According to Newsweek:
James Corden is receiving more criticism online—this time after being accused of plagiarism after seemingly using one of Ricky Gervais’ jokes during Corden’s late-night talk show.
Gervais even addressed the incident on Twitter but has since deleted his tweet.
As Corden opened the Halloween show of The Late Late Show on CBS, he started discussing Elon Musk‘s takeover of Twitter. He went on to tell a joke that many online pointed out was also “word for word” a copy of one of Gervais’ jokes from his 2018 stand-up special Humanity.
“Elon Musk talks about Twitter and goes ‘Well it’s the town square.’ I’m like, ‘But it isn’t.'” Corden continued during his monologue. “Because if someone puts up a poster in the town square that says ‘guitar lessons available’ you don’t get people in the town going ‘I don’t want to play guitar! I want to play the piano.'”
After a clip of the joke was shared on Twitter, hundreds of people started replying and accusing Corden of plagiarism. They tagged Gervais and shared a clip of Gervais telling an almost identical joke.
Eventually, The Office star replied.
“The bit about the town square advert for guitar lessons is brilliant,” Gervais added a laughing emoji as he retweeted the clip. It got over 20,000 likes, comments and retweets before being taken deleted.
Earlier in the month, there were rumors that the two British comedians were embroiled in a feud that was further fueled by Gervais sharing a clip from the TV series After Life in which his character made fun of Corden.
