The Office producer Ash Atalla has admitted that in recent years, he’s questioned whether it was right for him to have had Ricky Gervais make jokes about his disability.
At the insistence of Atalla, 53, who uses a wheelchair, comedian Gervais, 64, poked fun at the producer’s disability while picking up an award at the 2001 British Comedy Awards.
Joined by Atalla and the rest of the team behind the UK version of The Office, Gervais, 64, who co-wrote and led the sitcom, took the podium to accept the honour for Best New TV Comedy.
“We still need more money. It’s a very low budget,” the comedian quipped, pointing to Atalla. “He was the runner — no, that’s the producer, he wanted me to tell you that so you didn’t think he’d won a competition.”
As laughter echoed through the audience, Gervais once again emphasised that the joke came from Atalla, not him.
In another award acceptance speech, Gervais compared Atalla with theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, saying: “You’re just the same... but without all the clever stuff.”
Asked how he felt about the jokes now, Atalla told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs: “I felt good about it at the time. The joke that people remember, the first one, was a line that I gave to him, because I said to him, ‘Make sure they know I haven’t won a competition to be here.’
“Because I was suddenly concerned at the optics of... people in wheelchairs weren’t on stages back then,” he explained. “And he did that joke at the British Comedy Awards. There was this huge roar, and that kind of started the double act of that material on stage.
The Egyptian-born producer continued: “I tried to make the point a couple of times that it’s about nuance, and because I think I play fast and loose with the rules around my wheelchair, I’m really happy to use it when I want to, like, I haven’t queued at an airport in years, and then other times I get annoyed that other people might even bring it up.
“I’m a producer, and people don’t normally notice the producer, but there I was on stage, and I got a profile, a lot because of the stuff that Ricky and I used to do on stage.”
Looking back, Atalla admitted that “maybe I realize, or I feel I sold a bit of myself in that moment, I put the wheelchair front and centre because I knew it was something that would set me apart in that instance. Set me apart in a good way.”
“And, just in recent years, as I’ve thought about it, it’s made me consider whether I was right to do that,” he said.
Atalla contracted polio as a child, and the disease left him unable to walk.
Elsewhere in the episode, the producer considered whether it is right to have able-bodied actors playing disabled people, acknowledging that it is “a complex issue.”
“I think it’s a very simple rule now to have... just make it a 100 per cent rule, and nobody will get hurt,” he said.
“Disabled people should only play disabled people on television. It’s a complex issue,” he added. “You can make an argument to justify why an able-bodied actor should do a disabled role, like you can construct that argument.
“It’s just that, for me, it’s an argument that falls apart really quickly,” Atalla concluded. “And so I could make the case to you, I won’t, but I could make the case for you, but it’s just not one that I believe in.”
Atalla’s gone on to work as a series producer on The IT Crowd and an executive producer on Cuckoo, Stath Lets Flats, and Big Boys.
Desert Island Discs broadcasts at 10am on Sunday on BBC Radio 4 and is also available on BBC Sounds.
Additional reporting by Press Association
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