The Office began as a student film Stephen Merchant made on a BBC course
Ricky Gervais hired Stephen Merchant as his radio assistant in 1997 because his CV happened to be the first one handed over. A year later Merchant, on a BBC production course, cast his boss in a half-hour short called Seedy Boss. That piece of coursework grew into The Office.
Merchant was born in Hanham, a suburb of Bristol, on 24 November 1974, to a nursery nurse and a plumber and builder. He read Film and Literature at the University of Warwick from 1993 to 1996, reviewing films on student radio. Back in Bristol he tried stand-up at the Comedy Box, doing well one week and bombing the next, took dull temp jobs, appeared on the quiz show Blockbusters in 1997 and briefly worked as a DJ for Radio Caroline.
At XFM London he and Gervais shared a Saturday afternoon show from January to August 1998, when both left after the Capital Radio Group bought the station. Gervais himself called it a tinpot operation with a tiny audience. The Office reached BBC Two in mid-2001 to weak ratings at first; its second series in 2002 featured a Merchant cameo as Oggy and his own father as a handyman called Gordon. When it aired in America in 2004 it won the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy series, and the US remake that followed in 2005 listed the pair as executive producers.
Their partnership with the producer Karl Pilkington began on a new XFM show in 2001 and moved online in December 2005, sponsored by The Guardian. Guinness World Records certified that podcast as the most downloaded ever. Extras arrived on BBC Two the same year, with Merchant playing the hopeless agent Darren Lamb, a role that won him a British Comedy Award in 2006; the series later took a Golden Globe of its own.
Outside the partnership he has built a varied career. His voice as the robot Wheatley in Valve's Portal 2 (2011) drew wide praise, and his stand-up tour Hello Ladies became an HBO sitcom in 2013 that lasted eight episodes plus a closing special. He wrote and directed the wrestling film Fighting with My Family in 2019. The comedian who inspired him, John Cleese, once left a voicemail for Merchant's parents on a cruise saying he was an enormous fan, and Merchant said that was all he needed.
Source: Stephen Merchant
