Gervais is in that ornery tradition of awkward customers, and he comes with the considerable built-in advantage of being English, which makes his disdain and sarcasm all the more heartfelt.
The fact that he will publicly flaunt his disdain for paying taxes in a country that even his manager acknowledges has been very good to him (all but three of his professional fights in the last ten years have taken place in the United States where he enjoys enormous popularity) is just irritating.