Chances are you will have looked at a colleague and thought: David Brent. The fictional boss played by Ricky Gervais in the mockumentary television comedy The Office has become shorthand for the cringe-inducing idiot who mangles clumsy chumminess with management nonsense. Brent is so familiar that, when meeting Mr Gervais at his office in leafy, upscale Hampstead in north London, home to literary aristocracy and overseas bankers, I cannot help seeking out similarities to the character that made him famous. They sound alike (in Gervais's words like a "Worzel") and share the overlapping pointy teeth that Americans believed were false comedy dentures. But there the similarities end. Brent is clueless, Mr Gervais clued-up.

Since The Office first aired on the BBC in 2001, it has been shown in 90 countries and remade in nine others (there is even an unofficial German spoof set in the Third Reich, which casts Hitler in the Brent role). Its success has spawned an entertainment empire. While many media businesses are suffering because of fragmenting audiences, Mr Gervais has strategically fashioned himself as a multimedia operator. His interests span children's books, podcasts (his seventh series enjoys 4.6m downloads a week) and films (he has just finished the The Invention of Lying , which he directed and wrote, and is about to start filming Cemetery Junction , which he describes as a "blue-collar Office "). This week he will announce the dates for his fourth live comedy tour.