Personal details
All About this Star
In a nutshell
Ricky has claimed his upbringing was normal and stress-free, much like The Waltons. Lovely! Ricky has 3 siblings, Larry, Marsha and Bob.
He studied at University College London from 1979, initially studying biology before moving to the philosophy course from which he achieved an upper second class honours. Which doesn't sound too bad, although it doesn't matter now he's quite rich.
Earlier we mentioned Ricky's cat. It's called Ollie and was given to him by Jonathan Ross, one of his best friends. And if you're a regular viewer of Jonathan's you'll know that Ricky appears regularly on his chat show. We don't know the exact number of times but it certainly feels like a lot...
Ricky is best known as being a writer, stand-up comedian and actor. He took up a job as 'Head of Speech' at London-based radio station XFM but, during his time, needed an assistant. He ended up interviewing the first person whose CV he saw, with that person turning out to be none other than Stephen Merchant.
One of his first TV roles was when he starred on Channel 4's '11 O'Clock Show'.
The Office is probably Ricky's most successful project to date. He wrote and starred in the show as incompetent office boss, David Brent. Remember in the infamous dance? And yes, we're sure you've done it when drunk - haven't we all? The show itself is one of the UK's biggest television exports ever, with versions produced all over the world.
Ricky's next show, Extras, started in 2005 and went on to become a popular fixture on screens with plenty of laughs as celebrities lined up to take part and mock themselves ever so slightly.
David met his partner, TV producer Jane Fallon, while studying at UCL. She was responsible for amazing BBC Two drama, This Life, on which David worked as 'music advisor'.
