The World of Karl Pilkington (5 page)

Karl:
I mean I watch it, I like those little trial bits, right, but what I don’t think people realise is, right, it is hard eating a little kangaroo knob.

Steve:
Really, how do you know?

Karl:
No, it’s just, you think about it and you go, ‘Oh I couldn’t do that,’ but what they never mention on the TV programme – which I think takes it to the next level, right – is that they’re eating that stuff at, like, half past seven in the morning – which is worse, innit? If I was there and Ant and Dec said, ‘Right Karl, eat the knob’ I’d go, ‘Hang on a minute. Give us a few hours. Let me get some rice and that in me belly and just sort of fill myself up a little bit more. I’ll pop back at about half six this evening – have it ready.’ And I’d be happier then.

Steve:
You don’t want to eat animals’ private parts on an empty stomach?

Ricky:
So what are you saying?

Karl:
I’m saying I could eat a knob at night.

Ricky:
Just cut that there. We’ll loop that. If any DJs are listening, just take that quote ‘I could eat a knob at night’ by Karl Pilkington and maybe do a dance remix.

Steve:
Yes, maybe you are a house music producer and you could maybe get some high energy beat going and then we could send that out to some of the gay clubs. I’m sure it would be really popular.

Karl:
No, but d’you know what I mean though?

Ricky:
I could not do it. I couldn’t pop a kangaroo testicle in my mouth and chew it. It was disgusting to watch. Good on them because they were doing it but then again I think, ‘Well, they wanted to go in there.’ On the one hand I think, ‘Is that admirable? Is that showing good British mettle or is it “I’ll do anything to get on telly for a week?”’ Where does it stop? I thought Rebecca Loos went too far when she gave the little pig a tug, but at least she knew where to stop.

Steve:
I think it’s obvious when you have to stop – the pig tells you that.

Ricky:
Where is there a kangaroo hopping around without a cock?

Karl:
Here’s another question right – a bit of a spin off with animals and that. Have you ever, Steve, killed a fly?

Steve:
Probably, yes.

Karl:
Right. Well I was watching David Attenborough, right. He makes his money out of flies and that, don’t he. D’you think he’s ever killed one, or does he go, ‘Well I can’t kill that fly or that spider ’cos that’s how I make my money’?

Ricky:
I don’t know what the question is.

Karl:
Right, me mam, right, she said, if a fly is knocking about the house, she never kills it. She always catches it and puts it out and that. She said she’d never kill one.

Ricky:
Who is she, Mr Miyagi? What do you mean, ‘she catches it’? How does she catch it?

Steve:
With a pair of chopsticks.

Ricky:
Ooh, you could win the Nobel prize for this one …

Karl:
There is a lot of ways in’t there, in the world, that some creatures and that go about sort of moving on, if you know what I mean …

Ricky:
Not really. Do you mean evolution?

Karl:
Yes, on that David Attenborough programme he’s always showing, yeah, little insects and what they have got to do. And there was one about a wasp, right, that had to fly about, right, for ages, looking out for a certain type of spider, right.

Ricky:
Which it lays its eggs in, correct.

Karl:
It whizzes down, it lands on its back, so it’s got to get that right. I don’t think the spider’s up for anything, the spider isn’t even aware of this. It’s not going, ‘I’ve got to look out for a wasp’, even though all this has got to be perfect timing. So this wasp dived down right, sat on the back of this spider, it injects it or something, with a maggot or something, right – and then that maggot lives off the spider for a bit. The spider knows it’s got a maggot in it.

Ricky:
No it doesn’t.

Karl:
It does.

Ricky:
No it doesn’t.

Karl:
And it’s making a web for it. It goes, ‘I’ve got something to look after here now. I’ve got responsibilities.’ It makes a web, right. It sort of reverses into it and puts the maggot on the web. The maggot sort of clings on to the web, maggot eats the spider – and then it moves on. Now if I came up with that idea you’d say, ‘That’s never gonna happen.’

Ricky:
Wake up! It’s not the fact that you came up with the idea for an old lady dying at seventy-eight with a baby growing in her – even though it’s nonsense, it’s no idea – it’s how could it be enforced. Even if scientists thought that was the best idea in the world how would they make it happen? Who’s gonna go, ‘That’s a good idea, we’ve never thought of that, get in Elsie. Elsie, we wanna try something …’

Karl:
Who told the wasp to look out for that spider? To go on its back?

Ricky:
What do you mean ‘Who told the wasp?’ – It’s evolution, it’s natural selection …

Karl:
Yeah but say, like, we have a kid at the moment. You don’t just jump on the back of a woman and go ‘There you go love’ and then a baby pops out.

Steve:
You do if you come from Bristol.

Karl:
No what I’m saying is, right, you build up to it don’t you. You have a bit of a chat and you go, ‘How’s it going?’, ‘Alright yeah,’ and you get on and that – and then a little baby will come out.

Steve:
Oh, that’s how babies are made is it? You have a chat, and you go ‘alright’ and a little baby comes out.

Ricky:
That is amazing.

Steve:
Man alive – this is incredible.

Karl:
What I’m saying is at what point is a wasp ever gonna have a chat with a spider or meet up with it?

Steve:
I don’t even understand where we are now in this conversation.

Ricky:
‘At what point is a wasp gonna ever have a chat with a spider?’ What world do you live in? What’s in your head? I can’t believe it. ‘At what point is a wasp ever gonna have a chat with a spider …?’ 

Steve:
So in some kind of weird insect nightclub these wasps and these maggots are meeting and getting on. Is that how you imagine it?

Karl:
No, but that’s what I’m saying to you. What are the odds on that actually happening?

Ricky:
Listen – behaviour in lower forms of life is purely chemical. It bypasses any form of consciousness. There is a parasite that lays its egg in a stickleback, okay, and it literally has to change the stickleback’s behaviour because it has to get into a warm-blooded animal to complete its cycle. So what it does is – this parasite makes the stickleback not flee from the shadow of a heron – it makes the stickleback get eaten! So it then is in the belly of a warm-blooded animal and it can complete its life cycle. But at no point is this parasite going, ‘Slow down, there’s a heron coming. Stay here. Stay here.’ And the stickleback isn’t going, ‘Why? I don’t wanna stay here, there’s a heron.’ There’s no conversation. It’s not like they get together and go, ‘Listen I have got something that might be mutually beneficial to both of us. I need to get into a heron.’ ‘Hey, you like to be eaten by a heron but I don’t …’

Karl:
No, all I’m saying is you know the idea that I came up with – well, you’re saying that’s crazy.

Steve:
How many times have we heard ‘All I am saying is’ and then such a stream of nonsense that it’s blown our minds?

Karl:
No, but that’s all I’m saying – what you’ve just explained there with the heron having to knock about and for a flea to be sat in the shade and that …

Ricky:
Now that is incredible. That’s his translation of what I just said. That sums it up for me. He sees a headline, he reads a book, it then goes through this weird filtering system. And I imagine there is music in his head – it’s ‘boo bi boom ba eh oh bi ba’ – like a discordant piano.

Steve:
I think the noise in Karl’s head is like a fax machine at full volume. Errrrrrrrrrr!

Ricky:
I think it’s like music from a Czechoslovakian cartoon from l963. Odd noises, woks being banged, pianos being hit by elbows.

Steve:
He is the only person you can give a body of information to and he strips away the facts.

Ricky:
The way he said that. I clearly talked about some sort of parasite in a stickleback that makes its behaviour change so it doesn’t flee the heron’s shadow. He said, ‘So there’s an ’eron with a flea who doesn’t like the shade.’ How did it get to that?

Karl:
It doesn’t matter – forget that right – but anyway …

Ricky:
What’s your theory?

Karl:
What I’m saying is, I’ve come up with summit else that I wanna run by you then.

Ricky:
Go on then.

Karl:
As you have sort of boo boo’d the other idea …

Ricky:
Boo boo’d?

Steve:
We have boo boo’d it.

Ricky:
He’s chosen a completely different bear. It was originally ‘Pooh Pooh the Bear’ but now it’s ‘Boo Boo the Bear’. Brilliant!

Karl:
… You’ve said no to the old woman having a kid before she dies. What about if we do it the other way, right? Somehow, I don’t know how yet…

Ricky:
A kid has an old lady?

Steve:
That’s what it’s going to be isn’t it? A child gives birth to an old man.

Karl:
No, what I’m saying is, right, work the other way round…

Rick:
Come on then.

Karl:
So if somehow we can inject something into a body that’s just died, right…

Rick:
Listen to this. Imagine his notes. When he hands them into the Nobel people and they say ‘If there’s a way that we can inject something’. And the Nobel committee go ‘Well what?’ ‘Well I don’t know the chemical formula but something. Something HO2…’

Karl:
So anyway, you inject it in the temple.

Steve:
He’s narrowed it down to ‘the temple’.

Karl:
So you inject it in.