READING born actor Ricky Gervais joked he 'does it for the money' after accepting his award for best comedy.

His Netflix series Afterlife won at the National Television Awards last night (Thursday, September 9).

Afterlife saw huge success with audience ratings giving the show 4.9 stars. It has also been named on Netflix’s list of the most popular series of 2019.

It fended off competition from shows such as Sex Education, The Vicar Of Dibley and Friday Night Dinner.

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Taking to the stage, Gervais told the audience: “I will keep it short. It’s already interminable.

“Thank you for Netflix for all their support and their total lack of interference. They are just the best broadcaster.

“The amazing crew and cast, and the people at home who voted for it. Thank you so much. You are the reason I do this.”

However, after a pause he added: “The money is… You are the second… I do it for the money and thank you…”

Speaking in the winners’ room about the positive reception to the show, he added: “I’m still surprised by it. It’s a show about a man who wants to kill himself and his wife dies of cancer, and people go ‘OK, this sounds funny’.

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“And the reaction has been incredible, people come up to me on the streets and they go ‘I lost my brother or I lost my mother’, and you realise that everyone’s grieving.

“However dark something is they want to see themselves on the screen, and it opens the conversation.

“It’s been, I think, the best experience in terms of the reaction of anything I’ve ever done because of that emotion.

“And it’s so fun to work with these guys, they make it easy, it’s so fun all the time on set, genuinely, it really is.”

Discussing the upcoming third season, he said it is the “best one yet” and that it could potentially come out before Christmas, and the one spoiler he would reveal was that the dog does not die.

The third series of the show was also filmed in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire earlier this year.

On April 29, he was seen with a film crew in the grounds of St Mary’s and All Saints Church, shooting a scene while sat on a bench. Then, a few weeks later, he was seen again. Over the road this time standing outside Beaconsfield Old Town Registration Office in Windsor End.