The Problem with Karl Pilkington

Cafe Society
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For those of you who don’t know who Karl Pilkington is, a brief introduction.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the creators of The Office, were once deejays/radio hosts and they were assigned a producer called Karl Pilkington. They were so astounded by some of the things that Pilkington said that their show essentially became a three-way conversation with him. Subsequently, they moved from radio to podcasts, and their series of podcasts (the latest of which was made available as of today) became quite popular.

For a taste, see here – Karl Pilkington - Wikiquote

So, here’s the issue: Is Pilkington for real? Some considerations:

Gervais, Merchant, and Pilkington have all said that Pilkington is for real and he’s not a “character” and his dialogue isn’t scripted.

In one sense, that’s believable, because, as Gervais and Merchant have pointed out, it would take a lot of time to script that kind of dialogue and having put in that much work, why would they do it for free?

Also, the conversations do sound genuine and unscripted.

But here’s the problem: After all these years, can someone as apparently stupid as Pilkington not have learned anything? After all that interaction with Gervais and Merchant, after having authored three books, after having visited Mallorca several times a year every year …

It almost seems like he’d have to willfully endeavour to remain stupid.

And he has apparently been in a long-term relationship with what seems to be a fairly normal woman (Suzanne). How long could an intelligent, competent woman put up with such a numbskull year after year?

Thoughts?

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I have one of his books (Happyslapped by a Jellyfish) which is one of the funniest books I’ve read.

I don’t believe it’s scripted, but I do believe it’s improvised comedy.

IMO, the guy is either a great comedian, or he’s just projecting an exaggeration of himself.

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I’ve thought a lot about this. I don’t doubt that the boys don’t encourage Pilkington to be at his sharpest while recording, and after listening to both the podcasts and earlier radio work, they certainly have him repeat the same silly anecdotes over and over. But as you (and they have) mentioned, it would take far more work and energy to write this stuff or even just stay in character than to let things play out naturally. I think part of it is just that he’s a whiny bastard with nutty ideas who doesn’t have to keep either in check.

As for someone being too dense to learn anything… I think I’ll wait 'til November to weigh in on that.

Regardless, I love Karl, and I love the effect he has on Ricky. And the barbs he throws at poor Steve. And, of course, his perfectly round head.

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I hope it’s okay if I revive this conversation. I recently got the “XFM Vaults” audiobooks available on Itunes, which reissues Gervais/Merchant/Pilkington shows from dates earlier than that of the original series of podcasts.

It’s kind of interesting, because in the “XFM Vaults” shows, Pilkington seems to be the same guy, but he seems a little bit more alert than in the later shows. In the later shows, he seems to be talking a little bit slower and reacting a little bit slower.

I believe JJimm is correct to some extent that this is improvised comedy. However, I think that it would be difficult for Pilkington to carry on for so long so consistently. I think to a large extent, his ideas and beliefs are ones he genuinely holds, and not ones he’s just making up to be funny.

Hmmm.

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I absolutely love the way the three of them interact on the shows. I believe Stephen and Ricky encourage Karl to be a bit dense, but overall I think it is how Karl is.

Also, I want to say that I have literally cried because I was trying to stifle my laughter both on the train and while walking down the street because they are so funny. If anyone reading this hasn’t listened to them, I highly recommend them.

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For anyone who’s interested, you can also find the XFM shows here (they cut out the songs, though on occasion I wish they wouldn’t. They are hilarious, and you get to see Karl evolve. I don’t think he becomes slower in the podcasts, but he’s certainly being indulged more. The thing is, he does try to make actual jokes, on occasion (which amuses Ricky), and its’ clear when he’s doing that versus just being himself.

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I have no problems believing that Pilkington is the real deal. I work with a guy like him.

While he is competent and can do his job, he believes that the world is 6,000 years old, Didn’t know that humans and dinosaurs didn’t live together, asked me what 10 minus eight equaled, argued with me that Christmas is on the 24th, drank from a bidet for a year because he thought it was a drinking fountain, drove his foreign wife 600 km to the border in a mad dash so she wouldn’t be deported to South America and made the deadline by 20 minutes (he knew the cut-off date months in advance) and got caught screwing his ex-girlfriend in his boss’s office. And so on.

Those guys are out there.

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The thing with Pilkington is that on occasion he comes out with really witty nuggets. I don’t believe that he is completely stupid. Nor do I believe that he’s a character as such.

I think he has these character traits that Gervais finds hilarious - he tends to latch on to certain people, e.g. Robin Ince, who certainly *isn’t *stupid - and he’s exaggerated them to comic effect. We all do it. So when Karl starts one of his stories, it gets a reaction from the other two, and he plays up to it.

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He’s definitely authentic, and there’s no doubt in my mind that his brain works in a very unusual way. It’s also pretty clear that the later you get, the more he realizes that he is a source of humor and is trying to feed into that. But I don’t think it’s a matter of making things up; more a matter of him trying to think of stories to tell trying to expose himself to a wider range of input to get more output.

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His girlfriend wrote down instructions for cooking quiche after she caught him putting sausages in the toaster. His mother shaved half a cat because it kept being sick on itself. His father put a ‘Forest Gump’ in a wheely bin, and steals things from phone boxes. He believes that shadows can push people off their bikes.

In ‘Karl Pilkington: Satisfied Fool’ his IQ score was 86 (I think 6, it was in the 80s). He’s just interested in weird anecdotes and relates them as fact. Given the amount of XFM/Podcast stuff it’s pretty clear that yes, he’s really like that - in response to an article in Heat saying that Karl was fake, another Gareth Keenan, Ricky said that it took ages to script and edit a 30 minute show and that he wouldn’t waste Karl, if he was a character, on XFM.

I do think some of the Podcasts do seem a bit exaggerated, although probably because of editing, XFM was live.

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I’m not sure it’s very unusual, in a global sense. There are a lot of “ordinary” people who engage in what they consider intellectual discussions that reflect very closely Pilkington’s combination of fallacies, illogic, lack of solid scientific knowledge, gullibility and stubbornness.

I’m very curious about this girlfriend. It sounds like she had some supernatural degree of patience.

But he aggressively wants to believe them. As time goes on, he gets more and more annoyed when Ricky and Stephen try to point out how these stories couldn’t possibly be true.

And some of the stories are so obviously barroom jokes. He can’t really believe that those are meant to be factual, can he?

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Like Monkey News. I love how he relates these stories as total facts. I just re-listened to the one where he was talking about the monkey poker player. Another one where I was just walking down the street laughing like a crazy person!

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I’m glad this thread came back around because my girlfriend is a big fan of the show, and of Karl in particular. And he reminds me of some infuriating people I’ve had to argue with. I think he’s playing an exaggerated, stupid version of himself.

If you know how to stay in character, you know how to stay in character. I agree he would have to be very good at it but it’s not impossible to do. The shows are not scripted, for sure, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t stay in character.

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See, Monkey News is one where I get the feeling Karl’s in on the joke, at least later on. The first few I think were pretty genuine, but after a while, you can tell he’s deliberately trying to wind up Ricky and Steve.

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It’s like a f—king orange!

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One of my favorite moments is when Karl says something about “When caveman was knocking about with the dinosaurs” and Stephen and Ricky go apeshit, Karl’s response is “Why couldn’t that happen?” It’s almost transcendently clueless.

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gervais’s laughing really bothers me. it’s so manic.

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It gets overly screechy. As I posted in the other thread about the HBO animation, I think the cartoon version makes Ricky’s laughing more tolerable.

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Pilkington has his own Itunes podcast, which offers a free sample of him reading from a portion of one of his books. I gotta say, it doesn’t work very well in audiobook form. It sounds way too studied. It sounds more like satire than genuine gawdhelpusness. That might just be the effect of reading text, though.

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The first time I heard “Monkey News,” about the monkey pushing the left button in the rocket ship… I almost drove off the road. I love those guys!