Increasingly frustrated, he tries to win her over by planting his most passionate kiss on her lips. When he steps back, however, she looks distinctly non-plussed, shrugging: "Not really my cup of tea."Gervais says that Bloom was a tremendously good sport. For this series, Gervais and Merchant have persuaded such high-profile names as David Bowie, Chris Martin, Sir Ian McKellen, Jonathan Ross, Robert Lindsay, Stephen Fry and Daniel Radcliffe to send themselves up.In the first episode, Orlando Bloom bravely takes the rise out of his image as one of the world's most swoon-inducing heart-throbs. What he's actually saying is: 'This is why I'm better than you.' Why should we laugh at this man who has a great life? We don't want to listen to people telling us what a great holiday they had That's not funny or interesting. Where's the vulnerability?"Gervais chips in that "you want someone stumbling on stage and telling you his life is shit. You can admire cool comedians, but you can't love them or hug them like we want to hug Oliver Hardy or Johnny Vegas.
Comic characters should be precarious."You care about Stan and Ollie because you want to stop them falling backwards off that wall. In the same way, you can't help warming to Woody Allen when he asks a girl, 'What are you doing on Saturday night?' 'Committing suicide.' 'What about Friday?' He's so desperate, he'll make do with someone who wants to kill herself!"The other element that sets Extras apart, of course, is its employment of real-life stars playing twisted versions of themselves. We love a loser.The more comic characters strive for success, the more they are doomed to founder. Like all the great domestic comedy figures, including Gervais' most celebrated creation, the woefully and wonderfully misguided David Brent, Andy is trapped by his own weaknesses and crippled by awkwardness and embarrassment."One of our bugbears," Merchant reflects, "is the stand-up who thinks he's cool and above the audience.
Frequently playing with tone and dancing with thematic partners not readily associated with post-alternative comedy (racism and homophobia, for instance) the series works on several other levels, too.It adheres, for example, to the first rule of British sitcom: failure is funny. No, I won't mention any names!"When they're standing there chatting to me, they are clearly loving it so much more than I am. I try to be polite, but I'm thinking 'I don't respect your work in the slightest.' What am I supposed to say to them? 'Bring me your ideas - I'm just dying to work with you'? 'Let's go skiing together'?"But, fascinating and topical subject though it undoubtedly is, Extras is much more than a meditation on the pernicious effects of fame. If there's one thing worse than members of the public coming up to talk to me at parties, it's actors from terrible shows like... "I don't like being recognised much and I always feel a bit self-conscious.