Ricky Gervais has quite the reputation. He raised hell at the Golden Globes with his pointed pops at Tinsel Town, and has courted many a controversy with his humour and forthright views.
But behind the scenes, The Office creator lives a much less dramatic life with his 'soulmate' and partner of almost 40 years, Jane Fallon.
Ricky - who turns 61 today - met Jane, also 61 - at University College London back in 1982, where he was studying philosophy and she was reading history.
Back then, accomplished producer and author Jane said 'dating' wasn't really a thing, mainly because everyone was skint. Instead, she and Ricky would meet in the union, go to discos and drink beers.
The lived in a poky flat above a brothel in a pre-gentrified Kings Cross as Ricky fought to make it as a new wave artist with the pop group Seona Dancing, then as the manager of indie band Suede.
Jane, meanwhile, found work with a theatrical literary agency before becoming a script reader and later a producer on BBC soap EastEnders.
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Both would find massive success in their fourties; Ricky as the creator of The Office and Jane as the author of bestselling novels such as Getting Rid of Matthew , Got You Back and Foursome.
And Jane - whose latest book Just Got Real was released this month - believes their humble beginnings made their subsequent successes all the sweeter.
“We went through a good few years when we had absolutely no money – the brothel we lived above in Kings Cross – I always knew I had a plan to build up a career and I think once you do that it does mean a lot more because you’ve worked for all of it,” she told The Telegraph.
The pair now live in a £10.8million mega-pile in Hampstead, London, along with their pet cats, which Jane insists they have after hearing they can make you live longer.
A self-confessed stresser, Ricky has credited Jane with keeping him calm and helping him rationalise his hypochondria.
He describes her as his 'soulmate', and previously told The Mirror it was his deep love for her that inspired his hit Netflix series, After Life, about local journalist Tony coming to terms with the death of his partner.
Like Tony, Ricky couldn't face the idea of a life without Jane and hopes to die before she does so he doesn't have to cope with the loss.
He told The Mirror “I don’t think I’ve ever been lonely. I don’t think I’ve ever suffered from depression or despair like Tony. I’ve seen it – you don’t get to 60 without seeing most things. I’ve lost both parents and a sibling, and all my pets and some friends.
“But the ultimate for me would be losing my soulmate. That’s the worst thing that could happen to me. So, it’s an imagination, a fiction, that stems from that.”
Like the couple in After Life, Jane and Ricky are great friends who prioritise building each other up rather than putting each other down.
“I think it’s really important that you are friends, I really do. I’ve thought about this a lot recently actually and I realised that all my really close female friends have similar relationships with their partners in that they are really good friends with them," she told the Telegraph.
"I don’t really understand those people who, when you go out for a drink with them, they are slagging off their partner. You’re meant to be each other’s cheerleader. So yeah, you need to be good mates.”
But despite their unbreakable bond, Ricky firmly rejects the idea of official marriage on the grounds of his atheist beliefs.
“Don’t see the point,” he once told The Times. “We are married for all intents and purposes, everything’s shared and actually our fake marriage has lasted longer than a real one... but there’s no point in us having an actual ceremony before the eyes of God because there is no God.”
As for children, both have always been on the same page with a hard no.
Explaining how he “just didn’t fancy it," Ricky said neither he or Jane wanted to give up 16 years of their lives, especially when there are already "too many children, of course."
"It’s not too many people, it’s too many people with nothing, too many unwanted children, too many people who are poor and struggling, as opposed to too many people," he said.
"If they all had a good quality of life, no one would complain. What there is, is too many useless people. Too many people who shouldn’t have children.”
For Jane's part, she never wanted children, and was relieved when she discovered that neither did Ricky.
“I’ve never regretted not having kids. Even as a child, I found it hard to imagine being a mum. I didn’t want to have children because doing so just didn’t feel like me. Being a mother wasn’t who I was meant to be," she told the Guardian.
“Thankfully, my partner, Ricky, felt the same – not that I would make a terrible mother, or if he did think that he thoughtfully kept that to himself, but that he wasn’t keen on parenthood, either… We were happy with our decision, and we still are.”
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