"HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"

Ricky Gervais' plaster-loosening cackle peals in from the side-room adjoining the modest office where totalfilm.com is chatting with the fella who does his website.

We're talking about our ongoing campaign to get Gervais' Podcast/Audiobook fall guy Karl Pilkington a surely unwanted role in The Hobbit. (Sign up here).

"Yeah, Ricky passed that on," says Website Fella (Matt). "He loved it..."

"...because Karl will hate it."

The Gervais work gaff skulks anonymously above an estate agent's office in the posh and perky London borough of Hampstead.

He's a notorious stickler for punctuality ('lateness' was one of Gervais' choices when he took a turn on the Room 101 TV show). So we're there bang on time.

But the office is so meticulously unmarked, we have to bother one of the estate-agent clerks to confirm we're at the right place.

"Yeah, I think there's an office up there," he confirms. "Haven't heard anyone, though..."

"HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"

It's hard to miss Ricky Gervais. It's been ten years since the ex-band member/band manager/DJ/sketch comic did that funny dance in The Office.

Since then, he's conquered the comedy world, bagging seven BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, two Emmys...

A committed Yankophile, he's one of the few British comedians to have cracked America on his own terms - no smoothed-down edges, no cosy compromises for the sponsors or fawning to the gallery (see his inevitably mixed reception as host of last month's Golden Globe Awards).