First photo of David Brent as urinal lozenge salesman in Office spin-off film
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Version 0 of 1. The first image of Ricky Gervais as wannabe popstar David Brent – once of The Office, now a travelling salesman with a lust for fame – has hit the web ahead of the release of new mockumentary Life on the Road. The big screen debut of the former manager of Slough’s Wernham Hogg paper company is due to film some time in 2015. It will focus on Brent’s life on tour with his band Foregone Conclusion 15 years after being made redundant from Wernham Hogg. The 50-year-old, now a urinal lozenge salesman, has cashed in his pension to pay for a band of expensive young session musicians because ticket receipts are not enough to cover their wages and a tour bus. “I’m so excited that the world will see what David Brent is up to now and where his future lies,” said Gervais last week after the movie secured financing. “This film delves much more into his private life than The Office ever did and we really get to peel back the layers of this extraordinary, ordinary man.” Gervais signalled in August last year that Brent had moved on from The Office’s jaded corporate interiors, and it appears unlikely that regulars of the hit BBC2 show such as Tim (Martin Freeman) or Gareth (Mackenzie Crook) will be making an appearance. Crook, who played weaselly office worker Gareth Keenan throughout The Office’s original two- season run, said in October: “I really don’t think he’s going to go back and visit Tim and Dawn and Gareth and see what they are up to, because they won’t be interested in that.” However, Gervais will be joined by the rapper Doc Brown, who sang with him on the 2013 cod-reggae Comic Relief hit Equality Street. “I make him come on the road with me to do some stuff,” Gervais told the Radio Times in January. “The idea is that I am probably holding him back because he’s actually got a chance of making it as a musician, but he’s with this 50-year-old rep called David Brent.” According to Gervais, songs recorded for the movie include an untitled ditty about the plight of the Native American Indian which is “horrendously pompous and wrong and accidentally insulting”, and the singer’s festive effort Don’t Cry it’s Christmas, “about an orphan he knew”. Then there’s Slough, an ode to Brent’s home town, and Lady Gypsy, which documents an early sexual encounter. |