Ricky Gervais has posted the clips he did for Red Nose Day — Comic Relief 2013 — on YouTube, and they indeed herald a return of David Brent, as cringe-inducing as ever, a traveling salesman now, talking about what’s been happening with him since The Office made him a TV icon of sorts. And he’s still trying to get a music career going, this time with a young rapper, Dom Johnson, with the result being this, a song called “Equality Street”:

It’s no “Free Love Freeway.”

Now, you could quibble that the videos don’t quite match up to where we left Brent at the end of the second Christmas special, when he finally told Finch off and seemed to be finding love and, maybe, some awareness. He’s back to clueless and embarrassing here, but you might also say that a return to that Brent was inevitable, that the desire to entertain and be famous and be “loved” as celebrities are was bred in the bone. And, really, would a well-adjusted, successful David Brent be a good subject for comedy?

Ricky now has his own YouTube channel, and it’ll have original content, with stuff coming from the next Muppets movie and maybe even more David Brent.