James Corden - who has recently made headlines for his alleged restaurant behavior - has now addressed claims that he "blatantly stole" a joke from Ricky Gervais.
The host of The Late Late Show sparked criticism among viewers after joking about Elon Musk's Twitter takeover during his opening monologue.
"When you see Elon Musk talk about Twitter he does this thing where he goes, 'Well, it's the town square,' but it isn't," Corden said via Insider. "Because if someone puts up a poster in a town square that says 'guitar lessons available,' you don't get people in the town going 'I don't want to play the guitar! I want to play the piano, you piece of s**t!'"
He then added: "That sign wasn't for you, it was for someone else. You don't have to get mad!"
While the audience laughed, Gervais' fans clearly didn't find Corden's joke funny, as they took to Twitter afterward to point out that Gervais had already used the joke in his 2018 Netflix comedy special Humanity, as well as telling it to GQ in 2016.
In that special, the British comedian was mocking Twitter users who feel offended at jokes or tweets that aren't even directed at them, saying: "They choose to read my tweet, and then take that personally ... It's like going into a town square and there's a notice for guitar lessons and you go, 'But I don't f**king want guitar lessons!'"
Many Twitter users made the almost word-for-word connection, even blaming Corden's writers for the gaff, with one user tweeting: "It's nice to see James Corden get stitched by his writers. They fed him the Ricky Gervais joke, he butchered it on air. A fine example of karma."
Another user chimed in: "What's truly hilarious about this is that it's highly unlikely James Corden wrote this himself as he has a team of about 8-9 comedy writers for his show. What's wonderful is that the writer/s obviously knew this was a joke stolen from Gervais."
"I would like to buy the disgruntled writer who got James Corden to do a Ricky Gervais gag a pint. Outstanding," another user quipped.
Gervais himself evidently picked up on Corden's monologue, with the 61-year-old writing in a since-deleted tongue-in-cheek tweet: "[Corden's] bit about the town square advert for guitar lessons is brilliant."
But The Office creator did defend Corden, tweeting that he doesn't believe the host was responsible for the error and that it was probably down to a member of the writing team.
Now, in response to the criticism, Corden has addressed the joke in a tweet, writing: "Inadvertently told a brilliant Ricky Gervais joke on the show last night, obviously not knowing it came from him. It's brilliant, because it's a Ricky Gervais joke. You can watch all Ricky's excellent specials on Netflix. J x"
Gervais himself even retweeted Corden's explanation, suggesting that there is no ill will between the two comics.
Though, this wasn't quite enough to halt the army of netizens ready to unleash more wisecracks at Corden's expense.
One user quote tweeted Corden's apology with a reference to UK show, Would I Lie to You, where the aim of the game is convince the players to believe each others' lies. "I once told a Ricky Gervais joke word for word and said I had never heard it before…" the tweet read.
"I inadvertently wrote Hey Jude last night, not knowing the Beatles had already done so," another user commented.
Well, guitar lessons aside, let's hope The Late Late Show writers steer clear of any other big-name comics...
