Ricky Gervais reveals his weird debate with Golden Globes lawyers

Ricky Gervais has revealed that the biggest problem lawyers had about his last Golden Globes monologue was what term he could use for Dame Judi Dench’s genitals.

During this year’s ceremony, the comic joked about the actress’s claim that the part of Old Deuteronomy in the much-derided Cats movie was ‘the role she was born to play’.

On stage Gervais then joked: ‘She likes nothing more than plonking herself down on the carpet and licking her own minge.

But talking to Seth Meyers on his US chat show last night, Gervais revealed that when he ran his speech by network executives and lawyers, that was the only line they had an issue with.

‘They were worried about "minge",’ he explained. ‘I said, "It’s a British term; it’s a cute term –  not offensive at all, it’s not a swear word."

‘Then one of them looked it up and said it says "vulgar term for vagina" and I went "Well, all slang is vulgar, isn’t it?"’

On asking what term he could use instead, the lawyer suggested simply ‘vagina’.

Gervais responded: ‘I’m not going to say "vagina" – that’s worse. That’s so clinical about Dame Judi Dench.’

There then followed a discussion about what word he could use without getting bleeped ‘because that ruins it’.

‘It was such a weird conversation,’ Gervais said, recalling that they also poo-poohed his suggestion of ‘flange’, until he finally persuaded them that his original idea was the best after all.

‘So we settle on "minge" and they said they wouldn’t bleep it,’ he said. ‘But they still did. I knew they would, so I pointed!’

In an interview with Vogue magazine published today Dame Judi admitted she was happy how her character in Cats turned out, saying she looked like a ‘battered, mangy old cat’ and that the cloak she was asked to wear looked like ‘five foxes fucking on my back’.

Here is Gervais’s interview on the NBC show Late Night With Seth Meyers, promoting his newly-released second series of After Life.

Published: 5 May 2020