Piers Morgan congratulated Ricky Gervais on his new Netflix stand-up special, SuperNature, which has already drawn condemnation for its jokes about transgender people.
Morgan also used the opportunity to insult comedian Nish Kumar, who previously criticised Gervais’ jokes about the trans community.
“Watching #SuperNature on @netflix – absolutely outrageous, fabulously offensive, hilariously funny & already enraging all the right people like @MrNishKumar who are too woke, humourless & dumb to understand the comedy. Brilliant work @rickygervais,” Morgan tweeted on Tuesday (24 May), the day of SuperNature’s release.
Last year, a recording of Kumar slating Gervais during his 2018 stand-up tour resurfaced.
“All he is, is just the same as every other rich white dude comedian who gets too successful, runs out of ideas, and so just s***s on the latest minority group,” Kumar is heard saying in the clip.
Gervais recently introduced Morgan’s new show Uncensored, which Morgan promised would “cancel cancel culture”, during its first episode on TalkTV.
SuperNature has been denounced by some viewers who called Gervais’ subject matter “toxic” and “transphobic”.
One clip, which has been circulated on social media, sees Gervais say: “Oh, women! Not all women, I mean the old-fashioned ones. The old-fashioned women, the ones with wombs.
“Those f***ing dinosaurs. I love the new women. They’re great, aren’t they? The new ones we’ve been seeing lately. The ones with beards and c***s. They’re as good as gold, I love them.”
In his two-star review for The Independent, Nick Hilton wrote: “As is all too frequent these days, the longest riff is reserved for the humiliation of trans people. ‘Full disclosure,’ [Gervais] reveals towards the end of the show, ‘in real life, of course I support trans rights.’
“At this point there are a few stray cheers from the naïve few in the audience who think the irony is real, but that’s nothing compared to the roar of laughter and applause when the punchline – a crass joke about gender affirmation surgery – arrives.”
