I mentioned recently how much of a loss it was at the time that Kenny Everett did his best radio work on Capital Radio, (when Capital Radio was a proper local radio station and not the generic aural sludge it has become), and therefore nobody outside of London heard it. The same is true of a lot of Danny Baker’s radio work; the rest of the country missed it. Thankfully, the pirates and the home-tapers did their bit and now you can find recordings online to enjoy. If Kenny Everett’s radio shows weren’t available it would be a shame, the same goes for the other treasures I’ve managed to find; Noel Edmonds on Sunday mornings, Alan Freeman doing Pick Of The Pops (not ‘arf), Wolfman Jack’s old shows, (although bizarrely, new shows are still being made and syndicated), Alan Freed, and various John Peel items. Annoyingly, the massive John Peel archive of complete shows was removed.

I wasn’t aware of it until right towards the end of its run, but when I lived in Essex I could pick up XFM, a London station that tried to be a cool alternative station but sounded a bit too much like a commercial radio station, (which of course it was, it was by the time I found it, owned by Capital Radio). As I, along with the rest of the UK, had watched The Office and loved it, we all knew who Ricky Gervais was. As I said, by the time I discovered the radio show, it was nearly all over.

There used to be a website (it might still be there in mothballs) called Karl’s Round Head, that had a big XFM archive, but the links were closed due to copyright. XFM had apparently made the claim, despite the fact that they weren’t going to do anything with the recordings. Idly looking around YouTube today, I found that someone had put the complete shows up, with the music taken out. This is an amazing find, one of fairly reasonable cultural significance, and I am downloading them as MP3 files as quickly as I can listen to them, just in case these too get taken off.

The XFM shows were intended as a Gervais/Merchant partnership, and the very early shows are just that. Karl Pilkington was the producer of the show that Ricky and Stephen were given by the station. As the weeks passed, the two comedians realised the comic potential that Pilkington provided, and gradually the show became a three-way conversation between them as a team. Interestingly, Karl Pilkington displays flashes of brilliance during the talk sections. He is a quick-witted guy who can hold his own with alongside the comedy weight of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Obviously he does say some pretty daft things, which is where his reputation as an idiot started, but the truth is that he isn’t.

Music obviously wasn’t a feature of the show; the songs (which have been cut out of these ever so slightly illegal recordings) were in fact something of an inconvenience to the flow. They weren’t hired for their musical offerings though, this was a Saturday lunchtime show presented by one of the biggest names in comedy. Several times during the shows, Ricky mentioned how he would like to do a radio show with just the three of them talking and asking questions of Karl. This was I imagine where the seeds were planted that grew into The Ricky Gervais Show podcasts. Way back when the podcast began, nobody really knew what a podcast was, as the public are always a bit too wary of new ideas. I would name the team of Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington as an important part of the development of the Internet as a medium that sits besides television and radio’s more conventional approach. Peter Serafinowicz also deserves a mention in the ‘Online Content Hall Of Fame’, should one ever open, as does Richard Herring for all of his podcast output over the last few years.

Ricky Gervais has never put a foot wrong creatively, conquering television and film on his own terms. It is fairly obvious that he isn’t one of the people who did their best work on the radio, but radio is a poorer place without him.