Ricky Gervais spent his childhood terrified he was going to get his privates cut off by a child abuser.
The comic said the fear came from a warning his mum gave him to stay away from the toilets at his local park.
He said instead of telling him to beware of paedophiles she decided to tell him to watch out for men in the loos as they were hanging around to slice off boys’ willies.
The After Life creator, 59, said: “There had obviously been some sort of paedophile sighting when I was little, and it was in the park where I played.
“My mum said: ‘Don’t go into the toilets in the park.’ She couldn’t explain to me what a paedophile was, because I was little – I must have been seven or eight.
“So when I asked why, she said: ‘Because there’s a man going around and he cuts little boys’ willies off.’
Ricky Gervais has opened up about a childhood fear
“It f*****g terrified me. I didn’t go in there, so that worried me.”
Ricky’s first After Life episode contains a now infamous gag about paedophilia in which he tells a schoolkid he would be “safe” if he was a child abuser as his ginger hair and tubbiness wouldn’t make him attractive enough to target.
The funnyman added he was also riddled with fears in childhood of vampires and spiders.
Ricky Gervais made the shock admission
He said about bloodsuckers: “I told my sister to let me see a film – it was just a silly Dracula, Christopher Lee-type one.
“But for the next six months I made up this rule, that he wasn’t allowed to pull the sheet, so I had to make sure I had to sleep with the sheet covering my neck.”
Ricky added he also despised walking into alleys around the Reading estate where he was raised by his labourer dad Lawrence and mum Eva.
Ricky shared the fear came from a warning from his mum
The Office star – in lockdown at his £10.9million North London mansion with long-term partner Jane Fallon, 60 – said: “I remember on our estate there was lots of alleys and that was annoying.
“I don’t know why, whether a lot of people used to get mugged or beaten up there, but going through the alley was scary because I couldn’t see the end.
“On a rough estate going down an alley when you’re a kid is probably quite a rational fear.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
