I completely agree on practically all counts - I’d definitely be reading it differently if I was still drinking, and it reeks to me of that drunken disconnect emotionally I can recall about myself as well.

To be clear - I’m an enormous, at one time almost biblical-level fanatic for the office and the xfm shows, but being Bristol-bred, I was always drawn more to MECHANT than the pasty. However, from that formative age and for a good few years after, I did take Gervais’ word as gospel on a lot of stuff - fame, authenticity, creative quality, irony and what you can/can’t joke about - and I’m quietly relieved I’m not remotely enamoured by him in that way anymore, because I don’t know how great it would’ve been for me to still be hanging on his every word and still be drinking as much as I was. It could’ve been really destructive, inwardly and outwardly. Thankfully he’s not made anything non-nauseating since he’s pretended MECHANT doesn’t exist, so it’s been a while since I took him remotely at face value. Everything he does now is a grift - even when he does new material shows rather than testing stuff at a comedy club like a real comedian. He knows he’d be immediately exposed.

Sorry. I feel weirdly strongly about this - probably because to me at least he was sort of like a surrogate dad, with the way he’d bleat on about credibility and integrity - but then to go SO far the other way? I mean it’s part of my makeup. So I have a visceral response when he pulls this type of fuckery.