Ricky Gervais deletes tweet about James Corden because he 'started to feel sorry for him'

Ricky Gervais has said he deleted a tweet about James Corden allegedly copying one of his jokes because he started to 'feel sorry' for the former Gavin and Stacey star.

Gervais took to Twitter to share his thoughts after Corden delivered a monologue about Elon Musk's Twitter takeover on his chat show, The Late Late Show with James Corden.

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

"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!'"

"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 the audience in the studio, but if you're a fan of Gervais you might recognise the monologue from one he made in his stand-up show Humanity, released in 2018.

Plagiarism? I don’t know what people are talking about, these two jokes by @JKCorden and @rickygervais are barely similar pic.twitter.com/9kYOHiOiLj

— Paul Anthony (@PaulFI9) November 1, 2022

Gervais' joke is 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!'

Obviously, it's hard not to see the similarities.

Gervais addressed the situation with a sarcastic joke posted on Twitter, writing: "[James'] bit about the town square advert for guitar lessons is brilliant."

The Late Late Show host later himself admitted the blunder in a tweet, which read: "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. J x."

Gervais liked and retweeted the post, and decided to delete his initial response to the situation.

When asked why, he told a fan: "Started to feel sorry for him [laughing face]."

The After Life star also told his followers that Corden hadn't asked for permission to tell the joke, and speculated that one of the chat show's writers might be to blame.

"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," Gervais said.