Ricky Gervais has paid tribute to his “beautiful” on-screen dog who featured in his TV show After Life.

The British comedian and actor said Vislor Antilly, also known as Anti, was a “beautiful soul” and they “hit it off straight away”.

Gervais said the German shepherd helped make After Life his “favourite filming experience of all time” and he was glad he told her “a hundred times a day that she was a very good girl”.

Antilly was Brandy the Dog in all 18 episodes of the Netflix comedy about local newspaper reporter Tony, played by Gervais, who is dealing with his wife’s death.

In the show, which ran for three seasons from 2019 to 2022, Tony is often seen walking Brandy, who stops him from taking his own life.

A statement on the Instagram account of Antilly the Wonder Hound read: “Vislor Antilly, After Life’s Brandy, has sadly passed away. We already miss her terribly. Sleep well xxx.”

She died peacefully at her home in Oxfordshire at the age of 13.

‘Such sad news’

Reacting to the death, Gervais said: “This is such sad news. Anti was a beautiful soul.”

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The canine also featured in Hollywood movies including Tom Cruise’s Edge Of Tomorrow, Michael Fassbender’s Trespass Against Us and George Clooney’s The Midnight Sky.

And she was in TV shows such as The Capture, Doc Martin, Britain’s Got More Talent, and 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

Her final stunt on camera was released in July last year in the Midsomer Murders episode The Debt Of Lies, where she played a retired police dog who detains the murderer before retiring.

After that, Antilly retired from film and television.

‘Animal actor and stunt performer’

Born in April 2011 in Herefordshire, at the home of West Bromwich-based Vislor Dog Training Centre, Antilly was raised by trainers Travis and Ashley Foster, who appeared in Sir Christopher Nolan’s Batman: The Dark Knight. She visited them on set when she was 10 weeks old.

The biography on her Instagram account read: “Vislor Antilly is an animal actor, stunt performer and charity advocate. She played Brandy in After Life by Ricky Gervais and has a very silly tummy.”

Dame Judi Dench has revealed she can no longer leave her house alone due to her deteriorating eyesight.

The 90-year-old actress has macular degeneration, a condition which leads to a gradual loss of vision.

In a new interview on Trinny Woodall’s Fearless podcast, Dame Judi says “somebody will always be with me” when she leaves the house.

“I have to [have someone] now because I can’t see,” she continues. “And I will walk into something or fall over.”

Reflecting on how she used to feel about attending events alone, Dame Judi said she was “no good at that at all”.

“And fortunately, I don’t have to be [alone] now because I pretend now to have no eyesight,” she laughs.

In July 2023, Dame Judi said she was determined to work “as much as I can” despite her health issues.

“I mean, I can’t see on a film set anymore,” she told The Mirror’s Notebook magazine. “And I can’t see to read. So I can’t see much. But, you know, you just deal with it. Get on.”

Dame Judi’s acting career began in the 1950s when she made her stage debut in a production of Hamlet at London’s Old Vic theatre.

In the decades since, she’s conquered the worlds of TV and film, winning an Oscar for her role in the 1998 movie Shakespeare In Love and, more recently, playing the head of MI6, M, alongside Daniel Craig’s James Bond.

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Dame Judi has also cemented herself as one of the UK’s best stage actresses, winning a string of Olivier awards for starring roles in plays including The Winter’s Tale and Macbeth.

Her most recent screen credit was in 2022, for a small role in Christmas film Spirited. She has continued to make public appearances and last October, she was a speaker at the Cheltenham Literary Festival.

From the sampled vocals of Mel & Kim to the instantly memorable lyrics of Rick Astley’s biggest hits, Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s songs ruled the UK charts in the late 1980s.

With a blue plaque being installed on the side of the Bermondsey building that housed their “hit factory”, the trio spoke to Sky News about spotting Kylie’s “spark” and claiming they “invented” AI.

At their peak in 1989, Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman songs made up a whopping 27% of the UK singles market.

It remains one of the most successful partnerships in the history of pop.

Waterman admits feeling “knocked out” by the 40 or so crowd that came to watch them receive the honour – including 1980s artists Brother Beyond, former staff who worked on their records, and fans.

“These are some of the kids that every day used to be here after school wanting autographs. Of course, they’re all grown up now!” laughs Waterman.

The partnership produced countless hits for some of the biggest stars at the time.

“We had a method of working, we tried to taper the songs to how we thought the public would perceive the artist and we were quite successful in that regard,” says Matt Aitken.

Waterman adds: “If it didn’t work, we didn’t bother.”

In 1988, their success went into overdrive thanks to a collaboration with a young Australian soap actress called Kylie Minogue who they hadn’t even heard of at the time.

“When she arrived at the studio we were unaware that she was even turning up,” Mike Stock explains. “So we had to come up with a song pretty quick.”

They wrote her 1987 debut hit I Should Be So Lucky in just 20 minutes.

“She was a great deliverer of a song,” Aitken says.

“When she was sat in a corner you wouldn’t know she was there but the minute a camera went on… she sparked,” adds Pete Waterman.

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Back in the day most of their hits were recorded on a simple 24-track tape machine but now, with advances in AI software, songs can be produced in an instant.

So how do the trio feel about artificial intelligence being the new “hit factory”?

“AI? We invented it!” jokes Waterman.

“You’ve got to incorporate influences from the past but… the difference between AI and what we did [is] we had emotion,” he says.

“We fought over songs if a lyric didn’t work. It doesn’t work without emotion.”