Having invited a comedian famous for his clever, awkward and sometimes too-close-to-the-bone humour to present the Golden Globes this year, the ceremony organisers, guests and the world were apparently amazed that Ricky Gervais chose to go with cheeky bawdy British humour, after he delivered a series of ego-puncturing gags which Hollywood seems to have taken to heart. But his relatively innocuous closing joke, “Thank God I’m an atheist”, has also prompted ridiculous questions in the western world’s most religious country.

In the video Piers Morgan uses his CNN show to ask Gervais whether “Thank God” was meant to be offensive, whether Gervais knew it would offend Americans, and – apparently incapable of understanding atheism – whether there’s an afterlife. Gervais responds in the manner of a grouchy, rather more salt of the earth Bertrand Russell.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1XGTrrZjlI (via The Perplexed Observer)