As I understand it, Ricky Gervais had only a mildly successful music career back in the 80s. He didn’t meet up with his future collaborator Steve Merchant until the late 90s when he was working at Xfm, a radio station in London. At that time, Steve was just out of college while Ricky was pushing 40. Steve took a job at the BBC where he had to make a short film for a production course. This is where he came up with the idea for “The Office,” and Ricky Gervais became a star.
Since that time, “The Office” has had spinoffs made in France, Quebec, Germany, the United States, and Chile. Gervais went on to make another series, “Extras,” and has starred in “Ghost Town” and “The Invention of Lying.”
Now, there’s probably no one left reading after all this stuff I plagiarized from Wikipedia, but I needed to provide some background for the most important bit. While Ricky and Steve were working on the second season of “The Office,” they were hosting a radio show on Xfm called “The Ricky Gervais Show.” They were given a producer at random because, as Ricky put it, they “couldn’t be bothered to push the buttons.” What they didn’t realize at first was that their producer, Karl Pilkington, was a comedy gold mine.
At first, “The Ricky Gervais Show” featured Ricky and Steve as DJs every Saturday afternoon talking about British celebrities or about funny things that had happened in their own lives, and Karl worked mostly behind the scenes making sure that the swear words had been edited out of songs – stuff like that. Karl became a celebrity in his own right when Ricky and Steve started to plumb the depths of Karl’s bald round Mancunian head.
Here’s a transcript of an episode early on in the series, from January 19, 2002, where Karl is questioned about the apocalypse and mermaids. If you don't feel like reading, you can download this at http://www.therickygervaisshow.com/index.php?series=01&episode=09 and cue up to the 28 minute mark.
Ricky: What do you think the world might be like if there was, say, a nuclear war and we had to survive underground for a while, until all the waste went away and we could come up and we could eat fruit again and, oh, it’s all weird and we had to start from scratch.
Karl: I’d rather die.
Steve: Okay.
Ricky: Okay.
Karl: Wouldn’t you?
Ricky: Well, supposing it was sort of like Britain, it was just like, it was, all the buildings had gone, right, or there was a bit of scavenging and we hid underground and we came out, you know, in sort of ten years time, don’t keep shaking your head, you don’t know the question, just going “no, no, no, no, I’d rather die.” It was fine, you lived on tinned fruit for a few years, then you had to come up and start again, you had to find other civilizations…
Karl: I’d want that thing that, um, is it, is it Walt Disney had?
Steve: Cryogenically preserved.
Karl: Sort of popped in a fridge thing, and say, ‘look, wake me up when it’s all built again,’ couldn’t be doing with that, walking around with a hard hat on all day.
Ricky: What would you do, set an alarm clock? You’re the only person. What, you get in a fridge and leave a note? ‘If you find this do not disturb ‘til 2012.’
Karl: You know what I mean.
Ricky: No, well yeah, but saying that wasn’t, I mean what would you do first? You’ve just come out right into the light, it was just like, just like, you know, um, Saxon Britain, there was nothing, you have to start again, what would you do, what would you do first?
Karl: I’d probably go and see where I live now, to see what’s left of it.
{Ricky giggles}
Ricky: I love how he thinks.
Steve: Karl, if you, if you were the last man on earth, right, and you had to have one other woman with which to start the human race again, right, and not your girlfriend, who would you start the human race again with? Which person would you, would you wanna, bear in mind it’s not just like the fact that you’ve gotta have kids, they’ve got to be able to provide something in this world, they’ve gotta be leaders.
Ricky: And they might … and they might be all melted … they’ve just got one good eye but now they can tell what you’re thinking, ‘cause of radiation … and, and, and …
Steve: What do you think Karl?
Ricky: And they tried to go through a pod and there was a fish in there for some reason, in their wellington.
Steve: I mean, for me probably…
Ricky: What would you rather kiss, a mermaid or a unicorn?
Steve: Karl, quickly.
Karl: A mermaid.
Steve: No… I want him to answer my question.
Ricky: Why, ‘cause it’s got a lady’s face?
Karl: Hmm.
Ricky: Okay then, what would you rather kiss: a lady with the body of a fish or the body of a horse?
Karl: A fish, wouldn’t you?
{Ricky and Steve laugh}
Ricky: This is the best thing in the world. It’s like, you know when you call a file a rude word and then the computer goes, “Do you want to open ‘tits’?” You laugh ‘cause it’s like, that’s what playing with Karl’s like, you sort of like input it and you always get, get like, d’you know what I mean?
Steve: You get back more than you bargained for.
As “The Ricky Gervais Show” progressed, it gained listeners from the success of “The Office”, but it also drew listeners as eccentric Karl took a more prominent role in the show. Karl would introduce features that he had created and, because Ricky and Steve were too busy/lazy to prepare for the show, Karl’s own contributions became the focus. Here are some of his more famous bits:
Rockbusters: A game show where people had to guess the names of three music acts based on Karl’s cryptic clues. For instance, Karl might give a clue of “That army has got some well nice trenches,” and the answer would be Dandy Warhols (dandy war holes).
Do We Need ‘Em?: Karl would interview a prominent scientist or museum curator about the necessity of certain animals. Not surprisingly, every interviewee defended the rights of creatures like jellyfish to exist, even if they did sting Karl that one time.
Monkey News: Karl would bring in some elaborate unbelievable story, probably from an unscrupulous news source like Ananova, and present it as fact. Usually this would lead Ricky to either laugh about the absurdity of the story or get frustrated at Karl for not having better critical judgement.
I’ve only made it through the first couple seasons of the old radio show, but it continued from 2001 to 2005. Then it went off the air and onto the internet. “The Ricky Gervais Show” got into the Guinness Book of World Records as the most downloaded podcast of 2007. To this day, the combo of Gervais, Merchant, and Pilkington are still releasing audio online, albeit much less frequently.
Okay, so where am I going with all of this? I’ll be shocked if anyone’s still reading, but I had to get this out and over with. I promise that future blog entries won’t be so tedious.
When I watched “The Invention of Lying” a couple weeks back, I had an epiphany. The premise for “The Invention of Lying” is that everyone in the world, save Ricky’s character, is totally honest and totally gullible. Everyone speaks the truth and everyone is expected to speak the truth. I realized that Gervais probably got the inspiration for this movie from being around Karl for so long. Karl has become famous for taking tall tales, like stories about monkeys that foil bank robberies or pet birds that get depressed from being haunted by ghosts, and accepting them as fact.
I’ve tried to present a clear picture of why I find this so entertaining, but if I wrote several more pages, it still wouldn’t do it justice – you just have to listen. It’s especially fascinating and funny to hear Karl talk about his upbringing in Manchester. For instance, one day, Karl’s mom kept him home from school because it was too windy outside. It sounds like something from the Brothers’ Grimm.
Anyhow, if you want to find out more, you can download episodes of the old radio show at www.therickygervaisshow.com or look up stuff on Karl’s bizarre upbringing in Manchester at www.pilkipedia.co.uk. You can also find stuff at www.karlpilkington.com or www.rickygervais.com.
