Fan Fare

British comedian Ricky Gervais is a master of satire.  But some people don’t quite get it.

Gervais, creator of “The Office” and “Extras” TV shows and controversial host of January’s Hollywood  Golden Globe awards, created a stir this week with a wild Vanity Fair magazine interview in which he insisted (between guffaws) that he was making an “Office Babies” spin-off for U.S. television.

“Oh, that’s definitely happening. I’m filming it now. It’s just loads of babies. And you know what the terrible thing is? We’re not even paying them. (Laughs.) What we did is, we pretended to do a promotional thing where parents can come and meet famous people from The Office. So they leave their babies with us, and while they’re distracted getting autographs, we shoot the entire series. It’s just babies crawling over copiers and stuff, and then we overdub the footage. There are no actor fees,” he said.

“It’s sort of like Look Who’s Talking, but set in an office. We’re actually making that show for NBC and it comes out in April. It’ll follow 30 Rock. It’s called Office Babies, and it’s definitely happening,” he said.

No sooner had the interview hit the Internet on Friday, than the web was alight with Tweeters and bloggers .

Vanity Fair was clearly in on the joke, headlining its story (as suggested by Gervais)  “Ricky Gervais Reveals All About Office Babies Spin-Off: ‘It’s Definitely Happening.’”.

Just because you can never be quite sure what Gervais will do next, we called NBC .

They  laughed.

Gervais however IS bringing his latest offering “The Ricky Gervais Show” to U.S. TV this week.  The  show, on cable channel HBO,  is an animated version of Internet podcasts featuring what Gervais calls the “idiotic ramblings” of his friend Karl  Pilkington.

And that’s a fact.