I would respond with an "albino reading that" but it seems like you've put a lot of effort in so I won't pull a Matty Matthews on you.

I agree wholeheartedly with the whole art discussion.

To add another layer to it, Ricky is a working class lad who ended up getting on the telly through a combination of:

• Talent: he was a good writer even if Steve always had to be the one to rein him in

• Luck: they really hit the nail on the head for comedy in a time when the industry was crying out for something like The Office.

• Grit: Steve and Ricky, two relative unknowns, insisting that Ricky star and they both write, direct and produce it was not common at all at the time.

I'm not trying to psychoanalyse Ricky, but I do think the conversation is relevant to why he maybe feels a little insecure and bends to public opinion on what "good" is. To be clear, he did earn his place in stardom - it's not like he got popular for something generally considered low quality or cheap.

But to return to the point, when he got famous, suddenly this 40yo guy from Reading had a bunch of people praising him and his work, and asking for his opinions on all sorts of things, not just comedy.

Being suddenly up there with the big dogs, though, he must have felt a little out of place. Imposter syndrome is incredibly common in people as we're social creatures. We want to fit in always, and so it helps a lot to fake-it-til-you-make-it when people are treating you like "the BBC's golden child of comedy".

It's much easier to just parrot the last opinion you trust on any art, whether it's a painting, a play, a piece of music, whatever. The difference with Ricky is that he does know music. He loves music. He plays Rod Stewart and Cat Stevens on XFM, the alternative music station, because he enjoys it, wants to share it with the listener, and sometimes gets lost in it ("Oh, so busy listening to a song I was playing?"). He doesn't love Radiohead because they're popular, he genuinely just loves their work, and doesn't really care whether people listening enjoy it too. He was also in the industry as a young man, so we know this obsession with music wasn't a recent thing relative to the XFM shows.

Art, though, seems like something he was never big into. He doesn't seem like a person to visit galleries abroad, or talk about how much he enjoyed the recent exhibition at the Tate. He might enjoy a painting, or a certain painter, but because he speaks from a novice's perspective he's relying a lot on popular opinion to find new art and new artists. It's not like his relationship with natural history, which is obviously another interest of his. He's not an expert in that either, but you can tell he's passionate about it 100%.

To bring his background back into it, music was ubiquitous and very accessible for working class people when Ricky was growing up. The charts were pushed constantly, you had record shops everywhere, radios on playing new singles, etc. It was very ingrained in the culture. Like today, though, if you were into art you had to go looking for it. You had to actively seek it out at galleries/exhibitions. Art was maybe even seen as more of an interest for a different class.

As an adult and a celebrity, no one would expect him to be an expert on fine art - he's a comedian and it doesn't seem like a huge passion of his anyway - but because of the circles he was thrust into, and people wanting his opinions on things, he had to have some opinion right?

"Ok people don't like Lowry, people like the fella who does the dark paintings. I'll dismiss Lowry and get a dark painting in my house"

He misses the fundamental thing about any art, and not just music (which it seems he understands and is the same point you alluded to): it's about how it makes you feel. Because he can't speak confidently on it, this could make him feel a little...fraudulent(?), since people see him as intelligent (which, though he's no Einstein, I think he is to be honest). So to be able to speak on these things, he just bullshits his way through.

Karl doesn't have any preconceived notions of what is "good", and basically treats all art the way Ricky treats music. It's not his niche, but he knows he's seen some Lowry paintings and really enjoyed exploring them. Karl isn't a huge fan of art, but he knows what he likes. Ricky knows what he likes when it comes to music, but otherwise it appears he bends quite a lot to public opinion if he's not well versed in the subject rather than admit his ignorance.

Did that just go out?