Ricky: Right, but how were they giving it the banana?
Karl: No, this is before it went. You wouldn’t just put a monkey in it and go ‘There you go. Get on with it.’ They’d sort of put him in one of them training capsules that you get.
Ricky: Yeah. I don’t believe this happened. I don’t think they trained it to do anything. I think they sent it up there and they put electrodes coming out of it to see how it reacted.
Karl: No, there wasn’t any of that. They did a thing like they can with animals. If you give it something, like a treat, you can teach it how to do it. It’s just like a dog, innit.
Ricky: It’s called Pavlovian conditioning. However, that was to see if it would salivate or go over to a particular corner of the room, not if it could control a spacecraft.
Karl: It’s the next step up. The monkey’s not sat there going, ‘Oh, I’m a bit under pressure here, it’s a rocket.’ All that it’s knowing is, ‘I am getting a banana if I hit that button.’ That’s all the monkey is thinking about.
Steve: But how can they be sure that it’s going to press the button at the right moment?
Karl: Because it’s got headphones on. They’re telling it when. It’s not willy-nilly.
Steve: What’s to stop it just hitting the buttons at any old time because it’s a monkey and it’s not a human?
Karl: Because it’s trained now.
Ricky: Oh it’s trained? It’s fully trained? Yeah, go on …
Karl: So listen, so what happens anyway, they …
Ricky: Oh this is absolute rubbish.
Karl: … They popped the monkey in there. It’s got its headphones on. They’re going ‘Right, hit the green one’ and I think there’s something there, a little chute, and a banana comes out…
Ricky: No, you are making this up. There is no way that they made a spacecraft that had a banana dispenser. There is no way in this world.
Karl: So you’re saying that it’s easy to send summit up to space but you don’t believe there’s a little banana machine?
Ricky laughs.
Karl: So it comes to the launch day. Monkey is sat in there. Everyone is ready. Bananas are stocked up and all the rest of it. They go, ‘Right hit the green button’ and the rocket goes off and what have you.
Ricky: No, they would not make the monkey launch the rocket. Karl, you are living in a cartoon world ...
Karl: So the rocket goes off, right ...
Ricky: This is absolute bollocks.
Karl: … It’s all going well …
Ricky: It’s not going well. There is no way a monkey launched a rocket, you idiot.
Karl: So it’s all going on and so they’re going ‘Hit the left button’ and …
Ricky: Oh, the ‘left button’? Oh, well done spacecraft command. ‘This is Houston. Hit the left button.’ Oh brilliant. This is what happened in Apollo 13, they said ‘Hit the left button’!
Steve: So it goes left …?
Karl: So it goes left, heads for the moon and everything, and everything is going well. They get it up there, it does whatever it does. It reverses and it comes back. So then …
Ricky: You are brain dead! I would rather have the monkey drive me home than you.
Karl: So the thing is, it lands back. It does a good job and everything. It gets out and …
Steve: … It’s sick of bananas …
Karl: … This is where it turns a bit sad because after it’s done that mission, right, because it happened and it was all safe and everything, the next one would have been to send man. But the monkey enjoyed it and it was like ‘Well I want to do it again’.
Ricky: How did they know he wanted to do it again?
Karl: Just the way it looked.
Ricky: Ahh fuck off! ‘Just the way it looked!’ You are a maniac.
Karl: So the thing is, right, after it had done that it was on such a high it could never get that high again. There was nothing that it could do and it sort of ended up killing itself because it could never get that buzz again.
Ricky: Right. That was absolute bollocks. None of that is true, except that they sent a monkey into space. Absolute drivel.
Steve: So in your mind it committed suicide? It went on a crazy bender – drink and drugs and women – and then it was found in a motel room?
Karl: It does happen. You hear about it.
‘Well, it’s out there in book
form.’
Steve: Karl, a lot of people are absolutely fascinated to find out how you met Suzanne, your girlfriend of how long?
Karl: Er … ages.
Steve: And they can’t comprehend how there is a woman out there for you.
Karl: Well there is someone for everyone, in’t there. That’s always my thing. And it’s reassuring I think. You know, we’ve chatted about the face transplants and there’s a face for everyone.
Ricky: ‘There is a face for everyone.’ It’s philosophy isn’t it?
Karl: No, there is someone for everyone no matter what condition you’re in or whatever. I read an old Chinese proverb … It’s something about everyone, everything, no matter what it is, has got one talent. And that’s the same way in a relationship – there’s always someone out there, and that. I like the Chinese. There’s another Chinese proverb that I learned – ‘He who cuts the wood up, warms himself twice.’
Ricky: Yeah, that’s good.
Karl: That’s good, and then there’s that one about too many Chinese cooks spoil the broth.
Ricky: Well I don’t know who slipped the word ‘Chinese’ in there but I heard it as ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’.
Karl: Well it was just all sort of Chinese proverbs and that.
Ricky: One of my favourites on the same subject is ‘a camel is a horse designed by committee’.
Karl: What d’you mean?
Ricky: It’s just a metaphor. If you wanted to design a horse and you had that vision but you let twelve people in a room have their say, it wouldn’t come out as you wanted it to and it wouldn’t be as good. A single vision is more perfect than a committee vision because with everyone having their say, it becomes compromised.
Steve: Rick, can I just say now – I can tell from Karl’s look that he’s thinking, ‘Which committee designed the camel?’
Karl: Well I’d just say – why would you request the hump bit? ’Cos that’s just gonna get in the way innit? I mean I’ve always said that about a lot of animals. It’s like we’ve doubled up on a lot of ’em. We’ve chatted about elephants and mammoths. One or the other! And it’s the same with a camel. I’d have that up there as ‘what are they doing?’ They were good years ago in the Jesus times and that. Don’t need ’em now. D’you know what I mean? We’ve moved on.
Ricky: ‘We’ve moved on.’
Steve: Not the people who use camels to cross deserts.
Ricky: I am going to throw some animals at you and you tell how you would have improved them if you’d been designing them. Okay. The octopus.
Karl: So I can now go back? I can look at ’em and go, ‘What are they doing?’
Ricky: And where they’ve gone wrong. How could you improve it? Like the camel – you’d go, ‘Lose the hump.’
Karl: With the jellyfish, I’d probably give it a bit more of a body, cut down on the arms and give it some bones, because I don’t understand all this ‘getting in a jar is good’. When does it want to get in a jar?
Steve: It only wants to get into a jar according to your stories.
Karl: No, but there’s something that says it can get in a jar, ’cos it hasn’t got any bones. But I don’t know why it would want to do that in the first place.
Steve: I can’t even begin to answer that. Once again, you claim that you’ve read that they like to get in jars. I mean, how do they know that octopuses like to get in jars?
Ricky: Okay, another animal for you then, Karl.
Steve: Giraffe?
Karl: What are they adding to the world? What are they doing?
&nbs
p; Ricky: It’s not about what they add to the world.
Karl: No, but I thought that’s what everything’s about. It’s about ‘things are here for a reason’.
Ricky: The only reason is that they survived. They passed on their genetic material and evolved and were chosen by nature.
Karl: But there seems to be a lot of …
Ricky: The reason they are here is because they didn’t die. That’s it.
Karl: I’m just saying there seems to be a lot of doubling up. If I was Noah I would have gone, ‘Hang on a minute, I’ve just seen something that looks a bit like this.’ Let it drown and have a clear out. But he didn’t – he was messing about saving everything.
Steve: He was instructed by God to save everything, to be fair to him.
Karl: Yeah, but if he’s been given that job, for me, he’s sort of manager of that job.
Ricky: So you believe Noah happened as well? And he built a boat big enough to cater for two of every species? You actually believe that as fact, do you?
Karl: Well, it’s out there in book form.
Ricky: Brilliant.
Steve: You haven’t answered the question that we started with. How did you meet Suzanne?
Karl: Just at work.
Steve: Thanks.
‘I know, but even if it is in a box …’
Steve: Questions for Karl – Karl, if you could talk to any animal, which one would it be and what would you say to it?
Karl: There’s a lot of stuff out there, in’t there. I would probably go for the tortoise.
Ricky: Because it would take a long time to walk away from you while you were talking? Most animals would be off straightaway.
Steve: Yeah.
Karl: Just because they live for ages so they’ll have loads of stories. They’ve lived through a lot. Through wars and stuff. If you get, like, an old one …
Ricky: Well, most of them have lived in a box in a garden for fifty-odd years.
Karl: I know, but even if it is in a box …
Ricky: Oh yeah, they’ve really travelled have they. Some of them have experienced more than you, they have broadened their horizons much more than you. They could probably teach you a thing or two, yeah.
Steve: And what would you hope to learn from them?
Karl: Just history.
Ricky laughs.
Steve: Right. From their very specific tortoise perspective? Other questions. If you had a time machine, Karl, what event in your childhood would you travel back to and why?
Karl: What’s the point in going back to things that …?
Ricky: Oh Jesus!
Karl: No, it’s just that it’s never as good is it. It’s like a place you go on holiday and you go back thinking it’ll be as good as the first time – it never is. So I don’t believe in going back to places.
Ricky: What do you understand by the question? Do you think they are asking, ‘Would you go back like a ghost and spy on things? Would you go back and you’ve got your childhood back, you are that child again? Or you’re in your child body but you’ve got your adult head and experiences?’
Steve: Rick, I really don’t think Karl was thinking there was any of those variations, let’s be honest.
Ricky: I think he was thinking of himself, as he is now, in school with a cap on.
Steve: Yeah, but six foot tall sat on one of those tiny chairs.
Karl: No I don’t think I would go back. It’s all happened now hasn’t it.
Steve: Hang on. Let’s clarify one of Ricky’s points. What if you could go back and you could live that moment again? How would you do it differently?
Karl: There’s been times when I’ve gone, ‘Oh that was a bit out of order’ or whatever, but then you learn from your mistakes, don’t you? So I don’t wanna go back and change stuff, ’cos it’s like that thing that they go on about where they blame the butterfly on an earthquake. You know it’s gonna happen. If it wasn’t that butterfly, it’s another one. So why pass the buck, is what I’m saying?
Steve: So you’ve got no regrets? There’s nothing in your past you’d want to change or do differently?
Ricky: What about if you went back and you spied on something like a ghost? You couldn’t change anything but you could have a look at something.
Karl: Like what?
Ricky: Like Ebenezer Scrooge does with the ghost of Christmas Past. He goes back and he’s looking at himself dancing and stuff. What would you do? What would you go back and have a look at?
Karl: Yeah, but you are asking me to change. I don’t wanna change.
Steve: You’re not changing – you’re just observing.
Ricky: It’s impossible. It’s not gonna happen. It’s impossible.
Karl: Alright. I nearly died once didn’t I, on an ice-pop. Now maybe if I would have died I would say let’s go back to that and I won’t have an ice-pop.
Ricky: You wouldn’t be having this conversation if you’d have died. You wouldn’t be having this question put to you.
Steve: You’re rewriting history and then you’re going back to change it.
Ricky: Yeah.
Steve: There’s no need. You didn’t die.
Ricky: You didn’t die.
Karl sighs.
Ricky: How can you change it? You can’t change anything. You’re just going to go back and watch something. Would you like to go back and watch yourself choking on a Mr Freeze?
Karl: No, that’s what I’m saying. That’s why I wouldn’t go back now ’cos I’m alright. I haven’t had one since. I’ve learned a lesson. I’m not missing them ice-pops so …
Ricky: I don’t think you are making the most of this opportunity to fantasise.
Karl: I don’t see the point of going back in anything. Do you mean go back in time to the point of you can see like, Rome, in its working day?
Ricky: What, in your childhood? Were there gladiators in your childhood?
Karl: Well that’s what I’m saying, everything I’ve been through I’ve been through, so why see it again?
Ricky: Forget it. Forget it. It was just a nice little question.
Steve: I mean that shows the lack of imagination in Karl Pilkington. Your mind can’t fathom something unless it’s got two heads.
Karl: But I don’t see the point in doing something twice. Because the thing is – say if there’s one good moment when I was about six, that I loved. I would then have to go through all the other twenty years again.
Ricky: But why? Why have you imposed that rule? It’s a fantasy. Make it up.
Steve: Just go back and come back again.
Ricky: Yeah, whiz back and fast forward thirty-five years.
Karl: No.
Ricky: Brilliant. ‘No.’ Like this was really on offer.
‘I said, “Look, why are you getting involved?”’
Steve: Another question, ‘Karl, other than the famous boxing match that you have often talked about’ – I know that took up about twenty minutes of your time – ‘have you ever been in any other kind of fight?’ I don’t suppose a slanging match, I think we’re talking of ever being in a physical fight.
Karl: Once that I can remember. It was over a woman. Well a girl, at school. It’s hassle, innit, relationships when you’re younger?
Ricky: How old were you?
Karl: About seven.
Steve: It was over a woman?
Karl: There was this girl knocking about who, you know, she was quite good looking and everybody liked, and me mate, he really liked her, and I didn’t sort of ask her out and that, but she just sort of took a shine to me, and stuff, right. And I really didn’t go out with her properly. It’s at that age where going out with someone is just like sort of going, ‘Alright’ in the mornings. D’you know what I mean?
Steve: Go on.
Karl: You just sort of nod your head and that. Anyway there was some sort of school disco and they were playing spin the bottle or something, right, and I sort of wandered over to see what was going on and I stood o
n this girl’s dress and put a hole in it. And she started crying. I was like, ‘Oh I can’t be doing with this’ right. You know, ‘What’s up with you?’ And everyone’s going, ‘Karl what are you doing? That’s meant to be your girlfriend and that. You should be sort of saying, “Oh I’m sorry” and giving her a hug and all that and saying, “It’ll be alright, we’ll sort the dress out”.’ I said, ‘Oh, I can’t be dealing with this.’ So she’s crying her eyes out. I said, ‘It’s over.’
Ricky: ‘It’s over.’ You saying ‘Alright’ in the morning? Yeah, there’s no more ‘Alright’ in the morning.
Karl: So I go to the toilet, right, and this lad who fancies her comes in and goes, ‘You’re out of order.’ I’m saying, ‘What’re you on about?’
Ricky: So there’s two seven-year-olds? ‘You’re out of order!’ ‘Keep out of it.’
Steve: ‘Cut it out. Show her a bit of bloody respect.’
Ricky: Sorry, were you wearing trilbys?
Steve: Yeah. He put his cigarette out in the sink and just said, ‘Leave it.’
Ricky: ‘Get outta my face.’
Karl: I said, ‘Look, why are you getting involved?’ And it was obviously because he fancied her. We had a bit of a fight in there. I accidentally sort of chipped his tooth on a sink.
Ricky: Sorry, this is like something from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. What are you talking about? Two seven-year-olds in a toilet?
Steve: And you put a hole in her dress? What were you wearing – football boots? How did you make a hole in her dress? You were wearing winklepickers?
The World of Karl Pilkington Page 7