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 …
Ricky: What, they pay you to walk a dog?
Karl: They pay you to walk a dog and that, and I thought if I do that and get a paper round – two in one.
Ricky: Sorry, you just went from a job where you were the Head of Production at a radio station to …
Karl: Well, it was an alright wage but I wasn’t happy, so it’s pointless innit?
Ricky: I know that, but to go from the head of a department on a lot of money to walking dogs and doing a paper round …
Karl: I know but it’s about being happy innit?
Ricky: I know, that’s commendable if that’s true …
Steve: … And that makes you happier?
Karl: Well I haven’t walked the dog yet but I’m just saying, if I do … I mean I’m not taking it if it’s raining. I’m just thinking if it’s a nice sunny day and I fancy a potter, I’ll go round to her and say, ‘Well how much are you paying, I’ll take the dog for a walk.’
Steve: Sure.
Ricky: But I can’t believe some of the words that have cropped up. It’s 2006 now: ‘potter’, ‘cobblers’, ‘toffee shop’. It’s very very strange.
Steve: Do you live in Narnia?
‘Would you say he’s a bright bloke?’
Karl: I’m getting a lot of stuff about philosophy.
Ricky: Oh yes?
Karl: Descartes, that’s one that’s mentioned.
Ricky: Descartes the French philosopher?
Karl: Yeah.
Ricky: What’s your question?
Karl: Someone said, ‘What do you think of him?’ and I was like, ‘Oh I don’t know.’
Ricky: He famously pondered his own existence. ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ – ‘I think, therefore I am’. He was thinking, ‘How do I know all this is true, everything around me?’ and he thought, ‘Well I can see it and I can smell it and I can hear it’ and he went, ‘Oh yeah but my senses can be fooled. I could be dreaming’ and he thought, ‘Well that’s true, I could be dreaming, but if I’m dreaming then at least I’m alive, at least I have some sort of consciousness, so if I am even thinking about anything, I am, I exist.’ ‘I think therefore I am’. ‘Cogito, ergo sum.’
Karl: But we don’t need to know the Latin bit. Why is everyone always going back to Latin? It was ages ago.
Ricky laughs.
Karl: Were Latin people always in a rush, because there seemed to be, like, words for full sentences. Why couldn’t they just take their time and say what they wanted to say? It’s just like, ‘What was the rush?’
Ricky: I’d love you to teach Latin.
Karl: What about Plato?
Ricky: Right, he’s Greek.
Karl: Would you say he’s a bright bloke?
Ricky: Yes I would. I would say he’s a very very bright bloke.
Karl: Right, let me tell you this, right. If he’s that bright, d’you know how he got killed?
Ricky: No.
Karl: Got hit on the head by an egg.
Ricky laughs.
Ricky: He’s not so clever then is he? Boooo …
Steve: What’s the story with the egg?
Karl: He was on holiday or something, right, and …
Steve: He was on holiday?
Ricky: In Greece probably.
Karl: He was having a walk about and a bird was flying over his head.
Ricky: This bird was what – a great auk? What size bird killed him with an egg?
Karl: It was a big one, yeah.
Ricky: Was it? Was it an ostrich on a hang-glider?
Karl: The way birds used to crack the eggs open to let the kids out, they used to drop ’em on rocks.
Ricky: What bird is
this, dropping its egg to let the kids out? You are a maniac.
Karl: And Plato had a little bald head. So from the top, the bird’s there looking down, and it goes, ‘Oh there’s a little rock, I’ll drop the egg.’ It hit him on the head – killed him.
Ricky: I’m letting too much go now because I am so desensitised to this nonsense. The bird saw Plato and said, ‘There’s a rock down there’?
Karl: Yeah.
Steve: Well if these birds are killing people with bald heads, you’ve got to be terrified.
Karl: But listen, this is what I am saying before about knowledge and that – how knowledge is hassle – or success is hassle.
Ricky: Now I think that was Newton – ‘Knowledge is hassle.’
Steve: But why has Plato’s intelligence got anything to do with the fact that this bird dropped its egg?
Karl: Because he was intelligent and he is probably earning a nice few quid by giving out whatever messages he gave out, he could afford to go on holiday to exotic places. If he was working in a factory, he wouldn’t have been on this beach with big birds dropping eggs, so in a way it backfired. His knowledge killed him.
Ricky: And I think that was Kierkegaard – ‘His knowledge killed him.’
Steve: Where have you got this stuff about him being on holiday?
Karl: Well he was. He shouldn’t have been on the beach. He was only there having a break from doing what he does. It wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t on holiday.
‘That’s what codes are all
about, innit?’
Steve: Any nicknames? Did you ever have a nickname, Karl?
Karl: Not really. I mean there was a lot of people on the estate that I grew up on. You know nicknames are big things on estates. A lot of me dad’s mates had them. What their nicknames did was tell you about them. The Elephant Man is a good name because you know what you’re gonna get. If someone said, ‘Elephant Man’s popping round in a bit’, it wouldn’t be a shock when he walked in. So it worked in that sort of thing. So me dad had a mate called John the Screw.
Ricky: What, he had sex a lot? Or he worked in a prison?
Karl: No he had a DIY shop.
Ricky and Steve laugh.
Karl: So you had him, right. There was Fred the Veg …
Ricky: I assume it’s because he had the same IQ as you.
Steve: Or he was in a coma.
Karl: There was me uncle, Tattoo Stan – he had loads of tattoos that he’d just done himself.
Ricky: Oh my God.
Karl: The problem was, because he did his tattoos himself, the ones on his left arm were really good because he was right handed. But on his right arm – rubbish. So there was him and there was Jimmy the Hat.
Steve: Jimmy the Hat. Did he always wear a hat?
Karl: No, he didn’t. That was the point – he never wore a hat.
Ricky: That’s amazing. How can you pick up on someone never wearing a hat? How would you ever notice? ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ve noticed something about Jimmy.’ ‘What?’ ‘He doesn’t wear a hat.’ Why was he not called ‘Jimmy the Parrot’ because he never carries a parrot?
Karl: That’s just the way they work innit.
Ricky: ‘Here comes Jimmy Three Legs. Why do you call him that?’ – ‘He hasn’t got three legs.’
Karl: I didn’t really have a nickname – apart from when you go on CB radio and you have a chat to people.
Ricky: Oh, this was a craze in the late 70s, early 80s and it was just short-band radio, wasn’t it? Everyone had these little CB hand-sets and they would speak to each other in their local area.
Karl: Yes, I think it started off with truckers. So I had one of them and me handle …
Ricky: ‘Handle’ was your nickname?
Karl: Yes there’s loads of code stuff. I had a couple of ‘handles’. There was ‘Pilkie 01’ because there’s a lot of Pilkingtons in Manchester so I just thought, ‘Give it a number.’ And then because I did boxing and that …
Ricky: Well you did it once.
Karl: … I had ‘Boxer Boy’ because that’s quite a good image as well. People will be going, ‘Oh don’t mess with him.’
Ricky: What is the point of this?
Karl: Well you just meet people don’t you?
Ricky: But you don’t meet people do you? You just say, ‘What’s your handle?’ ‘Boxer Boy, what’s yours?’ ‘Rubber duck.’ ‘Alright, cheers.’
Karl: Oh, but then you’ll say like, ‘What’s your twenty?’
Ricky: What does that mean?
Karl: Where are you?
Ricky: Why don’t you say, ‘Where are you?’
Karl: Well just in case there is someone who is listening in. You hear about this all the time, people listening in and jotting stuff down.
Ricky: Oh right, so just in case someone in the world doesn’t know what ‘handle’ means, they are out of the loop.
Steve: It’s not a difficult code to crack is it, if you are trying to track someone?
Ricky: It’s hardly the head of the mafia talking to each other because the FBI are on the wire. ‘He keeps saying “What’s your handle?” and they come back with something else. I can’t work out what’s going on.’
Karl: That’s what codes are all about, innit?
Ricky: Go on then, tell me the code.
Steve: Reveal at long last to the world what these codes are.
Karl: Alright, so ‘What’s your twenty?’ – where are you?
Ricky: This is better than the Enigma machine.
Karl: ‘How many candles are you burning?’ – how old are you?
Ricky: How many candles are you burning – of course. So what’s the answer?
Karl: You go … erm …
Ricky: ‘I’m fifteen.’
Karl: fourteen.
Ricky: Brilliant. There is no one that’s going to work that one out.
Steve: So let’s just play through this conversation. Give us an example of how it worked, because I want to hear the fascinating conversations that Karl must have had.
Karl: So you turn it on and you start off and it was something like, ‘Breaker breaker, do you copy’ or whatever and then you go, ‘Right. It’s Boxer Boy here.’ And they go, ‘What’s your twenty?’ and you go, ‘Well I am just in Manchester …’
Steve: ‘… In the flat …’
Karl: And you go, ‘Right, yeah, how many candles are you burning?’ and you go ‘I’m thirteen.’
Steve: And that’s the end, is it?
Karl: Then you might sort of say something like, ‘What am I burning?’, right …
Ricky So you’re ‘burning’ again?
Steve: Confusing but go on … ‘What am I burning?’ ‘The bacon, ’cos I’m busy talking to you, you twat.’
Karl: That’s like, ‘What’s me power? What strength am I coming in at?’ Because then you can tell if they’re quite close to you.
Ricky: But you’ve just told them. They’ve said, ‘What’s your twenty?’ and you go, ‘I’m in Macclesfield Street.’
Karl: But then you say, ‘Oh that’s interesting ’cos you’re burning three. I don’t normally get a three.’
Steve: The least interesting thing you could ever say.
Ricky: I wish you’d have kept a diary of this because this has been fascinating.
Karl: Now and again someone will come in and go, ‘Side on.’
Ricky: What does that mean?
Karl: That means there is someone sat there listening in to this chat and going, ‘This sounds interesting.’
Steve: Unlikely.
Karl: And they want to join in, so they sort of go, ‘Side on,’ you go, ‘Side on, bring it in’ and they go, ‘Alright.’
Steve: ‘How many candles you burning? What’s your twenty …?” It seems to me that what you should have done is made a note the first time round so that when you speak to them again you don’t need to ask them those questions. Instead you could just say, ‘Can I just confirm that you’re
burning fifteen?’
‘So the rocket goes
off, right ...’
Karl: What we’re doing here is, right, just giving you a bit of Monkey News that’s gone on, right. Where a monkey has been involved in it. Good little story and that. Are you familiar with the one that went into space? The first sort of thing they ever sent up there, before man did it and all that. You see this is what annoyed me with it really. Armstrong gets all the glory, but do you know who went up there before him?
Steve: A monkey?
Karl: Yeah.
Ricky: A dog went up first.
Steve: But what was the monkey called?
Karl: Err, I don’t know.
Steve: Right, okay. So it’s not the most informed news bulletin?
Ricky: The dog was called Laika.
Karl: Was it?
Ricky: Yeah. They couldn’t get it back though. They sent it up there, did a few tests and stuff, and they couldn’t get it back. They didn’t have the technology to bring the dog back because of course it couldn’t fly the capsule back. Brilliant. We could all do that.
Karl: Right, well this was the next one up then, right – so the dog must have gone first and they went, ‘Right we made an error there, right. Get the monkey in.’ And what happened is they taught it what buttons to hit at the time that it needed to hit ’em and the way they did it was, like, give it bananas. It was like, ‘Hit the red button’ and it hit the red button and they’d give it a banana. And they would go, ‘Right, reverse is the green one, hit the green one’ and then he would do that and they would go ‘There’s a banana.’ So it was taking commands on headphones.
The World of Karl Pilkington Page 6