Show Notes
Comedian and writer Ricky Gervais talks to John Wilson about his formative creative influences and inspirations. Ricky Gervais made his name as the co-creator and star of The Office, the mock documentary series which became a landmark in British television comedy, and was shown all round the world. Further success followed with the comedy drama series Extras, Life’s Too Short and Afterlife, and awards including two Emmys, four Golden Globes and seven BAFTAs. Ricky Gervais has written and performed numerous solo stand-up shows around the world, the latest of which, Mortality, was filmed for Netflix and has just earned him a tenth Golden Globe nomination. Gervais tells John Wilson about his early comic influences including Laurel and Hardy, Fawlty Towers and Derek and Clive, the foul-mouthed drunken alter egos created by comedy duo Peter Cook and Dudley Moore on three, largely improvised, spoken-word albums recorded in the 1970s. He also talks about his own approach to writing comedy and the huge inspiration that the 1984 mock rock documentary This Is Spinal Tap was on the creation of The Office. Producer: Edwina Pitman Archive used: Laurel and Hardy theme, Dance of the Cuckoos The Office, Series 1, Downsize, BBC2, 2001 Fawlty Towers, Series 1, A Touch of Class, BBC2, 1975 Golden Globes, opening monologue, 2020 This Is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner, 1984
More from This Cultural Life
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and academic Viet Thanh Nguyen talks to John Wilson about his formative influences and experiences. A child refugee, he moved to the United States with his family at the end of the Vietnam War. He is best known for his 2015 debut novel The Sympathizer which has been translated into 30 languages, has sold more than a million copies worldwide, and was adapted as an HBO television series in 2024. Viet Thanh Nguyen has written widely about conflict, migration and identity in his fiction and, more recently, in his memoir A Man Of Two Faces. A professor of English and American Studies, he teaches at the University of Southern California. Producer: Edwina Pitman Archive used: News archive from Newsdesk, BBC Radio 4, 29 & 30 April 1975 Clips from Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola, 1979 Extract from The Quiet American, Graham Greene, 1955 Trailer for The Sympathizer, HBO, 2024
Pioneering artist Liliane Lijn talks to John Wilson about her formative cultural influences. A leading figure in the development of kinetic sculptures in the 1960s, she is renowned for her use of light and movement, creating sculptures and installations that draw inspiration from quantum physics and astronomy. She has worked with scientists at the CERN nuclear research laboratory and the Space Science Laboratory at Berkely University, and her art has involved spinning texts, plastic prisms and conical sculptures that emit light. Liliane Lijn’s work is held in museums and galleries around the world, including MOMA in New York, and the V & a. In 2025 she was the subject of a major retrospective show at Tate St Ives. She has recently published a memoir Liquid Reflections, which shares its name with one of her best known artworks. Producer: Edwina Pitman
Bestselling Turkish-British novelist Elif Shafak talks to John Wilson about her formative cultural influences. Renowned for epic stories that connect the past and the present, told from multiple perspectives, her novels explore marginalised communities and exiled people. An activist who has campaigned for the rights of women and freedom of expression, she faced prosecution in Turkey in 2006, accused for ‘insulting Turkishness’. Elif Shafak’s 2019 novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and her 2021 novel The Island of Missing Trees was a finalist for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her books have been translated into more than 50 languages. In 2025, she was elected as President of the Royal Society of Literature. Her latest novel One Brief Moment All Eternity is a portrait of the French writer Gustav Flaubert told through the eyes of the women who shaped him. Producer: Edwina Pitman
American photographer Joel Meyerowitz talks to John Wilson about his cultural influences and formative experiences. A pioneer of the artform, he first began capturing life on the streets of his native New York in the early 1960s, and helped to establish colour photography as a fine-art medium. After travelling throughout Europe he made his name with a groundbreaking show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1968. Following the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, Joel Meyerowitz became the only photographer to secure access to Ground Zero and, over several months, captured the scenes of devastation. His work has been the subject of more than 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world, and he is the recipient of many awards, most recently the prestigious Outstanding Contribution prize at the Sony World Photography Awards 2026. Producer: Edwina Pitman
Actor Ray Winstone talks to John Wilson about his formative cultural influences and inspirations. A schoolboy boxing champion, he built a reputation playing tough, working class characters after being cast in the borstal drama Scum at the age of 17. Winstone won huge acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic abusive husband in the film Nil By Mouth, directed by Gary Oldman, and Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast in which he played a bank robber forced out of retirement. Other big screen roles include the Martin Scorsese gangland drama The Departed, and Anthony Mingehella’s American civil war film Cold Mountain. On television, he’s played Henry the Eighth, Magwitch in Great Expectations and most recently, an imprisoned crime boss in the Netflix series The Gentlemen. Producer: Edwina Pitman