Ricky Gervais donates £1.9m to animal charities

Proceeds from platinum tickets to his Armageddon tour

Ricky Gervais is donating £1.91million to worldwide animal charities, from the extra profits generated by selling platinum tickets for his Armageddon tour.

The comic 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.’

Since his 2017 Humanity tour, Gervais has sold premium tickets to his gigs at well above the cost of others, with the difference going to charity. He argued this would also clamp down on touts saying then: ‘This way people willing to pay higher prices will at least know it's going to charity instead of some scummy tout.’

The 11 charities sharing the $2.4million pot from his global 2023 tour range from large organisations such as PDSA, which last year had an income of more than £100million, to Chaldon Animal Sanctuary, which last year had an income of just £54,000

The full list of recipients is: 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.

The donations come ahead of the launch of Armageddon on Netflix on Christmas Day.

During the 85-date tour, the comic entered the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest-grossing single stand-up show of all time, when his Hollywood Bowl show raked in £1.4m in May.

He has broken attendance records for the largest number of tickets sold for a British comedian and English-speaking comedy show in America, Austria, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

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Published: 5 Dec 2023