James Corden Reacts After Being Called Out for Ricky Gervais Joke

James Corden‘s latest controversy is no laughing matter. 

After being criticized for repeating a joke from Ricky Gervais nearly word-for-word on the Late Late Show Oct. 31, the host took to social media to explain the mix-up.

“Inadvertently told a brilliant Ricky Gervais joke on the show last night, obviously not knowing it came from him,” James tweeted Nov. 1. “It’s brilliant, because it’s a Ricky Gervais joke. You can watch all Ricky’s excellent specials on Netflix.”

James, 44, responded to critics one day after receiving backlash from fans who accused him of plagiarizing the joke from Ricky’s 2018 Netflix special Humanity on the CBS late-night talk show.

“When you see Elon Musk talk about Twitter, he does this thing where he goes, ‘It’s the town square,'” James said at the time, per The Hollywood Reporter. “But it isn’t, because if someone puts up a poster in a town square that says, ‘guitar lessons available,’ you don’t get people in the town going, ‘I don’t wanna play the guitar!’ But that sign wasn’t for you, it was for somebody else—you don’t have to get mad about all of it.”