The past couple of days have been saturated with remembrances of David Bowie, who died of cancer on Sunday at the age of 69. Of course, much has been said about his towering music career. However, Bowie’s dry sense of humour is also worthy of note: he could be downright hilarious. Bowie deftly navigated the world of comedy like a pro, unafraid of being made a fool of or losing his cool – which of course was impregnable in any case. It’s a quality many professional comedians saw and appreciated in the rocker.
His gameness for goofing on himself was on full display during his multiple appearances on Conan O’Brien’s former show, Late Night. “The man was always outstanding,” O’Brien noted on his TBS show in a tribute to Bowie on Monday night. “People remember what a phenomenal musician David Bowie was and that was the case: he was mind-blowingly talented.” However, he also “was fun and he was always funny”. In one of his most memorable appearances, Bowie took part in a recurring Late Night gag known as Secrets where celebrities reveal their innermost thoughts. “I was on tour in the United States back in ’89 and we did a show in Cincinnati,” a deadpan Bowie said, staring into the camera while holding a lit cigarette. “During that show, I shouted out, ‘It’s great to be in Cincinnati!’ That was a lie.”
Bowie’s interest in the goofy even stretched into animation, as he was known to be a fervent fan of Spongebob Squarepants – so much so that he voiced a role in a 2007 TV movie dubbed SpongeBob’s Atlantis SquarePantis. “I’ve hit the holy grail of animation gigs,” Bowie said on his blog of the role at the time. “Yesterday I got to be a character on … tan-tara … SpongeBob SquarePants. Oh Yeah!! We, the family, are thrilled. Nothing else need happen this year, well, this week anyway.” For a music legend to not only voice admiration for a Nickelodeon cartoon but turn in a role on a TV movie is a feat only someone with a career as unique as Bowie could pull off. Bowie’s fandom of Spongebob stretched so far that his first posthumous song will be a track he wrote for a forthcoming stage musical version of the cartoon to to debut in Chicago this summer.
However, Bowie’s single most memorable comedic moment – besides a split-second, scene-stealing cameo in Zoolander for which he nabbed an MTV Movie award nomination – is an uproarious 2006 appearance in Extras, the follow-up to The Office starring Ricky Gervais. Bowie’s single scene also happens to double as one of the best moments of the entire acclaimed series.
The show’s plot follows Gervais as his character desperately tries to navigate the thankless world of being a background actor, and in one episode he gets to meet the legend himself. After a brief, awkward introduction between the two, Bowie is suddenly struck with inspiration for a song by the chance meeting and improvises a scathing takedown of Gervais’s loser character. “Little fat man who sold his soul,” croons Bowie out of the blue while a shocked Gervais looks on. Turning around to play a nearby piano, Bowie continues: “Chubby little loser, national joke!” and soon leads the crowd in a sing-along. Bowie nails the outrageous lyrics, singing the words “pathetic little fat man” as if he were performing a ballad. It’s brilliant, and in a tweet following Bowie’s death, writer-director Judd Apatow posted the clip and summed it up best:
David Bowie on Extras was as good as comedy gets. @rickygervais
— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) January 11, 2016
