The World of Karl Pilkington (12 page)

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?

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.

Steve:
And what would you hope to learn from them?

Karl:
Just history.

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.

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.