The Ricky Gervais Show is a comedy audio

Sound

Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...

 show in the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 starring Ricky Gervais

Ricky Gervais

Ricky Dene Gervais is an English comedian, actor, director, radio presenter, producer, musician, and writer.Gervais achieved mainstream fame with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with friend and frequent collaborator...

, Stephen Merchant

Stephen Merchant

Stephen James Merchant is an English writer, director, radio presenter, comedian, and actor. He is best known for his collaborations with Ricky Gervais, as the co-writer and co-director of the popular British sitcom The Office, as the co-writer, co-director and a co-star of Extras, and as the...

, and Karl Pilkington

Karl Pilkington

Karl Pilkington is a British podcaster, author, television personality and former radio producer. He is best known for the Sky travel series, An Idiot Abroad, which was also presented in the United States on the Science Channel, in Canada on Discovery Channel and in Australia on One HD, and The...

, later adapted into an animated televised version

The Ricky Gervais Show (animated series)

The Ricky Gervais Show is an American cartoon series produced for and broadcast by HBO. The series is an animated version of the popular British audio podcasts and audiobooks of the same name, which feature Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant , along with colleague and friend Karl Pilkington,...

 debuting for HBO and Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 in 2010. The show started in November 2001 on Xfm

Xfm

Xfm is a brand of two commercial radio stations focused on alternative music, primarily indie pop, and owned by Global Radio.-History:Xfm was created in London in 1992 by Sammy Jacob, who later co-founded NME Radio in 2008. Xfm subsequently expanded to a network of four stations; there are...

, and aired in weekly periods for months at a time throughout 2002, 2003, 2004, and mid-2005. In November 2005, Guardian Unlimited

Guardian Unlimited

guardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...

offered the show as a podcast

Podcast

A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...

 series of 12 shows. Throughout January and February 2006, the podcast was consistently ranked the number one podcast in the world; it appeared in the 2007 Guinness World Record for the world's most downloaded podcast, having gained an average of 261,670 downloads per episode during its first month.