Ricky Gervais has been accused of making his former support act’s life ‘hellish’ amid a bullying row.
Comedian Robin Ince, claimed on Wednesday that Ricky’s backstage jeers took a physical toll on his health when they toured together and he has accused him of bullying.
MailOnline has now unearthed a YouTube video from 2016 that saw Robin reflect on the tour and confess that he was being ‘tortured’.
In the 26-minute clip, entitled, Living with Ricky Gervais 2, Robin said he was at the comedian’s ‘beck and call’, who he claimed made his life ‘hellish’.
The video showed Robin repeatedly being told to do a range of bizarre tasks, that seem like a joke to Ricky, but not to Robin.
Ricky Gervais’ support act Robin Ince has claimed he felt ‘tortured’ by the comedian, saying he made his life ‘hellish’ and had him at his ‘beck and call’
Robin Ince, claimed on Wednesday that Ricky’s backstage targeted jeers took a physical toll on his health when they toured together and he has accused him of bullying
If he tried to protest, clips showed Ricky reminding him that his food and hotels were free and he would persist in asking again.
Opening with Ricky sitting next to Robin, screeching down his ear, there seemed to be immediate discomfort.
The video’s tone was immediately set as it panned back to the first segment of the interview.
‘It was possibly one of the biggest mistakes and one of the worst decisions I’ve made in not only my professional career but my whole life’, Robin shared.
Robin said that his fans don’t see the real Ricky, who prodded at him and videoed him in the bathroom and pressured him to do constant humiliating tasks.
Robin and Ricky had been friends for 15 years before their time on the Fame tour, but he said he forgot that while on tour, Ricky gets incredibly bored.
He said: ‘When he is bored, he is either angry or wants to be entertained.
‘And his entertainment is to make his closest friends have a life that is hellish and torturous. Genuinely, when I say tortures, I mean that it feels like torture.
‘One moment you are in these luxury hotels but luxury hotels where you are at the beck and call of this man.’
While Robin’s recent claims are alarming, this is not the first time he has tried to reveal the harrowing time he experienced as a support act during his Fame tour
In the 26-minute clip, ‘Living with Ricky Gervais 2’, Robin said he was at the comedian’s ‘beck and call’, who he claimed made his life ‘hellish’
The video showed Robin being told to do a range of bizarre tasks. If he tried to protest, clips showed Ricky reminding him that his food and hotels were free and he would persist
Between clips of his interview reflecting on the tour, a range of throwback clips showed Robin being at the centre of awful tasks.
Some involved him being strapped to a hanging pole like a pig on a spit roast, being stripped to his underwear in public and being told to eat foods he was intolerant to.
In one throwback clip, Robin was seen filming Ricky, who was running around singing a silly tune about him, before stating: ‘If things hadn’t worked out for him, he really would be a madman.
‘Now, they just think of him as a comedy genius.’
Returning to the interview, Robin said: ‘The point is, I’m not actually paid to do the 25 to 30 minutes; that is not really what he’s paying for.
‘What he is paying for, the excess money, which is still less than I could have made if I’d taken that stupid writing job on some BB3 TV show, I’m an i***t. So he is paying to have me in the same as him so he can bother me.’
The video then showed a throwback clip of Ricky pressuring Robin to eat a croissant soaked in coffee, despite him being lactose intolerant.
Giving in to the pressure, which in the clip said can last for half an hour, Robin shoved the pastry into his mouth, looking visibly unhappy and distressed.
Ricky could then be heard laughing at him while Robin confessed that his ‘body was spasming out’.
‘It was possibly one of the biggest mistakes and one of the worst decisions I’ve made in not only my professional career but my whole life’, Robbin opened the clip
Some involved him being strapped to a hanging pole like a pig on a spit roast, being stripped to his underwear in public and being told to eat foods he was intolerant to
Robin said: ‘Sitting here now, all the time time I think why didn’t I just walk away. Just terminate the friendship and the tour and everything because I do not know what I have to gain’
The clip then turned to Ricky stating he only ‘came on tour to make Robin happy’.
He then stated that everything Robin eats is free and where he stays is too before telling him to kiss a flower and say he is thankful.
Returning to the interview Robin then said Ricky had a ‘side kick’, tour promoter Matthew.
He dubbed Matthew as a ‘lick spittle’ because he claimed he aided Ricky to help him humiliate him with random tasks.
Some included providing the comedian with black markers to paint his hair or buying him a thermometer to check the temperature of his testicles.
A like spittle is a person who behaves obsequiously to those in power.
He then revealed that during one task, he was left cut and bruised on his birthday.
Ricky told him to strip to his underwear on a public beach and had him sit in a ditch in the sand while he piled rocks and sand on top.
And while he would think that tasks like this, which left him ‘bruised’ with ‘cuts’, was the tip of the iceberg, it was never enough.
He said Ricky would ‘built it and built it and see how far he could go’.
In another clip panned away from the interview, Ricky could be seen telling Robin he was going to ‘transform’ his body and get him fit.
Ricky then threw a bag of ‘free’ gym clothes to him and him dressed in a tight-fitting white kit before telling him to do a range of exercises, which left him feeling sick.
Speaking on The Starting Line podcast, Robin, 55, claims that Gervais’s ‘bullying’ became so bad his co-star in The Office Mackenzie Crook stepped in and confronted him about it (pictured at National Television Awards 2022)
Before the exercise, Ricky had told him to drink a whole can of Coke.
To conclude his interview, Robin said: ‘Sitting here now, all the time time I think why didn’t I just walk away. Just terminate the friendship and the tour and everything because I do not know what I have to gain.
‘Save obviously the financial rewards of it and even that there is a lot of other jobs out there. It wasn’t a necessity.
‘I wouldn’t have ended up on the street. I wouldn’t have ended up living in a box. I wouldn’t ended up dancing with a hat in front of me.’
Robin said he will no longer do stand-up or comedy – he is retiring from the profession.
The unearthing of the video comes after the Mail revealed Robin’s claims on the impact Ricky had on his health.
‘I look back now, and I think it is bullying, really it is,’ Robin claimed. ‘I’m very good at sometimes just acclimatising to things, in which you go, ”Actually, this is really weird”.
‘But people who knew me did not like the way that relationship worked. I am not saying it is a traumatic experience, but after two weeks I came out in red lumps that my doctor said were a stress rash.
‘I think my hair is coming out in clumps.’
Speaking on The Starting Line podcast, Robin claimed that Ricky’s ‘bullying’ became so bad his co-star in The Office Mackenzie Crook stepped in and confronted him about it.
Robin announced his retirement in 2015, saying he was ‘starting to go mad’ with self-doubt, insomnia and regret over not spending enough time with his family.
He remained friends with Ricky until 2022 when he wrote a blog post criticising him for making jokes about transgender people in his Netflix comedy special SuperNature.
Robin announced his retirement in 2015, saying he was ‘starting to go mad’ with self-doubt, insomnia and regret over not spending enough time with his family
‘It is easy to forget the collateral damage of jokes,’ Robin said.
‘Anti-trans punchlines seem to have become highly profitable and it ignores the dehumanising effect on a swathe of already marginalised people,’ he wrote.
He then added: ‘I think Ricky believes it is just him being a “naughty boy”.
‘I believe it makes him a pin-up and role model for the alt-Right.’
MailOnline has contacted representatives for Ricky Gervais for a comment.
