James Corden has responded to criticism that he appeared to copy a joke originally made by Ricky Gervais – saying he delivered it “obviously not knowing it came from him”.
The host of the US programme The Late Late Show gave a monologue during Monday’s episode addressing Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover and told a gag which viewers noted was remarkably similar to one from Gervais’s 2018 stand-up show Humanity. Comedian Gervais, 61, drew attention to the similarities in a now-deleted Twitter post.
In the joke, Corden says: “When you see Elon Musk talk about Twitter he does this thing where he goes, ‘Well, it’s the town square’. 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 want to play the piano, you piece of ****!’”
