James Corden just buried himself a little deeper by retelling a joke originally told by Ricky Gervais nearly word-for-word during Monday’s monologue on “The Late Late Show.”
The nearly verbatim copycat joke is making Corden the laughing stock of the world of comedy. In addition, a restaurant owner recently claimed the comedian has been rude to his servers. One would think Corden would sharpen up and try to reclaim whatever dignity he had left, but he chose to rip another comedian’s content, instead.
Corden’s joke was based on Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.
“When you see Elon Musk talk about Twitter, he does this thing where he goes, ‘It’s the town square,'” Corden said Monday on “The Late Late Show.”
“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 wanna play the guitar!’ But that sign wasn’t for you, it was for somebody else — you don’t have to get mad about all of it,” Corden continued.
Fans of Gervais will recall that he said something nearly identical during his 2018 Netflix special, “Humanity,” as he joked about angry Twitter users.
“[It’s] like going into a town square, and seeing a big notice board that says, ‘Notice: Guitar lessons,’ and going: ‘I don’t fucking want guitar lessons!’ … Fine! It’s not for you, then. Just walk away, don’t worry about it,” Gervais said.
Gervais called Corden out by sharing a clip from Corden’s show and pointing out the duplicated content.
“The bit about the town square advert for guitar lessons is brilliant,” Gervais said.
Gervais ended up deleting the tweet.
“I reckon one of the writers ‘came up with it’ for him. I doubt he would knowingly just copy such a famous stand up routine word for word like that,” he said. (RELATED: James Corden Retracts Apology After Being ‘Abusive’ To Balthazar Staff. Owner Immediately Hits Back)
Corden resurfaced with low-key shame on Tuesday afternoon and acknowledged that he had retold a joke initially spoken by Gervais, but he definitely didn’t issue an apology of any kind.
“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. You can watch all Ricky’s excellent specials on Netflix,” Corden said, as he continued to dance around his error.