Posted @ 23:00The Emperor's New Clothes

LONDON; 2 NOV 2006; 23:00

The team behind The Office, Extras and The Podfather (Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant & Karl Pilkington) have announced the details of their latest, world shattering project. Provisionally titled The Emperor's New Clothes, the project will consist of a 52-week BBC1 prime-time TV sitcom, a quadruple DVD, 92-hours of podcasting and regular guest appearances on Jonathan Ross's various radio and TV programmes for the next ten years. It is due for release in January 2007 after a lengthy four-day writing and production marathon.

Announcing the project, Ricky Gervais said: "After the success of The Office, I resolved only to undertake projects for which I had a true passion which I thought stretched the boundaries of comedy and satisfied my desire for fame and money. This project achieves two of these three objectives: sometimes one just has to accept that money and fame are a natural consequence of conning people that ridiculing the unfortunate, the sad and the clinically depressed is an acceptable form of humour. The Americans are working on a method of transplanting talent; if my career continues as it has begun, I should easily be able to afford the operation when it becomes available".

Set in today's London amongst the ordinary, day-to-day people who work in the television industry, the story revolves around three young men — Rick, Steve and K — who imagine they are the funniest comedians ever to grace this planet but who are, in fact, not funny at all. Their wacky attempts to produce humour from social misfits results in hours and hours of entertainment teeming with absolutely no laughs at all.

The first episode will feature Jonathan Ross as a TV chat-show host who imagines that Rick is a zany, funny guest but who, in reality, is a boorish lout who is less interesting than counting your own toes. Cameo appearances from Hollywood 'A'-list stars, playing themselves, are expected to make the episode the first recorded certain cure for insomnia.

In related news, the BBC have announced that the first two series of The Office are to be rebroadcast over the coming Christmas period (and all future Christmas periods) with the Christmas Special being the only thing shown on Christmas Day (with the exception of a fifteen minute break for the Queen's Speech). A BBC spokesperson said: "Basically, we don't like our viewers".