Wow! He’s one of my absolute comedy heroes! Him and Trent!
Two questions spring to mind:
1) Was there anything about the younger Ricky when you knew him that gave any kind of inkling that he was destined for the kind of success he’s achieved?)
No. But you gotta remember my entire life back then consisted of dealing with rock'n'roll stars & rock'n'roll wannabes. He held his own in that company (he got promoted after a year or so as receptionist to booking bands as our Ents Officer); but there was nothing that would make you think that he was going on to follow anything other than the normal career path of someone who held that kind of position: namely, go into tour promotion. If anything, my money would have been on his partner, Jane (Fallon), who'd shared receptionist duties with him.
If you ever watched that Simpson's episode he features in, that's how he was like at work. Funny enough, but always slightly snidey with it. 'Comedy' Rick is just a bigger version of himself.
2) Which one of the characters in The Office (or any of his other shows for that matter) did he base on you, Paul? (My money’s on Gareth!
)
I'd like to think we got on well as colleagues, but I've never watched anything other than the odd clip from 'The Office', or any of his other shows fo that matter; because, for example, whenever I've watched 'The Office', I don't see David Brent, I just see Ricky: a less self-aware version of Ricky, to be sure, but it's still him. If you remember his appearance at the Concert for Diana, that wasn't David Brent. That really was him, fulfilling that lifelong ambition of playing Wembley Stadium.
As for me being a character in 'The Office'? I'll leave that to you and others to judge, but from what I've seen of it, I'm not sure that any of the characters in 'The Office' matched any of the people we worked with. In any case, long before he started writing, I'd left rock'n'roll & Ricky behind, to go work for the UN.