Trivia / The Office (UK)

• Actor-Shared Background: Like Ricky Gervais, David Brent is a failed rock star.
• Breakthrough Hit: Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant became Household Names, and left their day jobs to make TV shows, movies and more.
• The Cast Showoff: Ladies and gentlemen, the blues-rock stylings of Ricky Gervais.
• Corpsing: The actress who plays Rachel loses it and starts laughing while Brent is doing his terrible dance.
• The Danza: Many of the background characters in the office have the same first name as the actors who play them: Ben (played by Ben Bradshaw), Emma (Emma Manton), Jamie (Jamie Deeks), Philip (Philip Pickard).
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: The wheelchair-bound Brenda was played by Julie Fernandez, who was born with osteogenesis imperfecta.
• Humble Beginnings: The series started as a small, home-made video by Stephen Merchant when he was trying to get a job at The BBC. He came up with the idea for making a documentary style format as it would be easier for him to film. He and Ricky Gervais came up with the idea for the series and used a local university to film it. Upon seeing the short video the BBC requested that they make a series out of it. Many of the jokes from this original film are recycled during the proper series for example, David Brent's opening speech about making employees' dreams come true.
• One-Take Wonder: Ricky Gervais hoped that the scene where Brent is made redundant only required one take, as it was so draining.
• Real-Life Relative: The cleaner who always stands motionless and looks directly at the camera is Stephen Merchant's father Ron Merchant.
• Real Song Theme Tune: "Handbags and Gladrags", in a version similar to the cover by Welsh rock band Stereophonics.
• Referenced by...:
  • When Martin Freeman hosted Saturday Night Live in 2014, they had him do a mash-up of Tim Canterbury and Bilbo Baggins via The Office: Middle Earth, which even used the "Handbags and Gladrags" theme and a JRR logo in place of the BBC logo. In this version, Gandalf (Bobby Moynihan) is David Brent and Gollum (Taran Killam) is Gareth Keenan.
  • La Job, the Quebec adaptation of the original, gave its version of David Brent the name David Gervais.
• Star-Making Role: Take a bow, Ricky Gervais. Also for Martin Freeman.
• Technology Marches On: Nowadays Brent wouldn't have to go home and get a book to prove that Mr Spock is half human, half Vulcan. Someone could just Google it on their smartphone.
• What Could Have Been: "Sitting" by Cat Stevens was the original theme song. Another Cat Stevens song, "Tea for the Tillerman", would subsequently be used for Extras.

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