Comedian Ricky Gervais has donated £1.9 million to animal charities across the globe.
The stand-up and creator of television shows such as After Life and The Office, has donated a substantial sum raised from ticket sales from his latest Armageddon world tour.
The money will be split equally between 11 worldwide animal charities that have been chosen by Gervais.
These include All Dogs Matter, Animal SOS Sri Lanka, Catastrophes Cat Rescue, Chaldon Animal Sanctuary, Dogs On The Streets, Helping Rhinos, Millions of Friends, Mira Dogs, Paws2Rescue, PDSA and Wild Futures.
About the move, BAFTA, Emmy and Golden-Globe winning comic Gervais, 62, said: “I hope the dogs, cats, rhinos and monkeys invest this money wisely, because when my career goes tits up I’ll need it back.”
In an effort to take action against ticket touts, Platinum Tickets for the Armageddon tour went on sale to guarantee premium seats at market rates, with the extra profits from these ticket sales going to Gervais’s animal charities.
It comes ahead of the launch of Armageddon on Netflix, which streams globally on the platform from Christmas Day.
The Netflix release follows a record-breaking tour with Gervais playing 85 sell-out arena dates across the globe throughout 2022 and 2023.
Gervais, a vegan, is a long-standing supporter of animal rights and has put his name to various initiatives in the past.
Earlier this year, he supported a campaign to end bear bile farming in Vietnam, where bears, trapped in small cages, are subjected to a painful method of extracting bile for use in traditional medicine.
Gervais, Judi Dench, Peter Egan and Lesley Nicol sponsored a bear and raised money to build a brand-new sanctuary to save the last 300 bears trapped on bile farms in Vietnam.
