People call for Ricky Gervais to return for Golden Globes after this year's opening monologue jokes are booed

Some of last night's (7 January) viewers of the Golden Globes think the awards ceremony could have done with a different host.

Comedian and actor Jo Koy was on hosting duties last night - having been a relatively late appointment to the show - and his opening monologue didn't go down well with everyone.

He drew a death glare from Taylor Swift for making a joke about her and Travis Kelce, as he said: "The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? On the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift... there’s just more to go to here."

Meanwhile, a joke about the Barbie movie wasn't particularly well-received as he said: "Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page, Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project.

"And Barbie is based on a plastic doll with big boobies."

And perhaps sensing things weren't going so well after another joke about the Barbie movie, the comedian decided to defend his position.

He said: "Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago! You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up. You're kidding me, right? Slow down, I wrote some of these and they're the ones you're laughing at."

It's got some people wishing for the days of Ricky Gervais, who won a Golden Globe at the ceremony for his Armageddon comedy special but wasn't there in person to collect his award.

Gervais has hosted the Golden Globes five times, and each time has been quite scorching about the assembled host of the great and the good of Hollywood.

The Golden Globes has had good hosts, bad hosts and boring hosts, and whatever else you might say about Gervais, he's not been a boring presence at the awards ceremony before.

And some of the comedian's fans have taken to social media to share one of his previous and controversial opening monologues.

Others called to 'bring back Ricky Gervais', though some defended Jo Koy and said that he was doing the job of any awards ceremony host by roasting them before they got their awards.

Oddly enough, the Golden Globes has more often gone without a host than had one.

The first ceremony was in 1944 but it wasn't until 1982 that the Golden Globes actually had hosts, and it went from 1996 to 2009 without a host as well.

Then on January 17 2010, they decided to hire Gervais to host the night and he promptly took the p**s out of Hollywood, though he must have done something right because they asked him back for the next two years.

Four years ago today, @rickygervais roasted most of Hollywood in under 8 minutes

pic.twitter.com/wGZvXExLBH

— LADbible (@ladbible) January 5, 2024

Gervais returned to host the Golden Globes for a fourth time in 2016 and again for a fifth and supposedly final time in 2020.

It was then that he came armed with a joke about Jeffrey Epstein's death as the punchline to him talking about his Netflix show After Life.

2020 was supposed to be his last ever time hosting the Golden Globes so it would take something for Gervais to make a return to the ceremony stage.