...thanks to Ricky Gervais

Dapper Laughs says he’s going to go on a new stand-up tour… and it’s all down to Ricky Gervais.

The laddish comic, whose career crashed amid a backlash over his sexist jokes, said that The Office’s creators defiant stance against those who take offence has inspired him to get back on the road.

In a tweet this morning, Dapper – real name Daniel O’Reilly – quoted Gervais saying: ‘You can laugh at bad things without being bad people.’

And using the hashtag of his Netflix stand-up special, O’Reilly added: ‘#Humanity by @rickygervais is brilliantly offensive, wish I’d seen it before I went on news night, would have felt with it slightly differenty! [sic]

‘It’s inspired me to finally have the bottle to do another stand up tour, aa-shit!’

At the end of 2014, O’Reilly announced on Newsnight that he was quitting the ‘character’ of Dapper Laughs. 

The biggest condemnation came after he was caught on camera telling a woman in the audience of one of his live shows that she was ‘gagging for a rape’ – apparently in response to a similar heckle. The furore led to the cancellation of his ITV2 series On The Pull , in which he tried to teach men how to pick up women.

O'Reilly appeared on Celebrity Big Brother  earlier this year. Channel 5 had promoted the show as ‘The Year Of The Women’ to mark the centenary of some women earning the right to vote.

Published: 18 Mar 2018