Resurfaced footage shows James Corden previously ripping off Noel Fielding joke

Between being banned from a New York City restaurant to being called out by Ricky Gervais for stealing one of his jokes, James Corden can't seem to catch a break at the moment.

But just when you thought things couldn't get any worse for James, the Late Late Show presenter has been caught ripping off yet another comedian.

In recently resurfaced footage, it looks like James - or perhaps his writers - robbed Noel Fielding's famous 'whisper' joke.

Here's a snippet of Fielding's original joke:

The Mighty Boosh star had been performing at Montreal's Just For Laughs Festival when he first told the 'whisper' joke.

The gist of Noel's joke is that the best way to get out of being robbed or mugged in London is to whisper "Oi, mate" because, according to the 'rules' of whispering, the criminal will have no choice but to whisper back: "What is it?"

At the time, the joke killed, and Noel had audiences howling in their seats when he strutted off stage that night.

But, seven years later, it would seem that James made the grave mistake of thinking people had forgotten about Noel's bit.

During a Christmas episode of the Late Late Show, James was speaking to guest Matthew Broderick about being robbed on the street, when he said: "If someone tries to mug you - so someone comes up and goes: 'Give me your wallet, man.'"

CBS

Breaking into a whisper, he says: "Just go: 'You're never gonna believe what's happened.' If you just go: 'You'll never guess what?'"

Pretending to drop a weapon, James continued: "They go like this, they go: 'What?' And it gives you time, you just bolt!"

Yikes. Hard not to see the resemblance, isn't it?

At the time, one fan immediately recognised James' joke and took to Twitter to call him out.

They tweeted: "@JKCorden totally stole the whisper thing from @noelfielding11."

And not too long after, Noel Fielding himself replied: "Yes I believe this is my material x".

Twitter

Resurfaced footage of James' stolen joke comes just days after Ricky Gervais accused him of stealing one of his jokes.

The After Life star took to Twitter to call out Corden after noticing that his latest monologue on The Late Late Show sounded very familiar.

"When you see Elon Musk talk about Twitter, he does this thing where he goes 'It's the town square.'," Corden began, speaking about Elon's Twitter takeover.

"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 want to play the guitar! I wanna play the piano you piece of sh*t!'"

PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

"But that sign wasn't for you, it was for somebody else, you don't have to get mad about all of it," Corden joked.

The joke went down well with James' studio audience, but it also went down well back in 2018 when Ricky Gervais told the exact same joke, almost word-for-word in his comedy special Humanity.

Gervais' joke goes as follows: "They choose to read my tweet, and then take that personally. That's like going into a town square, seeing a big notice board and there's a notice - guitar lessons - and you go, 'but I don't want f***ing guitar lessons'. 'Fine, it's not for you then, just walk away. Don't worry about it!'"

Needless to say that James' team will be doing some extra work this week to get their plagiarism score down!