The World of Karl Pilkington (2 page)

Karl:
So you take it to the doctors and… I don’t know what they do with it, they inject it with summit or whatever…

Steve:
Yep, that’s how it’s done.

Karl:
And you get a little baby and there it is – it looks the same. Now you both go off and do your own things, right. Steve, you look after your baby, you treat it well, you give it good food and that.

Steve:
Yes, well I’m a good dad.

Karl:
But Ricky just gives his cheese. So it changes its looks, it goes a bit fat, it gets tired easily. Now this family…

Ricky:
Why am I just feeding a baby cheese?

Karl:
Now this family who had a horse in the house, they had a little baby and me mam went round and came back and said, ‘You’re not gonna believe this but it’s a beautiful little baby.’ And the weird thing was it was a good looking kid but as time went on they didn’t really look after it – I’m not saying they abused it – but it used to run around and play out ’til ten at night, it used to chase cars …

Steve:
Right. Did it have hooves?

Ricky:
It used to chase cars? What sort of kid chases cars? Was it called ‘Rover’? Did it fetch sticks?

Karl:
The weird thing is, it was a good looking kid but as time went on and all that not eating properly, its hair was all patchy and it became an ugly kid. And that’s what I’m saying, right; you can clone all you like but at the end of the day, it’s how you’re brought up.

Steve:
Man alive, that was one hell of a point.

Karl:
But am I right?

Ricky:
Er … you’re always right, Karl.

Karl:
War. War’s happening innit, because everyone’s saying, ‘Well now we can fly, we’ll go over there and invade that lot.’

Steve:
So there were no wars prior to the invention of the aeroplane?

Karl:
Not like there is today. What I’m saying is, the world has got smaller, hasn’t it? Everyone is saying that. I was saying to you the other day how we now go to places where we shouldn’t go. People go on holiday to places where you’ve got to have an injection before you go there. Forget it then. That’s a warning. Don’t go there!

Ricky:
I am with you on that. I don’t want to enter a country where I have to have an injection to stop me from dying while I am in that country. I totally agree with you on that.

Karl:
So what happened is, so they invented a plane and it’s like, ‘Oh let’s go on holiday’ and then they go, ‘You’ll die though’, ‘Oh, well you’ve got to invent summit.’ ‘Let’s invent an injection’ and then it’s like ‘Right, what else do we need to go to that place?’ There’s a lot of faffing. 

Karl:
What I’m saying is, you know Steve’s travelled more than I have. You’ve been to, like, dangerous places.

Steve:
I have been to places where you need injections, yeah.

Karl:
Yeah but why?

Steve:
Because it’s fascinating. Do you not believe in the idea that travel broadens the mind? It makes you experience other ways of life, other ways of thinking. It enriches you as a human being. That’s the whole reason people go travelling.

Karl:
But since the invention of the telly you don’t have to go that far.

Steve:
You’re absolutely right.

Ricky:
So there you go then. The telly was invented in the twentieth century wasn’t it?

Karl:
Yeah, it’s pretty good.

Steve:
Where would you stop then? Would you stop inventing stuff right now or do you think we could carry on for another five years – see what comes up and then just draw a line under it all?

Karl:
We are just messing about.

Ricky:
But there’s still things to do – a cure for cancer, a cure for AIDS.

Karl:
Yeah but should we mess with that?

Ricky:
What d’you mean?

Karl:
Because there’s too many people in the world as it is, in’t there? So that’s a way of controlling it. You know, look at London, right, it’s over-populated. Rent keeps going up because there’s more and more people surviving. If you let ’em die, it’s gonna even itself out. I was saying to someone the other day about maybe we should look at – if we are going to invent something – forget like the traditional way of people having kids, right, the way they have it away and that, you know …

Ricky:
What do you mean?

Karl:
You know, the way that we have kids and stuff. It’d be good if what happened was, to control it, a man and woman, right, they’re born and that, they enjoy their life, they learn a lot. They live to be about seventy-eight by that point.

Ricky:
So specific.

Karl:
I think by seventy-eight I reckon you’ve sort of got to that point where you go, ‘D’you know what, I’ve done everything I’m gonna do.’ If you haven’t bungy jumped by the time you’re seventy-eight you’re not gonna do it.

Ricky:
No, your hips come off.

Karl:
You’ve done it all now. So I’ve had my innings, I live to be seventy-eight, but then, just as you die, you have a little baby inside you and, as you die, your life carries on.

Steve:
How is this happening?

Ricky:
Sorry – are you mental? I have never heard such drivel.

Karl:
You’re saying that but if Newton said it you’d go, ‘Hmm, interesting.’ That’s what annoys me.

Steve:
Karl, he never would. He would never say it and that’s the point.

Ricky:
I don’t understand what you’re talking about. How is there a little baby in a seventy-eight-year-old?

Karl:
No, what I’m saying is – it’s like an apple, where the apple grows and it’s got its little baby pips in it and the apple goes and the seeds are planted and a new one’s born.

Ricky:
But that’s what happens now.

Steve:
That’s what reproduction is.

Karl:
But with my way, babies aren’t being born left, right and centre. It’s controlled so that as someone dies, someone’s born.

Steve:
But Karl. Stop. Whose responsibility is this?

Karl:
Look, if you don’t wanna do it, we won’t do it!

Steve:
Has Nature got to develop humans so that we live that way or is this a scientific experiment?

Ricky:
What I like is, he said to you then, ‘Look if you don’t want to do it, we don’t need to do it.’ As though, if you were up for it, we’ll sort it out.

Steve:
We’ll have a whip round and do the research.

Karl:
I just think at the end of the day we’ve got to do something. Is anyone keeping an eye on this and looking at what we can do next to control the population thing? It does my head in that I’ve got to live in London for work and there’s loads of people here and you know, forget going out on a Saturday night – it’s too busy.

Steve:
So your solution is that seventy-eight-year-old women have little babies inside them and as they slip away into death, the little babies are born?

Ricky:
And who looks after the baby, because it is a pretty good system having a baby while you are young enough to look after that baby and make sure it lives to reproductive age itself.

Steve:
I mean that system has been working for years. But wait a minute Nature, put that on hold, ’cos Karl Pilkington’s got an idea.

Karl:
That’s what it was. Just an idea.

Steve:
Yeah, it was nonsense, but thank you for it.

Ricky:
It was the ramblings of someone you’d find by themselves, in a hospital, eating flies.

Steve:
Yeah, this is the sort of thing you’d find in the diary of a psychopath who went on a rampage and then turned the gun on themselves. They’d go through his possessions and find he’s drawn weird drawings, women with knives in their face, and written this kind of gobbledegook.

Ricky:
I saw a similar sort of theory written out on a wall, but it was written in shit.

Karl:
No, all I’m saying is, when people die normally, everyone’s fed up about it, aren’t they, and a bit down, but if when you pass away, you go, ‘Oh we’re going to miss Gladys’ or whatever, but then there’s this new life brought in. It’s almost like a bad news/good news.

Ricky:
But you’re talking about it like someone could pick this idea up and run with it; like you’ve given them enough information to do it. How is this possible? Where does she get the baby from? How does it grow? Why grow it in Gladys’s belly? Why not have it in a drawer? Just add water.

Steve:
Who looks after ‘Son of Gladys’?

Ricky:
There is no theory here. It’s the ramblings of a madman.

Karl:
What I’m saying is the body is always changing innit – from caveman to now, or whatever, and they’re always finding out more and more. Like d’you know how they say people have six senses?

Ricky:
Yes.

Karl:
Well there’s loads more than that. 

Ricky:
Okay, show me that you’ve got just one.

Karl:
No, right, there’s this one that’s knocking about and what it is – say if I’m in a pub, right, and I’m just doing a crossword or whatever …

Steve:
… Unlikely, but go on …

Karl:
And there’s some woman who’s walked in, right, and she’s staring at me. I know she’s looking at me and I look up and she’s looking at me. They’re saying that’s a new sense that they’ve found out from doing tests and what have you.

Ricky:
Yeah, it’s rubbish.

Karl:
And they are saying that’s been around since like man and dinosaurs was knocking about.

Ricky:
But it could be peripheral vision.

Karl:
No they’ve explained it.

Steve:
I think it’s safe to assume that, with your perfectly round head, people are always stopping and looking at you.

Karl:
No, but they explained it. They said it’s from the time when caveman was wandering about and he would go, ‘Hang on a minute’ and he would look round and there’s a dinosaur there or whatever, and he’d leg it.

Ricky:
Right, this is nonsense. ‘When caveman was wandering round’. Cavemen and dinosaurs, oh they used to live together, yeah sure. Oh that’s the same era. What have you been watching, Raquel Welch in
One Million Years BC
?

Karl:
What d’you mean?