Gervais launches some new podcasts - and this time they'll cost you.

When his podcasts got into the record books, Ricky Gervais said he wished he'd listened to his sidekicks Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington.

"Steve and Karl wanted to charge for the podcast," he said. "Just a pound they said. I said no. We've had nearly three million downloads so far. It's difficult doing a show with two people who won't talk to me."

So now he is going to charge about £1 per show.

He is recording a second series of podcasts, to start next Tuesday, which will cost £4.50 to sign up for the run of 'at least' four episodes.

When they were free on the Guardian website, the broadcasts were downloaded an average of 261,670 times a week.

So, if he repeats those sorts of figures on the audible.co.uk website, where they're going to be hosted, he could be a very rich man indeed.