By RICKY GERVAIS
Added: Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 UTC

Reposted from:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/12/06/btatheist106.xml

It's the Christmas show for firm atheists - Dominic Cavendish meets the comics doing gags for the godless

When Ricky Gervais was a child, he thought Jesus was fantastic. "I loved him because he was kind and strong," he tells me, shortly before taking the stage at a secret warm-up gig ahead of his first major London appearances this year. "He fought for the underdog. He had integrity and charisma."

I brace myself for a punch-line, but he's in earnest. "From the age of three to eight I thought Jesus was amazing," he says.

Then came the moment of apostasy. He was drawing a Bible picture one day when his older brother, Bob, casually asked him why he believed in God. "My mother went, 'Bob!' And I knew. I knew that she was hiding something that he wanted to tell me. I thought about it for an hour and that was it. I didn't believe any more."

Click here to continue:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/12/06/btatheist106.xml

TAGGED: ATHEISM, MOVIES, RELIGION