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"  It&amp;#039;s safe to assume that Ricky Gervais enjoys many parts of his life\u2014the constant plaudits he&amp;#039;s received since his 2001 rise from relative obscurity to cocreate and star in perhaps the most perfect situation comedy ever\u2014BBC&amp;#039;s The Office\u2014or the ability to lure stars such as Kate Winslet and Ben Stiller to pillory show-business excess on his HBO show Extras. He also presumably adores his girlfriend of a quarter century, Jane Fallon; their cat, Ollie; and the new movie he cowrote, codirected, and stars in, The Invention of Lying. (Really, what hetero man wouldn&amp;#039;t relish making out with the film&amp;#039;s costar, Jennifer Garner, without the risk of getting a fistful of Affleck?) What the 48-year-old doesn&amp;#039;t seem to love quite so much are silly questions about women and sex\u2014but Britain&amp;#039;s most excruciatingly awful freestyle dancer toughed it out with ELLE anyway.   ELLE: If I could hand you a sex tape of any two unrelated historical personages, who might you be most curious to see?RICKY GERVAIS: Oh, God! Why would I want to see two other people having sex? Ahhh\u2014Hitler and Gandhi?   ELLE: Interesting. The first time you met Garry Shandling, you told him he resembled Bingo from the old Banana Splits series.RG: He does look like Bingo.   ELLE: But he didn&amp;#039;t actually know what Bingo looked like, right?RG: No, and I didn&amp;#039;t leave it there, did I? I could have just said, &amp;quot;Oh, he&amp;#039;s a cartoon character.&amp;quot; And it was way too early in the interview. I should have left that for question 43. Rather like you with that sex tape question.   ELLE: Sorry. So you sent his assistant to fetch a picture of Bingo from the Internet. Your penance is to choose a nonhuman character you resemble.RG: Elmo. He&amp;#039;s always excited and his mouth&amp;#039;s always open. And I&amp;#039;ve got a big round head too, but mine&amp;#039;s red from a mixture of drinking wine, being fat, and not tanning well.   ELLE: You&amp;#039;re not particularly heavy, but you&amp;#039;re always saying you are. I feel like women will often say, &amp;quot;Oh, I&amp;#039;m so fat,&amp;quot; hoping to hear, &amp;quot;No, you&amp;#039;re not fat at all!&amp;quot; Is that what you&amp;#039;re up to?RG: I suppose I do it for a lot of reasons. As a comedian, not only should you be painfully aware of your inadequacies, but you want people to know them as well. And there&amp;#039;s a ridiculous pressure on women to be size 0 that men don&amp;#039;t have.   ELLE: I gained weight recently, and it&amp;#039;s killing me.RG: I&amp;#039;m guessing you&amp;#039;re an angsty middle-class metrosexual media-type guy. I grew up with men who would hold a finger over one nostril and blow out the other one on the street.   ELLE: In The Invention of Lying, Jennifer Garner&amp;#039;s character says she can&amp;#039;t commit to you because she refuses to have fat little children with snub noses. Do you really suppose women think that way?RG: They may do it subconsciously. I saw a documentary that said your pheromones show what sort of immunities you have and which ones you&amp;#039;re lacking. So if you put 10 blokes&amp;#039; sweat in a jar and a woman had to say which jar she finds most attractive, nine times out of ten, that man had perfectly complementary traits.   ELLE: Do you really think Melania Trump would choose Donald&amp;#039;s sweat jar?RG: In human evolution, power is the new strength. Now we&amp;#039;ve got bigger caves.   ELLE: Speaking of pheromones, if your life depended on having sex with an animal, which would you choose?RG: Oh, God! And we were having such a good time. Now I&amp;#039;m forced to either be cruel to an animal or have my brains blown out. I will answer the question if you answer me this: If I get Stephen Hawking, Kofi Annan, and Nelson Mandela to do this column over the next three months, tell me if you&amp;#039;d ask them that question.   ELLE: Absolutely. Start booking.RG: I don&amp;#039;t believe you, but I&amp;#039;ll answer. The amoeba. It would be crushed, even by mine. I&amp;#039;d be going, &amp;quot;Too big for you, eh?&amp;quot;  ELLE: If your life depended on either making love with your writing partner, Stephen Merchant, or a random, similarly aged man, whom would you choose?RG: Obviously anyone but Stephen Merchant. How could I carry on working with him after that?   ELLE: : But what if this random person recognized you and told the tabloids?RG: : Oh, so now the question takes place in a world that&amp;#039;s exactly the same, except for the part about me [pleasuring] some bloke I&amp;#039;ve never met before? I love the way you&amp;#039;re not satisfied with me being in this weird concentration camp sex game, so now you have to alter the question. There are 6 billion people in the world. I reckon I would get lucky and not get the guy with The Office and Extras DVDs who&amp;#039;s sitting in the front row of my next gig.   ELLE: I understand you are a great lover of art. What painting\u2014from the nineteenth century or earlier\u2014is most arousing?RG: Oh, God! Really? Some of my favorite paintings were by [J.M.W.] Turner, who painted the ship on fire. I&amp;#039;ve heard of fetishes, but going down to the docks with a pack of matches has never been one of mine. I imagine your next question is going to start off, &amp;quot;Now Ricky, I&amp;#039;ve heard one of your heroes is Winston Churchill. Would you like to shove his cigar up your ass? Or pour his brandy over your nipples?&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;ve let yourself down, you&amp;#039;ve let ELLE down, and in a way, you&amp;#039;ve let America down. Is this really for ELLE, or has a serial killer taken your family hostage and told you you have to ask people these sorts of questions?  ELLE: No, the family&amp;#039;s fine. Finally: If you were single and could see on women&amp;#039;s heads the number of partners they&amp;#039;d had, what&amp;#039;s the highest number you&amp;#039;d consider when seeking a serious relationship?RG: I love it. Now he&amp;#039;s branding women. Oh, I can&amp;#039;t wait for Nelson Mandela&amp;#039;s answer to that one. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a10386/ricky-gervais-339288/?click=smart&kw=ist&src=smart&mag=ELM&link=-SMT-ELM>