Gervais: I had to say sorry to vicar for joking at my mother's funeral

The star and creator of the TV hit The Office says he and his elder brother "wound up" the vicar at his mother's funeral and spent much of the occasion "crying with laughter".

Gervais, 45, says they played tricks on the clergyman before and during the ceremony for his mother, Eva.

The star says his brother Bob, 56, was the instigator of much of his family's humour.

Speaking on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, to be broadcast today, Gervais says: "When my mum died, we were organising the funeral and the vicar said to my brother, "So tell me about your mother; what was she like?"

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Ricky Gervais says he was an atheist by the age of ten

And my brother, just winding up the vicar, said, "She was a keen racist." And the vicar said, "I can't say that!" So Bob went, "Oh, OK then...she liked gardening."

"And then, when we were at the funeral, there was me, my brother Bob, my sister Marcia and our oldest brother Larry, who'd come down from Scotland.

"But Bob had played a trick on him as well, because the vicar suddenly goes, "Eva leaves behind four loving children: Ricky, Bob, Marcia and Barry." And Larry just turns round and looks at us. We were crying with laughter and the vicar thinks we're crazy."

Asked by interviewer Kirsty Young if the joking was tasteless and disrespectful, Gervais, who claims he was an atheist by the age of ten, insists it was not.

He says: "We worried about what the vicar thought.

"I remember at my dad's funeral, where we were mucking around and laughing, and we had to go over to the vicar and say, "Sorry about that. Dad was 83 - if he was 50, there would have been less laughter."'

Gervais adds: "I wouldn't do it at someone else's mum's funeral - that's the difference. But I don't think there are any taboos in humour."