Ricky Gervais delivers another swipe at James Corden in Netflix special

Ricky Gervais and James Corden's supposed 'feud' has risen its head once again, this time via the former's new Netflix stand-up special Armageddon.

Premiering on the streaming service on Christmas Day, the comedy show's topics of conversation include artificial intelligence, political correctness and the death of humanity, yet Corden's acting turns into the butt of one particular jibe.

The joke addresses a website informing its users whether or not a film or TV series features animals dying, so they can avoid having their days ruined. "It's become a thing for anyone's phobias; anything you don't want to see in the film, you just look up the film and they answer your question," explained Gervais.

"This website was founded in 2010, so it's run about 13 years and the later questions start reflecting the times we live in now and they get more and more fragile and narcissistic."

Apparently, one person felt the need to ask if Steven Spielberg's Holocaust classic Schindler's List has "any fat jokes" and "hate speech" amidst the harrowing drama. "I asked one question myself on this [site]: is James Corden in it?" quipped Gervais.

The feud between Gervais and Corden

Harmless taunting between the two funnymen began all the way back in 2009, with sketch show Horne & Corden parodying The Office's David Brent on two occasions, who was of course played by Gervais in the BBC sitcom. Corden had him mixing around the World War I trenches and doing his iconic arm-swinging dance.

A year later, Gervais' first Golden Globe Awards hosting gig sent Hollywood into meltdown, but Corden - who was about to front the BRIT Awards just a few weeks later - made sure to publicly denounce his peer's approach.

"I'm not going to go down the Ricky Gervais road, because you can't in that room anyway - there's a big difference between The O2 and the dining room in the Beverly Hilton," he said to The Daily Mirror. "I want to host the BRITs with as much warmth and sensitivity as possible."

Following Corden's The Late Late Show takeover in 2015, though, Gervais was critical during an interview on XFM. Despite not naming names, he argued: "I think that sometimes... people do it the wrong way round. Someone works really hard, and they become a comedian and they get a big show, then they get offered a chat show in America. They take that and then work their way down from a comedian to a bloke who's looking for hits on YouTube the next day because no-one watches late night."

Fast forward to 2017 and Corden's Harvey Weinstein bit at the amfAR charity dinner went down like a lead balloon with Gervais. "It's a beautiful night here in LA," he told the A-list crowd. "So beautiful, Harvey Weinstein has already asked tonight up to his hotel to give him a massage..."

Audible groans rang out around the venue, and while appearing on Radio Andy shortly afterwards, Gervais suggested: "When you do a contentious joke or talk about a taboo subject, it's got to be a great joke. You can't just bounce out there and do jokes about abuse and rape. You've got to be very intelligent when you do it. There's got to be a point to it. He did it like it was light entertainment. He didn't do it well enough."

Three years later, Corden's role in the musical flop Cats got a kicking from the comedian at the Golden Globes, with Gervais joking: "The world got to see James Corden as a fat p****. He was also in the movie Cats, but no one saw that..."

Speaking to The Sun, though, the Extras and After Life creator promised there was no resentment between them. "There is no feud between myself and James nor has there ever been," stated Gervais. "The Cats joke that I told at the Golden Globes is obviously a pun on his role in the film, and James' impression of me in his sketch show was also friendly teasing, and I took no offence to that."

He even appeared empathetic when Corden unintentionally plagiarised one of his stand-up routines last year. In one of The Late Late Show's opening monologues, the ex-talkshow host was riffing on Elon Musk's Twitter buyout and how the social media platform regularly sees angry users complaining about questionably "offensive" material.

"That's what I think when you see Elon Musk talk about Twitter, he says, 'Well it's the town square', but it isn't. Because if someone puts up a poster in a town square that says guitar lessons available, you don't get people in the town square saying, 'I don't want to play the guitar! I want to play the piano, you piece of s***!'" said Corden. "Well that sign wasn't for you, it was for somebody else, you don't have to get mad about all of it."

Having previously written this piece himself for another Netflix programme, a forgiving Gervais revealed to Nihal Arthanayake on BBC Radio 5 Live: "He did [say sorry]. I said 'Don't worry about it'. I said 'if your writers were in the back of the room when I was warming up and you got it out there before I did it on Netflix...'

"But whatever you think of James Corden, there is no way he knowingly ripped off my joke and thought he'd get away with it. I don’t know how he got to it because the writer must have walked him through and said 'do this' and 'do that'. Or he saw it five years ago and completely forgot about it and thought he'd made it up. That can happen as well," he continued.

"There are some plagiarists but a lot of it is genuinely accidental. So that is clearly my routine, but I don't think he came up with it at all. I think a writer pitched that to him and didn't tell him it was mine, or the writer forgot."

Ricky Gervais: Armageddon is now streaming on Netflix.

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• Ricky Gervais reacts to Stewart Lee calling After Life one of the worst things ever made

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