Ricky Gervais has a stand-up routine so offensive it 'could end career'

When the man responsible for writing scenes featuring the late, great Ronnie Corbett snorting cocaine and Kate Winslet complaining about Holocaust movies says he's got something offensive planned, we should probably believe him.

Comedian Ricky Gervais (who revealed last month that he'll be returning to stand-up after a break of six years) has claimed on Twitter that he has written his "most offensive stand up routine ever" for a new show, set to be titled Humanity.

Writing on his blog, Gervais recently revealed that he would be playing "a couple of low key warm-ups with the Derek lot to flesh out the bill a bit", with the shows set to take place in London in May.

Gervais recently commented on the importance of being able to being able to offend.

Speaking in Paris at the Netflix festival last week, he said, "I think offence is the collateral damage of freedom of speech. But just because you are offended doesn't mean you're right. The more famous you get, the more people love you and hate you. If you are doing anything that isn't anodyne and watered down, you are going to polarise - but it's good to polarise, because some people are smart and some people are f**king stupid."

Gervais is currently promoting his Special Correspondents Netflix film (watch the latest trailer for that here), which is due to hit the service on 29 April, as well as his forthcoming David Brent movie, entitled Life On the Road (the first trailer for that one is here).

He's recently been entertaining his followers with his thoughts on today's Johnny Depp video apology:

As well as this truly incredible Game of Thrones/Brent mashup:

(Image: Rex)