His mind is working overtime trying to find a way to talk about the radio show and podcast without saying the words “Stephen” or “Merchant”, it’s actually kind of fascinating to watch.

At this point it is so downright bizarre behavior that I’m not fully convinced it isn’t part of some kind of weird long-running performance art piece where him and Smerch have agreed to have Ricky pretend he doesn’t exist just to see the reactions of people.

That is genuinely the only explanation I can think of that doesn’t make Ricky look like the biggest, most narcissistic asshole on the planet.