British comedian James Corden, currently working as a presenter on US television, has been called out for copying a joke from fellow British comedian Ricky Gervais word by word during his Late Late Night Show. Corden was talking about Twitter and Elon Musk’s recent takeover of Twitter when he repeated the famous ‘guitar lessons’ gag on Twitter by Gervais.
In the joke, Gervais talks about people getting offended at tweets not directed towards them as people going to a town square and seeing a poster for guitar lessons and getting angry because they don’t want guitar lessons. Corden repeated the same lines when he was talking about Elon Musk’s comparisons of Twitter to a town square where people can come and talk.
Gervais, who has regularly made jokes at the expense of James Corden during his Golden Globes appearances and in his show Afterlife, was quick to notice the similarities and sarcastically tweeted, “The bit about the town square advert for guitar lessons is brilliant”. However, the legendary comedian later deleted his tweet. Ricky Gervais made that joke during his 2018 Netflix special Humanity which was one of the most viewed specials on the OTT platform.
When one fan asked Gervais if he was asked for permission to use that joke, he replied that it wasn’t the case and presumably one of the writers ‘came up with it’ for him as no comedian will copy the joke of a famous comedian word by word like that.
No. 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.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) November 1, 2022
However, James Corden’s body language while telling the joke was remarkably similar to Ricky Gervais, suggesting he had seen the joke being performed.
Ricky was not the only one to spot the similarities to his own joke as several social media accounts called out James Corden for his plagiarism.
I think we may have heard the bit about guitar lessons before… 🤔@rickygervais pic.twitter.com/C0qWVRNmOm https://t.co/a9rn1PpW2u
— LADbible (@ladbible) November 1, 2022
The guitar lessons joke is great. It was great when Ricky Gervais wrote it & it’s still great now… https://t.co/xUEk3aBxTl
— Nicky Clark (@MrsNickyClark) November 1, 2022
In which James Corden basically does a Ricky Gervais joke word for word pic.twitter.com/8MfkrBo8Y0
— Rupert Myers (@RupertMyers) November 1, 2022
James Corden was stuck in another controversy lately when he was forced to apologise for his behaviour at the New York restaurant Balthazar, which resulted in restaurateur Keith McNally briefly banning him. Corden apologised for his behaviour in an episode of the Late Late Show which airs on the CBS network.
