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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Entertainment
Sara-Aisha Kent

Ricky Gervais worries he'll be in a wheelchair as he relies on partner to dress him

Ricky Gervais is worried that he could end up using a wheelchair for life.

The comedian, 60, suffers from severe back pain and recently suffered a setback when tying his shoelace ahead of going for a run over the weekend.

As a result of the excruciating pain, his long-term partner Jane Fallon has to help him get dressed.

After Life creator Ricky says he was in that much pain he wanted to scream "get me a f****** ambulance" after the shoelace incident, The Sun reports.

He added: "This is why I know I’ll end up in a f****** bucket one day. I’ve got tennis tomorrow, that’s got to be cancelled. Thank God I haven’t got a gig."

Ricky Gervais is worried that he could end up wheel-chair bound for life (Getty Images)

The funnyman joked: "Next tour, after this one, I’m changing the genre. It’s not stand-up, it’s sit-down."

He later took to Twitter to update his fans on the injury as he wrote: "Bad Back Update: Lying on the floor, with a hot water bottle tucked in a weightlifting belt, like a sad, fat turtle, watching the gymnastics on TV. Pathetic."

Ricky's back has never been the same after a tennis game in Italy left him bedridden.

Ricky said of his back problems: “It’s probably happened ten times significantly in 30 years, usually when I’m putting a toothbrush back or doing up a f****** shoelace.

"It’s horrible. You forget how much you rely on your spine.”

In 2019 Ricky was slammed for making fun of a disabled TV producer.

The comedian suffers from severe back pain (Getty)

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Wheelchair user Ash Atalla said that he was "uncomfortable" with the jokes that Gervais used to make but 'went along with it' at the time.

Reflecting on their time together when making The Office and the subsequent adulation that the sitcom received, Ash has said that he used to feel "awkward" when Gervais used to joke about him.

Ash has accused Gervais of being "obsessed" with disability, after he often made him the butt of gags he made at TV award ceremonies, as well during the filming of the acclaimed sitcom.

Ashy was referred to by Gervais as "my little wheelchair friend," before he went on to jest about disability in his live shows and then to play disabled character Derek, in his critically-acclaimed series.

Ash uses a wheelchair after contracting polio when he was a child, was one referred to by Gervais as "just the same as Stephen Hawking, but without all the clever stuff."

He suffered a flare-up over the weekend (Getty Images)

Ash admitted: "I was complicit in him making fun of the wheelchair. But I don’t look back at it with an enormous amount of pride.

“I feel a little bit uncomfortable about some of the stuff we did together.”

While Ash, who has also produced The IT Crowd and Man Stroke Woman, also joked about his disability, he has complained that Gervais took it to a different level.

He continued: "There was another level of awkwardness to it.

“He did go on to make quite a few shows about disability so maybe he is obsessed with it.”

Ash revealed that Gervais would have meetings when producing The Office to discuss what they could get away with when joking about disability.

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