Stephen Merchant has shared the personal message that Adele dedicated to him ahead of a recent Las Vegas show – and joked that he received nothing of the kind from Bono the following night.
The co-creator of The Office opened up in an Instagram reel that before seeing one of Adele’s shows at her Vegas residency, he was presented with a programme, on which Adele had hand-written a personal memory of the time the two met several years ago.
Watch the reel here.
“I’ve just got back from Vegas, where I was watching Adele in concert,” Merchant said. “And I met the great lady maybe about ten years ago, not expecting her to remember me. I get to the show, someone appears from nowhere, they hand me a personalised commemorative programme, written to me with a message from Adele.”
“I can’t believe it, my night is made, I’m enjoying the show, she’s doing a great performance, amazing singer, amazing songwriter, great showmanship, and then, this happened,” he adds, before showing a video clip of Adele embracing him during the show as she is walking through the crowd.
“The fact that Adele took the time just before she went on stage to perform in front of thousands of people to actually write me this, is incredibly sweet, I’m very, very touched. So I just wanted to say a big thank you to her.”
“And the following night, I went to see U2 in concert. And I didn’t get shit from Bono.”
In September, Merchant was named as the UK’s richest comedian, ahead of his former co-writer Ricky Gervais and Peter Kay. It is thought that his TV production businesses, including SJJM LTD, are a major factor in his financial success.
In 2018, Merchant had said he would be happy to work with Ricky Gervais again. “If the right idea was there, it’d be good to do something. But at the moment, there’s nothing on the horizon,” he said.
A couple of years later, Merchant made a playful jibe at Gervais‘s Netflix series After Life, which led some fans to wrongly speculate that there were issues between the two of them.
When asked by film critic James King “What is your least favourite bit of movie shorthand?”, Merchant responded: “Watching old home movies of dead child/wife = inability to move on.”
While he did not explicitly name After Life, the series focuses on Gervais’ character Tony as he mourns the loss of his wife, who died of breast cancer.
Adele’s Las Vegas residency is due to run until June 15, 2024.