Well let's get the elephant in the room out of the room quickly. On my well-worn DVD boxed set is says that The Office is written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. If Stephen Merchant gets a mention on Ricky Gervais' YouTube rundown of the sitcom's best moments it's certainly not as big a namecheck as Gervais gives himself. If The Oggmonster featured in the chart I must have been out of the room at that point.

 

Merchant does get mentioned in the Mackenzie Crook and Martin Freeman BBC Two chinwag about their time on the show. Merchant's directorial instructions were essential, recalls Freeman. He used to tell Freeman to do a look at the camera a la Oliver Hardy to add a memorable visual punchline to scenes.

 

I'd like to know what went on behind the scenes of the making of these two programmes to mark a quarter of a century since The Office first aired. I presume Ricky was approached to appear in the BBC doc but instead chose to follow his own path and put his own show on his YouTube channel. I guess you could call it Office politics.

 

There's no denying that the Gervais top 25 is a wonderful wallow in comedy nostalgia. Some, in fact, lots of his choices are actually still fresh in the memory. From getting made redundant while in Bernie Clifton fancy dress for Comic Relief day, or telling Finchy to "fuck off" to posing on the desk in stone-washed denim for a press shot, this is Gervais at his absolute best. Needless to say you can guess what number one is – it fuses Flashdance with MC Hammer shit. 

 

His commentary is punctuated by his trademark hyena laugh but he does point out things that I'd never noticed even after so many viewings I wore iPlayer out. When he 'phones' Finchy to sack him and it gets rumbled that he is actually talking to the time sponsored by Accurist I'd never noticed that Gareth glances at his watch to check he has the right time.

 

Talking of Gareth, MacKenzie Crook gets genuinely misty-eyed when he recalls landing the role and going for the Gareth coiffure. He went to a trendy Soho barber and asked for a "wanker's haircut." He certainly got it. The rest is jelly in a stapler history.

 

And of course there's the story of Freeman actually auditioning for Gareth and only reading for Tim at the last minute. It's one of those turnarounds that made the show. Would we still be talking about The Office if Freeman had played David Brent's yes man bowlcut sidekick? Well, actually we probably would. After 25 years it still stands up as a landmark sitcom. If it has lasted this long it will surely last forever. Maybe after 50 years we will get a show homing in on Stephen Merchant's memories of the show