" bit is just too on the nose to be an accident, so yes, it was probably "borrowed" from Gervais. Now whether the writer knowingly reused the joke, or whether it just lodged in the back of their brain and came out in a session is something else. I can believe that a writer might honestly think that it was an original idea rather than from a four year old comedy routine.

There's a famous story about a packet of biscuits eaten at a railway station that Douglas Adams related in his Hitchhikers' novel, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. Adam's claimed that it had actually happened to him, but it had appeared in films and other works on multiple occasions. Maybe it happened in real-life as well? Maybe not. Snopes has an article about it: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pinched-cookies/

Adam

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[Mark Jeffries]

Also, it should be stated--and I have no feelings either way towards British Jimmy--that he is a figure who seems to generate either much love or much hate.  It seems as though those who prefer to be called "queer" these days hate him because he's a straight man who likes musical theater. I think the other criticism is that he tries too hard.  It also seems that there are Brits who hate him for simple overexposure--once he made it big with "Ned and Stacey" and the play "One Man, Two Guv'nors," he was hosting every awards show and seemed to be on TV constantly in the UK.  There is something about him that rubs people the wrong way, and it seems especially interesting because he has done more for musical theater exposure on television through his show and hosting the Tonys than anyone since Rosie O'Donnell was doing a daily talk show.  Perhaps it will be a good thing for him that he is ending his run on "The Late Late Show" and can figure out some new paths to go in his career.

Mark Jeffries
spotl...@gmail.com

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[PGage]

 I have actually done a lot of psychological research on memory illusions, and it is totally plausible that someone can genuinely believe the origin of something is in their own mind when they demonstrably got it from something else they witnessed or heard. I have no trouble believing that is what happened here, but some Twitter critics make a possibly telling point, which is that the Gervais special is well known in the comedy writing world, and it is not likely that a room full of late night comedy writers could not explicitly recognize the source of this joke. 

Song writers are often unconsciously influenced by songs they have been exposed to, but it would strain credulity if a room full of ten rock and roll musicians wrote a new song together that began with the opening riff from Smoke on the Water and claimed they had come up with it themselves.

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