Well, no surprise here. It was revealed two months ago that Golden Globe producers had invited cheeky British comedian Ricky Gervais to host their reliably boozy shindig for a third straight year — keen, one assumes, to reignite the media fuss that greeted his polarizing performance this year, which some found hilariously irreverent and others thought overly disrespectful to the industry being celebrated that night. (I was firmly in the former camp.)

At the time, Gervais claimed he was wary of accepting the offer to three-peat, but one needn’t have been a mind-reader to know he’d inevitably relent. And so, it seems, he has: the New York Post is informed by an inside source that the deal has been made. Hurrah.

Assuming Gervais returns, it’ll be interesting next year to see how him emceeing compares to that of Eddie Murphy, who, in case you’d forgotten, is running the slightly bigger show that is the Oscars. It’s been a while since the Academy opted for a comedian with that level of bite: with Gervais’s recent run, the Globes have rather cornered the ‘funny’ market in the season’s endless procession of awards shows, and Murphy will have to be on vintage form to compete.

Gervais is arguably a more current comic than Murphy (who, despite his star billing, is rather a token presence in “Tower Heist”), but also more suited to the smaller-scale party vibe of the Globes. (Acidic satire doesn’t play terribly well in the more formal environment of the Academy Awards — just ask Chris Rock. It’s a far tougher comic balance to strike.) Anyway, as I wrote back in August, happy Gervais is apparently back on board.

Now, if someone can just find a way to make the SAG Awards fun…