The World of Karl Pilkington (9 page)

Karl:
I don’t understand.

Ricky:
No, no, I’m going way back. I’m not saying chimps had eyes on the side of their head. I’m talking major milestones in any evolution. Er … I lost you at evolution, I think.

Steve:
So when you were doing this washing up experiment, you say that you found it difficult, it took you ages. So you didn’t just give up once you realised how essential thumbs were? You actually washed up everything? 

Ricky:
I just think of Suzanne walking in and Karl’s there, just covered in water and Fairy Liquid suds, standing on a pile of broken crockery.

Steve:
Yeah, plunging his face into the sink every thirty seconds and just swishing his head around.

Karl:
Well we talked about the washing up thing before. I look out of a window, because the sink is in front of the window, and that’s why I quite like washing up, because I can just look out onto the street, see people going past. But I was looking across the way right, and there’s some sort of Chinese people who live in a really small flat, and they’re up till all hours. I don’t know what they’re doing, but they decide to vac up about half past three in the morning. They’re always really noisy and that, but above them, there was some woman, right, whose bedroom is on par to our kitchen, right. So I’m sort of washing up, and I look across and see this woman with like, no pants on and that, no bra and that …

Steve:
‘Naked.’

Ricky:
That’s the word you’re looking for.

Karl:
Yeah, yeah, she’s just wandering about with nowt on and that. So I was like, ‘Oh.’ So I carried on washing up and kept looking. And I was looking and she looked at me, right. So we made eye contact. So I was like, ‘Oh God.’ So what I thought the best thing to do was, sort of drop me pants a little bit, just a little bit. I had boxer shorts on. If I just show a little bit of arse cheek then it’s kind of like we’re quits, right.

Steve:
I don’t understand your thinking.

Karl:
So Suzanne’s watching the telly, right. She turned round to see how I’m getting on with the washing up and she sees me with me pants down a little bit with me arse out. She said, ‘What you doing?’ I said, ‘Don’t look now, but there’s a woman over the road with no pants on and that. She caught me looking. I am just giving her a bit back.’

Ricky:
I love the fact that he explains the rules and Suzanne is meant to go, ‘Okay.’

Steve:
So hang on, you showed a bit of your arse? You turned, presumably, to show the arse?

Karl:
I had to lift it up a little bit, sort of onto the draining board.

Steve:
What did she do? Did you register her reaction? When she saw a bit of your arse, what happened?

Karl:
When she saw my arse?

Steve:
Yeah.

Karl:
Well then I wasn’t looking, because I thought, in a way, I don’t want it to look like, ‘Well I’ve seen a bit of your stuff, here’s a bit of mine.’ I just thought, at the end of the day, I caught a glance of you …

Steve:
… It’s only fair

Karl:
You’ve had a bit back …

Ricky:
I think James Stewart missed a trick in
Rear
Window
. That would have been a much better film, had James Stewart just popped his pants down.

Steve:
It would have given a whole new meaning to the title
Rear Window
.

Karl:
It’s tricky though. I seem to be surrounded by people like that. Because I told you before, there’s the old woman across the way who is just sat there reading a book. I look through everybody’s windows like that. Remember that film,
Sliver
, when they’ve got video cameras? I’m just looking onto everybody’s world and just seeing what people are getting up to. Nowt wrong with that.

Steve:
Brilliant.

Karl:
That’s why I like washing up.

Ricky:
The idea is you choose one to live that life, not to have been that person. Are you saying that if you chose Napoleon, you would be Napoleon but you’d be back to life, walking round now, going on the bus? Or would it be the eighteenth century? What are you saying?

Karl:
What I mean is …

Ricky:
Oh just answer the question. Who would you be and why? Someone you admire or you think had a good life. Just answer the question.

Karl:
Well what I mean is, it’s good to be remembered, like Winston Churchill is remembered as being a decent bloke, but I wouldn’t want the hassle that he had, so I don’t want to live his life.

Ricky:
You’d like to be Winston Churchill but you’d like to have a paper round instead of …

Steve:
… Saving the world.

Ricky:
Yeah.

Karl:
That’s what I mean. But are you saying, ‘Whose job would I wanna take on?’

Ricky
It’s not that complicated.

Steve:
The question is this, ‘If you could be anyone in the world, who would you be?’ That’s the question.

Karl:
A lot of responsibility on a lot of jobs, in’t there?

Steve:
What are some of the names flowing through your head now?

Karl:
Erm … I was thinking Bruce Willis. 

Ricky:
I never expected that, I never expected that.

Steve:
So his responsibility, in your mind, is what? Saving people who are trapped in a building with terrorists?

Karl:
Well yeah, maybe. His worries are different worries. With people who have a lot of money come other worries, d’you know what I mean? So Bruce Willis – he’s always going on these marches isn’t he – saying, ‘stop war’ and all that?

Ricky:
I don’t know.

Karl:
… Because he has got more to lose if there’s a war. He’s got loads of houses. One of ’em’s gonna get damaged. Whereas if you’re poor, you’ve only got the one house. If there’s a war it’s, ‘Just end it all for me then. I’m sick of it anyway.’ D’you know what I mean?

Steve:
Whereas Bruce …

Karl:
With a successful life and a happy life there’s more for you to lose is what I’m saying. Like, at the moment, I’ve finished the job that I’ve been at for ten years, right. I have finished working there, so suddenly my timetable’s a bit out and I haven’t got enough of a routine. And I’m a man who likes to know what I’m doing.

Steve:
‘Five until seven, washing up with no thumbs.’

Karl:
I’ve sort of turned into, like, an old person, where the little jobs that you shouldn’t enjoy are now the main event.

Ricky:
How old are you? You’re thirty-one aren’t you?

Karl:
Thirty-two.

Ricky:
Thirty-two and you’re pottering around, not knowing what to do with yourself.

Karl:
Well like yesterday, Suzanne’s shoes needed to go to the cobblers, right.

Ricky:
I haven’t heard the word ‘cobblers’ for years.

Steve:
I didn’t know cobblers still existed.

Ricky:
You only ever see them in Christmas films made by Disney.

Steve:
Last time you were going to the toffee shop and now you’re going to the cobblers. Next week it’s the candlestick maker.

Karl:
But all I mean is, suddenly that’s a nice little day out. I’m sort of putting me coat on, going, ‘Right, I’ll go and see the cobbler now and have a chat.’

Steve:
You didn’t come back with three magic beans did you?

Ricky:
Tell me about the cobbler.

Karl:
The cobbler’s alright. He’s fixing shoes and that.

Ricky:
He’s cobbling. He’s cobbling all day.

Karl:
Have I told you about me Uncle Alf, who was a cobbler?

Ricky:
No.

Karl:
I’m sure I told you about him. He’s the one who lived in a bedsit and he had two tellies. He had one that the sound didn’t work on, and one that the picture didn’t, but both together it worked. So as long as he was watching the same channel on both, sound came out of one telly and he would watch the picture on the other.

Ricky:
Brilliant.

Karl:
And he slept in a rubber dinghy. But anyway …

Steve:
Whoa, you can’t just let that slide. Why did he sleep in a rubber dinghy?

Karl:
He just liked boats and stuff.

Ricky:
Yeah, I like boats but they’re better on the water. Beds are better to sleep on. Boats are better to sail on.

Karl:
Well he just had it in there. It’s a bedsit. It was really tight on space.

Ricky:
Boatsit? He’d moved into a ‘dinghy-sit’.

Karl:
He’s got this dinghy, so he’s thinking, ‘Rather than it get in the way, I might as well use it.’ But he was a cobbler and he used to repair my shoes but he would always sort of overdo ’em, right.

Ricky:
What do you mean?

Karl:
Like, do you know
Pimp My Ride
on MTV?

Ricky:
Yeah.

Karl:
Because he does up shoes, he’d go mental on ’em.

Ricky:
What do you mean? There was a stereo, there was horns. “Nanana nah nah …”

Steve:
Go-faster stripes down the side.

Ricky:
‘Here comes Mr Pilkington. He’s got the fastest shoes in the land.’

Karl:
He just made shoes that would last forever, so instead of putting one sole on, he’d put about five on so it looked like one of them built up shoes that you never see. He would just put loads of stuff on. They’d last forever.

Steve:
But they did look like orthopaedic shoes?

Karl:
Yeah, suddenly I was six foot seven, whenever he sort of sorted me shoes out. But he’s a cobbler and it’s work that’s always there for you, innit?

Ricky:
I suppose so.

Steve:
So you went out to take Suzanne’s shoes to the cobblers …

Karl:
Yeah, so I just took ’em to the cobblers and that, and that was a nice little job for the day. I got a leaflet through the door saying if you want to walk a dog, the rates are good. I don’t know what they pay but I got a letter in my little letterbox saying if you are free in the day …