The World of Karl Pilkington

by Pilkington, Karl

  Karl: Well that was the interesting thing. They said …

  Ricky: No. It didn’t happen, Karl. Oh, don’t talk shit. What are you talking about? These people round in white coats going, ‘Quick, answer the question, you’re bleeding.’

  Karl: Right, so they talked to it for about twenty-five to thirty seconds. The last five seconds it sort of can’t be bothered answering them. But apart from that they were chucking questions at it. I don’t think it spoke. I don’t think it was two and two equals four and stuff. It was more to do with blinking.

  Steve: So blink once for ‘yes’, blink twice for ‘no’?

  Ricky: Oh yeah, so they said to the bloke, ‘Listen, when you die, you are probably not going to be able to talk because your jaw is going to be on the ground, you’re not going to be able to open your mouth. If you do, you’ll fall over backwards and hit your head. So instead, blink once for “yes” and twice for “no”.’ ‘Yeah, alright, yeah. Is the axe nice and shiny?’

  Steve: ‘Now you promise to do it?’

  Ricky: ‘Yeah I will, yeah, yeah.’ The thing is they wouldn’t be able to do it with you, Karl, because if they cut your head off, it would just roll away because it is perfectly spherical.

  Steve: Plus, whenever you ask Karl anything, it takes about twenty seconds for him to process the question and start to formulate an answer.

  ‘You mention it once,

  suddenly it’s the talk of

  the town.’

  Karl: We were talking about sayings and that, right. ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’ I’m never going to use that, I don’t think. Anyway …

  Ricky: You’re never going to understand it fully, are you?

  Karl: Suzanne repairs me stuff anyway. It doesn’t really matter. But what about the one in greenhouses and that?

  Ricky: ‘People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.’

  Karl: Yeah.

  Steve: Does that confuse you? You’ve never understood that one?

  Karl: No, that’s a lot clearer innit. It’s sort of saying, ‘Don’t be chucking stuff about if you’re surrounded by glass and what have you.’

  Ricky: Yeah, but don’t forget – it’s an analogy. It’s a metaphor. It’s not to be taken literally. It’s not really talking to people who live in glass houses.

  Steve: Sorry, before you say that, Rick, I’m intrigued to know if he’s fully got to grips with this. Just give us your explanation again of what you take it to mean.

  Karl: Well, just don’t be chucking stuff about, really.

  Ricky: If that’s what it means, they would just say that.

  Karl: No, no, but that saying has been around a lot longer than we think. That’s when people probably did live in basic glass houses. What they mean now is …

  Ricky: No no no no, whoa whoa whoa. Sorry, so cavemen went from rock to a nice crystal structure, did they? What you talking about? When do you think we lived in glass houses?

  Karl: Well, when that saying is used now they mean sort of plasma tellies. Or ornaments.

  Ricky: No they don’t.

  Karl: They are saying, ‘Don’t chuck stuff about because you’ll break it.’

  Ricky: No, it’s not about damaging your own property.

  Steve: They don’t mean you shouldn’t throw rocks inside your own ‘glass house’.

  Ricky: It’s a metaphor. It means, ‘Don’t be having a go at people if you yourself have got more to lose.’ Do you know what I mean? Don’t start a war if you could come off bad as well. It’s about how fragile your situation is. If you live in a glass house – metaphorically – don’t throw stones at someone else because when he throws stones back at you, your house is more easily damaged than his. Again, metaphorically.

  Steve: It doesn’t mean that if you’re living in a glass house don’t throw bricks about – because that would be a very specific audience that the phrase was trying to reach.

  Ricky: Okay, I think we have got to the crux of this. Karl, what is an analogy?

  Karl: It’s sort of like a little story told quickly, innit.

  Steve: ‘It’s a little story told quickly.’ To what end?

  Karl: Well it depends what the story is.

  Ricky: Give me an analogy.

  Karl: Well I thought of one with the greenhouse, right.

  Steve: Now it’s a greenhouse. Before it was just a glass house.

  Karl: Alright then, a glass house.

  Ricky: That glass house is metaphorical. It’s about the fragility of your situation …

  Karl: You see I just prefer to say what you mean so here’s mine; ‘People who live in a glass house have to answer the door.’

  Ricky: I don’t know what that means. You may be a genius because I don’t get that. ‘People who live in glass houses have to answer the door?’

  Steve: Let’s hear his explanation.

  Karl: Because the people knocking at the door will be able to see you, ’cos it’s a glass house. So don’t pretend you’re not in.

  Ricky: There is no analogy or metaphor for you, is there? You literally mean if you live in a glass house and someone knocks on the door you have to answer it. There is no hidden meaning there, is there?

  Steve: You have to add a number of other caveats, surely? ‘If you live in a glass house don’t walk around naked.’

  Karl: Yeah.

  Ricky: You see these are literal. You could actually make that into quite a nice saying. If someone said that to me and they weren’t a shaved chimp, I would think that means, ‘If you have chosen to be totally open all the time you can’t go back on it. If you wear everything on your sleeve, if you shout about everything, you can’t have any secrets because people can see through you.’

  Karl: It can mean that as well, yeah.

  Steve: Oh that’s handy. I love the fact that in your head there should be sayings for people who actually live in glass houses. Who is it that is living in a glass house?

  Karl: I didn’t start it. It’s just if everyone else is bringing up about these people who are living in glass houses, let’s get to the real problems we’ve got.

  Ricky: ‘People who live in glass houses should live near a glazier.’

  Karl: What? Look, here’s another saying, right, that I learnt recently from a mate, right. ‘There’s an elephant in the room.’

  Ricky: Okay, I haven’t heard that one but explain it to me.

  Karl: It’s like when you … er … when something’s going on in a room, right, but no one is mentioning it because everyone’s a bit too sort of… but in a way it’s better that it’s out. It’s like how whenever we go out for something to eat or a drink or something – normally after about five minutes, the topic gets on to the shape of my head.

  Ricky: Yeah, yeah. Well I can’t resist the shape of your head.

  Karl: Right, so you’re happy talking about it.

  Ricky: It’s not just the shape though, is it? It’s the state of it as well. Outside and in. I mean his head is a fascinating little objet d’art. It’s perfectly round. It’s got no hair where it should have and it’s hollow.

  Steve: The features are slightly too small for the face.

  Ricky: Unbelievable.

  Karl: No, but what I’m saying is, I’m the elephant in the room, right. Nobody’s talking about it. You mention it once, suddenly it’s the talk of the town.

  Ricky laughs.

  Karl: What I mean is everybody starts joining in going, ‘Well yeah, it is round, but it does suit you’ and these are people who I don’t even know sometimes, and they’re all dipping in, and that is an ‘elephant in the room’.

  Steve: So you don’t want people to discuss the shape of your head, or the lack of hair? You would feel happier if they didn’t mention it?

  Karl: Sometimes I think it is better that it’s out there. It’s made me a stronger person though. It’s the same way we were talking about religion and that. Samson and Delilah. He got weaker without hair. Whereas with me, it’s made me strong
er because it’s almost like it’s treated like a disability. Everybody’s sort of mentioning it, and talking about it. ‘What’s it like having a bald head?’ So it has made me stronger.

  Ricky: But would you ever wear a wig?

  Karl: Erm … Not really.

  Ricky: A long wig so you looked like Samson.

  Karl: Well the only time I wanted a wig was when I did jury duty once, and it was annoying that I was sat on the jury right in front of these criminals, right. Everybody else has got disguises. The judges have them wigs on, right.

  Ricky: That’s not a disguise.

  Karl: That’s a disguise. That’s why judges wear ’em.

  Ricky: No. Why print their name in the paper and have a picture of them? What do you mean, ‘it’s a disguise’?

  Karl: It’s a disguise, innit?

  Ricky: No, if it was a disguise, they’d go in with one of those glasses with a nose and a beard attached. All judges would look like Groucho Marx if it was a disguise.

  Karl: Well I am just saying, that’s what annoyed me when I was sat there on the front row. I couldn’t have been any closer to the criminals. I was sat there and I thought, ‘Why didn’t I just pop a little wig on, or a pair of glasses?’

  Ricky laughs

  Ricky: I would have loved to have seen you in the front row at Crown Court.

  Steve: Except in this country you’re not allowed to show pictures of jurors. You can’t take photos in a courtroom. So there’s always these sketch artists that draw drawings and they’re on the news. The idea that we’d have seen a sketch of eleven people and a Krusty the Clown figure would have been amazing.

  Ricky: Yeah, I would have loved to have seen the artist’s drawing of you. Because it would have been carefully drawn people and then just a little round head.

  Steve: Or Charlie Brown.

  Ricky laughs.

  Ricky: Yeah, Charlie Brown sitting on the end.

  ‘What d’you mean about eyes facing forward?’

  Steve: A question for Karl, ‘What body parts can you live without?’ Obviously someone having sleepless nights thinking about this.

  Ricky: He can live without a brain.

  Steve: He’s coped this far.

  Karl: So the bits that I’ve got now, if I had to get rid of one of ’em, what won’t I miss?

  Steve: Yes.

  Karl: I did a bit of an experiment on this, right. At home, Suzanne does the cooking, it’s my job to wash up.

  Ricky: She gives you all the really big responsible jobs? She pays the bills and wires the house and you go, ‘What can I do?’ and she says, ‘Well you can go and play with the worms in the garden.’

  Karl: So anyway, it’s my job to wash up and I thought to really make it interesting I wonder if I can do it if I didn’t have any thumbs?

  Ricky laughs.

  Ricky: And so what did you do?

  Steve: You sliced off your thumbs?

  Karl: I just sort of held ’em in and it’s amazing how it took me ages, just having that one thing gone.

  Ricky: It’s part of our evolution, the opposable thumb. Basically that’s when we soared. These are milestones in evolution. The opposable thumb, the forward facing eyes, walking upright. These are massive things that take us out of the animal kingdom.

  Steve: And one day, Karl, you’ll walk upright.

  Karl: What d’you mean about eyes facing forward? D’you mean before we got here there was people whose eyes were looking in their head?

  Ricky and Steve laugh.

  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.

  ‘He just liked boats and

  stuff.’

  Steve: Don’t know if you know this, Karl, but apparently octopuses’ testicles are located in their heads.

  Karl: No. But to me that isn’t that amazing, ’cos at the end of the day an octopus, all it is is an ’ead.

  Ricky: So everything it’s got has to be in the head.

  Karl: It has to be in the head. It’d look daft if they dangled down below, right.

  Steve: ‘It’d look daft if they dangled down below.’ That could almost be the B-side to …

  Ricky: … ‘I Could Eat a Knob at Night’?

  Steve: Karl, the question’s been asked; if you could be anyone in the world, who would it be?

  Karl: Dead or alive?
>
  Ricky: Why would you choose to be a dead person?

  Karl: No, but sometimes there’s people who are now dead but everybody raves about ’em.

  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 laughs.

  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?