Guardian S3E1 (August 22, 2006)

Hello, and welcome back to the first in the third series of the Ricky Gervais Show with me, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant

and the fool, the round headed buffoon that is Carl Pilkington.

We've been away filming our second series of extras, and leaving Carl to his own devices in a sweltering London.

Bad a heat wave here in the capital city, haven't we, Carl?

It's been alright.

It's been up to a hundred degrees, record-breaking temperatures.

Yeah.

What have you been doing though?

Uh sort of enjoyed it a little bit, was out and about.

Yeah.

Getting to see the place, having loads of walks.

And I like to have walks.

You know, watching what was happening.

Like a dog.

Yeah.

When when he jumps off the couch and starts scratching against the door, Suzanne thinks it's time.

It's just good thinking time though, isn't it?

As well having a walk.

You've got no other clutter going on around you.

And you just think about a lot of stuff.

And you know, like you say, with the weather being hot and stuff, a lot of insects knocking about.

Right.

So I've just been watching them.

So while we've been filming a TV show,

you've been watching insects.

Yeah, just seeing, because everybody knows insects are out there, but no one's keeping an eye on them.

What are they up to?

What are you worried about?

Steve, you won't be laughing like that if you'd watch them, because they do some weird stuff and that, is what I mean.

What sort of stuff?

Any examples?

I saw a bee have a heart attack.

You saw a bee have a heart attack.

How were you sure it was a heart attack?

Because what happened?

Did it clutch its chest with all six legs?

No, I'd say.

Were there some other little bee paramedics?

No, no, I'd just been out in the park anyway, just looking at, you know, caterpillars, knocking about, butterflies and stuff.

So I was so...

So when Suzanne goes to work, she goes, Carl, don't you waste the day.

Just because you don't work at the radio station anymore, I want you to do some constructive stuff.

You go, Yeah, I am, yeah.

And so you so in your head suddenly goes,

and he goes out, and there's a moth.

But the thing is, so I'd been in the park, and I was aware of the insects that are around us more than like most of the time.

And I come out of the park, just crossing like

sort of a busy road and what have you.

And I saw this bee to the right of me, sort of in the air.

And it was a big one, and I was a bit like, oh, let's watch that.

And it just fell it fell from the air in front of me and it was on the pavement and I thought oh what's going on here and I I looked at it for a bit and it was really still gave it a little kick just to see if there was any movement nothing stone sort of what's the saying stone cold dead

yeah stone cold bee dead so yeah that's I like the fact that this bee suddenly saw Carl and had a heart attack yeah it'd never seen anything that round before it just thought it it approached him because he thought it was a sunflower.

My god, it's a giant walking orange.

Every dream has come true.

No, but it just summed up life for me.

I thought that's like us, innit?

At the end of the day, they have heart attacks, stress.

You put it down to stress, do you?

Well, it's in London, isn't it?

You know, everything has stresses from living here.

And they are bald, aren't they?

They've got fur all over them, but they lose the.

And always overweight.

It was a fat, bald bee.

So what did you it it fell to the floor and you you instantly you just kicked it, you didn't attempt to do it.

Well I waited a second and just looked at it to see if there was any you know leg movement or wing and there was nothing and then when I sort of kicked it it was sort of hard.

It had hardened already.

It's just rigor mortis.

Did it put you in a bad mood for the day?

Because I know things like that can just send you over the edge for the day.

Uh death and that does a bit.

Suzanne doesn't like me talking about death.

What riveting conversations do you come up with?

No, just things like one of our mates has had a baby baby recently, and I just was saying, Oh, when that's sort of our age, we'll nearly be dead.

Think of that.

So, first thing he says is a new life brought into the world.

But when he's our age, we'll be dead.

Yeah.

Maybe they let you do the speech and the christening.

Yeah, it's just, you know, so, like I say, just insect life and that, it's interesting.

You say it's interesting, but do you care about really finding out about them?

Do you really care about what bees do or as do?

You look at them and you make up your own world.

For example, it had a heart attack, it's stress, it's overweight.

You know nothing.

I could probably,

won't you look something up?

You know, honey bees are fascinating.

You know, honey bees,

they've been around making honey for a hundred million years.

It's incredible.

Their wings beat over 11,000 times a minute.

And he's thinking, no wonder I had a heart attack.

Exactly.

But they're fat.

Do you know

bees, like ants, are actually like specialized wasps.

They're sort of developed from the same

family, like.

Well, yeah, yeah.

It doesn't surprise me.

Doesn't surprise you, though.

Does it interest you in any way?

Well, everything's linked to something, isn't it?

It's like how they say away from monkeys and that.

Yeah.

It's all the same sort of thing.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, I've been watching loads of stuff.

I've been watching ants.

You mentioned ants.

I've had a lot of moths in the house.

They're sort of sad.

So you say it like it was a garden party.

No, it's just all these things.

You look at them.

I mean, you go into the scientific bit saying, you know, it likes honey or whatever.

It doesn't like honey.

The reason they store honey is to get them through the winter when there's not like nectar or nectar's hard to get in their store, and they store too much, which is why we can skim a little bit off the top.

We're like agents.

Yeah, well, but all I'm saying is I look at more about what its life is like as a human being.

You guess, you make it up.

You don't look into it at all.

No, but you can.

A bit of guesswork is pretty close to the truth most of the time.

What do you mean by that?

That statement sums you up.

A bit of guesswork is pretty close to the truth.

Because if you watch something long enough, is what I'm saying, you can see that it's a bit clueless.

It's the same way about ants.

Oh, you know, they're hard workers and all that.

I watch one, it's going back and forth all the time.

They go one way and then they stop and go the other way.

They try to look busy in front of the mates.

But if you watch one

long enough, it's back and forwards and it's like it's done nothing there.

I'm going to carry this twig back and forth until I can knock off at four.

There's a lot of that going on.

Is there?

Because there's not.

There's none of that going on.

There is.

No, like I say, the moth.

Depressing little sort of thing.

Why is it depressing?

Just the way it hasn't got eyes, does it?

You just look at it, it doesn't know what's going on.

I just don't think.

I think if you haven't got eyes, you shouldn't have wings.

That's a rule, if we can put that into practice, please.

That's a great rule.

That's a fantastic rule, isn't it?

If you haven't got eyes, you shouldn't have weed.

Certainly true of people thinking of becoming an air pilot.

You know, whilst you've been working on that, I've been travelling about a bit, just

seeing the country and that.

Went to

Dorset, right?

Nice beach there.

And you know those huts you get, like a hut on the beach, and you

get changed.

You can get changed in it, but they're better than that.

It's like you can put a telly in it, a sofa if you want.

Oh, you don't mean the Victorian changing.

You mean

things?

It's sort of bigger than that.

Yeah.

And

we're walking down there, and there was a really sort of big fat family in one of them.

There's about four of them.

And you could tell that they've never had a game of anything.

Do you know what I mean?

They just sit down there eating ice creams, looking at the scene, what have you.

And the weird thing is, the little fat kid, the youngest one, who must have been, I don't know, about eight, he was really fat to the point of you couldn't see his neck.

Yeah, and he sat at the front of his mum and dad and his older sister.

He sat there, and he had a frisbee.

And I thought, look, they don't want to play with him.

I mean, that's that's an active game to play, innit?

Frisbee.

As we got closer, he was just using it to eat Maltesers out of.

I just thought, even again, you know, the one active thing he's got is using it to eat out of.

Yeah.

Extraordinary.

And that just sums up what people are like about when it comes to keeping fit and activities.

Oh, that's fantastic.

Were you sporting Rick?

I was, yeah.

I loved it.

I absolutely loved it.

Were you good at it?

I was good at some things.

I was never good at rugby.

Never good at cricket.

was all right at football.

But those things were the more competitive things that were scary.

So at my school, when you're surrounded by

people who

the fun is hurting someone.

Well, it's weird if you say it, because I remember the first day I went to play cricket, my mum said, as I was leaving, I was really excited about playing cricket, she went, be careful.

I was walking across a playing field once, a cricket ball hit me on the head, I was unconscious for two hours.

Freaked me out.

On the way to play cricket, I thought, okay, always scared of the ball because it's obviously, as you say, rock solid.

I remember a couple of seasons later, I had to play rugby for the first time.

As I was leaving the house, she went, be careful with rugby.

I knew a kid once broke his back playing it.

I was terrified of rugby.

I was terrified of it.

It's such a scary game.

The ball came to me, I got rid of it immediately.

It's mental.

Yeah.

I don't understand.

What I remember is, I remember a teacher saying you've got to play it very carefully because you can get seriously injured, you can hurt yourself, you can be crippled for life.

I remember thinking, why are we allowed to still play this game at school?

I was worried about cracking heads

and a finger in the eye.

How is it not bad?

That worried me all the time, a finger in the eye.

But they removed the asbestos from schools in the 60s and 70s.

But rugby isn't allowed to play.

It's mental.

You see, I had a mate called Mark who liked playing cricket, right?

And when I when I used to say to my mum, Oh, can I I'm just want to go out with Mark and his dad to play cricket, and she never used to let me go, she'd go, Oh, prefer, you know, you didn't.

And I used to always think that, you know, it's it's because it's a dangerous sport, you can get hit on the head by the ball and it's hard, put an eye out or whatever.

But it was because his dad, his dad used to drive us to the place to play cricket, and he had um his eyelids were too big,

so

he he he used to have to sort of have his head right back.

It's like one of those old-fashioned dolls.

Right.

Where you lean amazing and then pump back and clump forward again.

And

she didn't like me getting in a car with him.

So I know this whose eyelids are too big.

So growing up, you had a woman who had her head like a bag of spuds.

I didn't know her.

No, you had two kids at school with webbed hands and feet and big heads.

You had a pigeon chest boy.

Nowadays, you're walking around with insects and moths like something from James and the Giant Peach.

Yeah, and you had a bloke whose eyelids were too big.

One thing I've noticed that, because I occasionally go to the gym, and you know those guys who work out constantly to give themselves extraordinary physiques, just they, you know, they're on the trip, they're on the weights and they're really you know, I noticed in the summer particularly, those guys cannot wait to get their shirts off.

Yeah.

Everywhere you see, they're walking around.

If they've got a good torso, they are walking shirts off.

Even I think if you go to nightclubs, I notice there's always one guy who's thinking, well, I have put so much work into this body, I have got to get my shirt off on the dance stage.

Oh, Oh, yeah, you know,

a brand new tattoo.

I'm not covering that exactly.

I've paid a lot for it.

Let's see it.

Yeah, yeah.

But that's what we were saying about bodies.

I can't remember why we were talking about it.

We've got to a point in science now that you can change a head.

No, well, that doesn't make any sense at all.

It was a programme,

it was done in the 50s or 60s where they stuck a monkey's brain on a stick and had it wired up and it still worked, right?

Right, okay.

And that was in like the 60s or

to say the change of head makes no sense at all because if you put a uh a a different head on a different body you're changing the body.

Yeah I know well that's what I'm about to say to you though.

What?

That's what I'm saying.

That I'd be more confident

if I had someone else's body

because if anyone dissed it I can go, no, it's bad innit?

What are you talking about?

Well it's like say um as opposed to someone else's head

yeah well

it m the head is me.

Well of course it is that's what I mean so what do you mean you'd be happier having someone else's body?

What than your own?

What I mean is, say if

you're wandering about,

for some reason, there's an incident,

you have to take your top off, and that, and everyone's looking at you, right?

And you're a bit sort of, you know, you haven't got the muscles and that, you haven't got the six-pack, right?

Which isn't that nice anyway.

I don't know why that's become a nice thing, really, seeing the insides of you.

You might as well.

I mean, I know I came up with the see-through skin idea, but

it's a bit weird, innit?

You can see stuff.

No, no, it's the muscle in front of the.

No, it's not.

Sometimes you can see it.

It's not the outline of your muscles.

But you can't see tubes.

You can see tubes and veins and stuff.

You can see veins.

Yeah, well, I don't want to see that.

That's why we've got skin over it.

Stop looking at naked men there.

Well, sometimes you can't help it because it's been hot, and like you say, it's people walking around with vests on and that.

So, anyway, what I'm saying is: say if some incident happened, I'm walking about with my top off.

Right.

Girls are laughing at me,

Why?

Donald, they might.

Yeah, go on.

So they wouldn't look at your body, they'd all look at your head.

So what I mean is,

rewind that, right?

And imagine all that happens again, but I've got someone else's body.

Right.

Whose body?

Just some fella who's died and my body was injured, and they said, we've got a new body in.

You can have it.

Stick your head on it.

Now, say if

they're laughing at you.

they're laughing at the body,

but at least I'd be able to sort of go, I know it's a mess, but it's not mine.

At least I don't have to claim ownership.

So, all of this extraordinary technology that can make a head put one head on another person's body so you can go, it's not my body.

Oh, no.

But it's not your own.

I'm not being funny, though.

So, if you have a body transplant, right?

And you're there, you're at home, naked, you look down,

lovely penis and a set of testicles.

Yeah.

Right?

What do you do with with them?

What do you mean, what am I doing with them?

Well, do you like them?

Well, you wouldn't you wouldn't mess about with them as much as if they were your own.

But if you did mess about with them, would you feel guilty that you were messing about with another man's testicles and penis?

And it's the full body.

Yeah.

No,'cause they're not my hands either.

You're a genius.

You're a fucking genius.

So what you're doing is watching someone else wank.

Yeah.

Well, one thing Carl has been doing over the past few months is writing his diary.

He's kept that up.

I don't know what he's had to to write about.

All he's been doing is looking at moths and ants and bees and going for walks.

But I'm sure it's all in the diary.

So let's have a look at that.

Oh, I don't believe it.

He's only gone and written it down.

We went to the park and had a brew.

Suzanne read the paper while I played with the ladybird.

I mean, it's like a child, isn't it?

It is like what a child is.

Suzanne read the paper while I played with the ladybird.

His only friend is a beetle.

It climbed up my arm.

It struggled on me hairs.

This is in detail then.

It kept stopping every now and then and was rubbing its head with its right arm.

It did it about four times and always used its right arm.

It rested for about five minutes, then flew off.

Sunday.

Add a bit of a to-do with Suzanne'cause she wanted a lion today.

I ate this.

Once you're awake, you should get up.

I got up and put the radio on really loud.

She eventually got up.

I told her insects don't have lions so we shouldn't.

Why are you upset?

You must be fucking unbearable to live with.

You must be a nightmare.

No, I've just started because I've watched insects a lot I don't want to keep going on about them because we're a bit insect heavy.

But at the end of the day,

if we copied insects, we wouldn't go far wrong.

I don't know what you mean, though.

One minute you're saying they're great, then the next minute you'll slag them off.

Yeah, I'll slag some of them off if I don't know what they're doing, but because I've studied them a bit longer, I just think they do.

You haven't studied them.

He thinks he's like Darwin.

But you just slagged them off again, don't you?

Insects are doing stuff then.

It goes there and then it goes back again.

The ant was.

The ant was messing about.

But only that one.

The others were carrying stuff.

That's what I'm saying.

There's snidey ones in everything.

In everything in the world, you get a hierarchy.

Oh, long words.

The bookshelf was dusty, so Suzanne asked me to dust it if I get a minute.

I ended up looking at every book.

Just the spine.

Just for a few seconds each.

Yeah.

Didn't open them.

I looked in the dictionary to see if the word dictionary would be in the dictionary.

I didn't think they would bother with it being on the front page, but it was in the book as well.

It's a good point though, isn't it?

No, it's not a good point.

Because

you didn't tell us anything.

Dictionary is in the dictionary.

Well, of course it is.

Well, why?

If you go, how do you spell dictionary?

You'll look at the spine and and you go, oh, there it is.

D-I-C-C-C.

So, what does dictionary mean?

It's a book full of words, isn't it?

That's what it means.

All books are full of words, you idiot.

How to spell them.

And if you don't know what to say, it's not how to spell them.

Alright, then we'll...

No, no, no, no, no.

It's not a book full of words to title.

No.

It's the meaning.

Give us the definition of dictionary.

It's a book full of words if you want to know what the meanings are.

But if you didn't know...

Well, sorry, what was that sentence?

Yeah, but what I'm saying is, if you didn't know that, then you wouldn't be looking in it because you wouldn't know the book is about that.

So, if you don't know the word dictionary and what it means, you won't be looking at the dictionary, you'd be looking at an A to Z.

Just because there's so many words in the world, I would have thought they wanted to cram as much as they can on a page.

And if dictionary is already on the front, is that why you suddenly use the word hierarchy for the first time ever?

Did you find that in there?

Did you see hierarchy in the dictionary?

I feel that that big word has pushed out about 26 other more useful ones.

Yeah, well, Suzanne's been going on about me learning another language.

But I sort of think your brain has only got so much room on it.

And the rest of it's filled with lard.

So

if I've got to learn everything I know again, but in a different language, it's taking up space, isn't it?

You don't learn everything.

Oh, God.

It's all storage, isn't it?

But you don't have to learn it again.

You don't have to learn the concepts again.

You're merely using vocabulary.

Moves there are in the human brain.

You Really, don't worry, you won't use them all up.

I feel that he has reached his capacity, though.

Yeah.

Well, you need another sort of, you need an update.

You need some more memory.

Woke up to some interesting news.

It's good when this happens because it sets me up for the day ahead.

If it's miserable news, it affects my day.

It said on the news that they have found two new flies.

Fuck it out, Maura Insect.

What have you done?

Is that all you've done this summer?

Bong.

Trouble in the Middle East.

Bong, two new flies found.

Ladybird climbs up arm.

They were found in the UK and they were found close to each other.

Maybe this happened because they were different than the other flies and weren't expected to hang about together, so that's why they knocked about with each other.

That would happen, wouldn't it?

What do you mean?

There's two new flies.

Yeah!

Do you mean?

Does it mean there are two new flies, there are different species?

Yeah, two new species, and they found them close to each other, right?

Yeah, but they didn't mean there was one of each.

No.

yeah, yeah, they did.

They found two different ones.

No.

No, they have.

Seriously, I know that.

That's right, that's a fact.

So you've got like, I don't know the names of them, they give them odd names, don't they?

But call it A and fly B, right?

Yeah.

Fly A,

I don't know.

Say that's orange.

This is just big.

Fly B, yeah.

This is painful.

It's just making it easier.

Fly B, West Milhat.

It's a mil hat.

Yeah, fine.

Now, they found the orange one.

I went, look at this over here.

This is a bit weird.

And they've gone, oh, that's a new species.

Log it, whatever.

And then the other one went, oh,

keep your pen, Andy.

Look at this one.

It's got a hat on.

So then they found them both within the same distance.

I don't know how that sentence.

Keep going, keep going, keep going.

Let him try and finish.

They found them both within the same distance.

But without interrupting him, let him finish this next point.

Let me just make one thing clear.

Carl Pilkinson just said they found them both within the same distance.

Think of that!

Don't know what it means, but go on, let him finish this point.

So,

what I mean is

they weren't knocking about with other normal house flies because they were probably sort of going, Oh, he's a bit weird.

Leave it.

Yet, because the other one was also odd,

they're hanging about with each other.

Don't you understand that?

Why is that such an odd concept?

Because

you think of it as like

two little

new kids in school.

they find out they're both new and they they've got so many

And this was on the news, was it?

Yeah, just on the radio, yeah.

I know if I looked into that story, it would be 90% wrong.

Bit tired today because didn't get to sleep as early as I'd wanted due to a moth getting in the bedroom.

Fuck me!

I got it in a glass and looked at it for a bit and then let it go because Suzanne wanted to go to sleep.

Looked up some interesting news.

Some people dug up an old body in Ireland.

Turns out it's well old and was here when dinosaurs were here.

The really weird bit is it had hair gel in its hair.

Right, what is it?

Fella.

Well, no, it wasn't around when dinosaurs were here then.

Just a bit after.

Right, fine.

A lot after, yeah, go on.

I think any hominid, anything that could even be linked to anything that may become man, is only about a million years old.

And I think Homo sapien is probably only about 150,000 years old.

Dinosaurs are about 150 million to 250 million.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's not the age bit, that's amazing.

It's the fact of there's a fella, won't you have even had shoes on his feet.

Right.

And yet he was worried about his hair style.

Right, well that's definitely not true either.

This is unbelievable.

Well, there was a man on the radio doing poetry, says Carl in his diary.

I thought he'd have a go at doing a poem about today.

Not really.

He had to see.

I'm a little bit queasy.

He hasn't really written a poem.

He's written a small poem.

No, he hasn't really.

Yes.

If moths had eyes.

Oh, fuck me!

Let me read the poem.

Okay?

Oh, fuck me.

You wouldn't interrupt T.S.

Eliot.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Okay.

If moths had eyes, would they be happier?

How do they know they're not dead?

Cavemen hunting for food, but not before they style the hair on their head.

What would last longer in dinosaur times?

A blind man didn't stand a chance.

Not with all them rocks about.

I'd rather be a blind moth.

Right, it may be the greatest poem ever written.

Just, you know, dissecting it briefly, you attempt to rhyme in the first four lines, but abandon the rhyming system in the last three.

Is there a creative?

Can we have Carl read that?

By all means.

Just you read it as you would like to.

So this is.

Imagine this, right?

Okay.

This is going out all over the world, this podcast.

And now

Carl Pilgner, the new poet from Manchester, now living in London, England, would like to read a poem.

If moths had eyes, would they be happier?

How do they know they're not dead?

Cavemen hunting for food, but not before they style the air on their head.

What would last longer in dinosaur times?

A blind man didn't stand a chance.

Not with all them rocks about.

I'd rather be a blind moth.

He said it as though the last one must be a rhyme.

He said it like it was going to rhyme.

Oh, God.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

I think he feels as though the final line, I'd rather be a blind moth, is going to be one of those great

summations that somehow the moth is a metaphor.

There's no metaphor in that.

He really does mean he'd rather be a blind moth.

Yeah, well, I'm just because I've locked on the day's news.

Can we always do that, Carl?

Can we always find a day

and always sum it up in your thoughts a poem?

Just like that.

I love that structure.

I love that structure.

If there's any English students or professors or novelists or poets listening,

please email us what they thought of that poem, why it's good, why it's bad.

So give us your thoughts on that.

I mean we would love expert opinion, poets,

English professors.

Just email us at podcast at rickyjavaise.com.

Now Carl, apart from being a poet, you are an author now.

You've written a book.

You know, which surprised me and Steve, because as Steve said, we thought you'd read a book before you actually wrote one, but you've

proved us wrong.

And all your teachers wrong, and everyone in the world who thinks you're an idiot.

It is actually a very good book.

I mean, a lot of it is transcripts from the podcasts,

but you've answered some of your critics, haven't you?

And you've tried to prove some of your theories.

It's everything about Carway.

It is like all the drawings.

All the drawings.

There's new stories, isn't there?

And there's so much effort.

I can't believe it.

He's been working on it for months.

And it's out on the 18th of September.

But you can order it now, can't you, on Amazon.com and amazon.co.com.

What's that book called?

It's called The World of Carl Pilkington.

Well, thanks very much.

Goodbye from me, Vicky Gervais.

Goodbye from Stephen Merchant.

Goodbye.

And goodbye from the little hollow egg-headed moron that is Carl Pilkington.

Audible hopes you've enjoyed this program.