Karl Pilkington
Karl Pilkington (born September 23, 1972 in Manchester, England) is an English radio producer perhaps best known for producing the radio show that brought together the writers of The Office, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.
Pilkington was initially an off-air producer of the show, which was broadcast on Xfm, but his antics and opinions soon led to him joining Merchant and Gervais on-air. Some of Pilkington's most popular contributions to the show include Monkey News (news which is supposed to be about monkeys, but is almost always about chimpanzees), Rockbusters (which is really 'Blockbusters' with a word change), Do We Need Them?, Cheeky Freak of the Week and Songs of Phrase.
Pilkington is sometimes mentioned in Ricky Gervais interviews, and is often on the receiving end of Gervais's practical jokes. In addition, Pilkington appears in a twenty minute interview on Ricky Gervais's live standup comedy DVD, Politics.
Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington were reunited for a six-week weekend slot on Xfm that ended on July 2, 2005.
Karl is frequently referred to by Ricky Gervais as 'a little baldy manc'. It should be noted that Ricky has a particular obsession with squeezing Karls' head. Steve Merchant and Karl have a difficult relationship, primarily because a) Steve doesn't rate Karl as a producer and b) Karl thinks Steve is a bit odd looking.
He also has a tendency to start his sentences with "What I'm saying is..." when trying to explain one of his many stories to Ricky and Steve, who often insult both him and his farfetched stories and false theories that almost never make sense.
Recent News
Recently Pilkington maintained an erection whilst in conversation with a fireman on holiday in Spain, and admitted to occasionally having a "cheeky" glance at male genitals when he has the chance, just to check everything is "alright and that". When given a choice between genders, he claims he will check out the man's genitals first.
Views and beliefs
Pilkington has expressed several opinions which most people would find unusual (and sometimes offensive). These include:
- 'Squoze' is a word... e.g 'Last night Ricky squoze my little round bald manc head'.
- A solution to population growth is to have everyone drop dead at 78 and have a baby grow out of them.
- In addition to his solution on population growth, Karl feels that when you die (at 78), you should have "something" injected into your temple, which will then, somehow, bring you back to life. Additionally, when you've been resurrected by this miracle cure injection, your next birthday won't be 79, it will be, amazingly, 77. Yes, that's right, you get younger. So, by the time you're 9 months, people won't be "sad and that" by the fact you're going to die and in turn, you won't be depressed because you're too young to realise.
Monkey News
Monkey News is a popular feature that has been running since the early XFM days, which involves "[A story] where a monkey's been involved. Good little story and that". It's usually followed by some absolute nonsense tale that Karl has made up or extrapolated out of all recognition from a news headline. Monkey News is an easy way to anger Ricky, who often disrupts the show due to being so wound up with disbelief.
Examples of Monkey news
- About a monkey called Marty, it's in some science lab and it's wandering about out of its cage. The "lab fella" is busy on the phone "or something" and doesn't notice that the monkey has escaped. The monkey then goes to a PC in the corner and types "My name is Marty". The "fella" got off the phone and saw what had been typed he then asked his assistant "Have you done this?" his assitant said "No" and they have a "right little argument". During this time, Marty had written "This is not a practical joke, my name is Marty". Apparently you can have a webchat with him.
- A monkey was able to carry out a space mission solo, whilst obeying commands such as "Push the green button" which launches the rocket, much to Ricky's disgust "No! They would not make the monkey launch the rocket! You are living in a cartoon world". "Press the left button" and wearing headphones connecting it to mission control. He also adds, "it does whatever it does, hit reverse, it comes back..." It's also been conditioned so that everytime he hits the correct button it's associated with a banana coming out of a 'banana dispenser'. The story has a sad ending because the monkey was on such a high after being up in space it couldn't do anything that special again and got depressed. We know that the monkey was sad because "of the way it looked". Not even going on tour could reach the peak of self-actualisation for this monkey and it ended up killing itself.
- A group of monkeys were able to learn the value of money and go shopping, one of them even managing to pick out particular deals to save cash.
Fictional Character?
Chris Campling, a journalist writing for the The Times has speculated that Karl Pilkington is not a real person, but an actor portraying the role of a scripted character created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Campling pointed towards the fact that Pilkington's views on chinese people had been stated on Gervais' radio show, before he stated the same thing on his interview with Gervais, on the politics DVD, which Campling found suspicious. Merchant and Gervais have denied claims that Pilkington is a creation of theirs, claiming that Gervais encouraged him to bring up his view on chinese people because it has comedic value. Merchant also stated that he would be ashamed if the radio show was scripted. Ricky agreed, stating, "We spend 3 months on a half-hour script, how could we script a two-hour show every week?" Merchant added: "If we came up with a character as good as Karl, we would never use him on a crappy little radio station like this one (Xfm London)".
Future
Karl will be reunited with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant from Monday 5th December 2005 via the form of 12 weekly podcasts through http://www.guardian.co.uk/rickygervais
Karl (along with Ricky and Steve) can be heard on Christmas Eve 10am-12noon and New Year's Eve at the same time on BBC Radio2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2