 In 1997 Ricky Gervais was hired by XFM as “Head of Speech”. Gervais insisted he had an assistant and the story goes he picked a CV from a pile which was that of Stephen Merchant who was then hired. They were eventually given their own show which ran for a few months in 1998. The same year Capital took over XFM, both Gervais and Merchant took voluntary redundancy.
 In 2001 Ricky and Stephen were re-hired by XFM following the success of The Office. This time they were given a producer in the shape of Karl Pilkington who was purely there to press the buttons. They quickly figured out though that he was no ordinary producer and slowly but surely Karl evolved from a background figure to eventually taking over the show.
The trio’s last show on XFM was in July 2005 before they moved onto doing podcasts later that year. Initially they released 12 free podcasts which were hugely successful breaking records for the number of downloads. A further 12 were released but this time they charged a small fee. Gervais crowned himself the “ The Podfather” and released another three free podcasts at the end of 2007 as thanks to all the fans. These were the last to be released and it is unsure if they will ever make any more.
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