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Is Karl Pilkington 'Real'?

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I don't know, if he is made up, he is the best character that has ever existed.

I listened to all of the XFM shows, it just really didn't seem made up. Ricky often became obviously annoyed with him and it just didn't seem to be fake. He may ham it up a bit, but I think he is real.

I love some of his insights though, while ridiculous and stupid, they are completely logical.
 
StuBurns said:
This is just not a good excuse.

It covers somethings, but not others. First time he talks about his Dad's friends, and there's Jimmy the Hat, they ask if he always wore a hat, and Karl says he didn't see him wear one, but he didn't see him that much, and they joke that maybe it's ironic. So when the story reappears, that's actually why he had the nickname. They tried a piece of material, they riffed on it, and the modified version was repeated.

I'll give you an even more blatant one. Anecdotes in the first person are more effective, a common theme in comedy writing is always tell story style jokes in the first person. So when Karl says his dad met a man that looks like Ken Dodd, and said 'nice to meet you Ken', it's not nearly as effective as when Karl later tells the story and makes himself the person who met the guy.

Memory isn't accurate, but it won't put you in a place your dad was. Maybe it happened to his dad, maybe it never happened, I have no idea, but it's blatantly purely comedy when it's repeated from the first person.

Other clear indications it's bullshit is characters who are attributed to things. Like when he first talks about getting a mattress from the back of a van, it's one of his dad's friends. Then when they've established his 'uncle' that has two TVs and sleeps in a boat, it becomes his old mattress, because it's a comical addition to the sleeping in a boat thing.

He says things which blatantly contradict other things. He said his dad cut a mattress, which fucked it up, so he had to replace it and the catalog company ripped him off. Then magically he suddenly has it again years later.

We'll never really know, but massive amounts of the show are completely made up. His brother never stole a tank, his dad didn't crash a train, and his friend doesn't live in a hole in the dirt.
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It's hard to comment without having to exact clips of when each story was re-told, but I don't think it's necessarily made up just because elements change. There are other possible explanations for things. If the stories you mention are repeated on the podcasts, then yeah they are almost definitely tweaked for comedic effect because they were making a product and had editing etc. Even if they were repeated in XFM days that could be a case of Ricky and Steve suggesting he changes the story for the same reason. It doesn't make the original stories fake.

With Jimmy the hat it's not hard to see why that might have gone from maybe to definitely in that time between. Karl talks to his parents, so he could have asked his Dad after telling the story and had it confirmed. That's not exactly unlikely.

The point is there's a grey area between him being real and there being discrepancies so it's all fake.
 
News Bot said:
100% genuine on XFM, about 80% everywhere else.

I remember a certain point on XFM where he got tired of Ricky's shit and ended up reversing roles, and Ricky got pissed to the point of walking out. That was awkward to listen to but very genuine.
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Is that when they did Educating Ricky? Ricky seemed to get really annoyed at some of those.
 
An Idiot abroad is seriously one of the funniest tv-shows I've ever seen. Every episode literally had me in tears. Karl is hilarious.
 
He certainly plays up to it a bit now, but he is 100% real.

Go back and listen to some of the old Ricky Gervais XFM podcasts. Karl was their producer and Ricky became obsessed with him, its also some of Ricky's best comedy
 
He definitely plays up to it, but if you go back and listen to those XFM shows, as everyone is saying... he barely even speaks for the first ten or so. Then Ricky and Steve will say things like how fascinating they find him because of things he says off air. There's an episode where Ricky says he may be the most interesting man in the world, and they just start asking his opinions on everything. It's lovely because you can feel them discovering him at the same time as you (as a new listener) do.

Regardless of whether he's a character now, I do believe he's genuinely quite odd. And it's funny. Whether he's putting it on or not, he's funny. I don't care if it's put on.
 
Gorger said:
An Idiot abroad is seriously one of the funniest tv-shows I've ever seen. Every episode literally had me in tears. Karl is hilarious.
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Agreed. I love his unfiltered thoughts. He often makes good points though because his thoughts and questions of 'why' dont go through some ethical, cultural or moral filter; he just comes out with it. I have a feeling my life would be so mucn more enioyable if I was at Karls level.
 
Thank you for this thread!

As with Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines - when someone mentions it, someone (that'll be me) will start it up again :D

EWsov6Y.png
 
huxley00 said:
I don't know, if he is made up, he is the best character that has ever existed.

I listened to all of the XFM shows, it just really didn't seem made up. Ricky often became obviously annoyed with him and it just didn't seem to be fake. He may ham it up a bit, but I think he is real.

I love some of his insights though, while ridiculous and stupid, they are completely logical.
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Annoyed is an understatement ;)
When they talk about the infinite monkeys writing Shakespeare (I think in the fourth season), Ricky flat out storms out of the room after yelling at him :D
 
I think some of it is fake/played up but man is he funny regardless. Love Idiot Abroad.

Haven't seen Derek yet.
 
Lotta marks in this thread.

Karl is very good at finding off the wall ways to be stupid about every single topic set before him. Compare him to how actual stupid people are, and you'll have your answer.
 
Wilbur said:
He definitely plays up to it, but if you go back and listen to those XFM shows, as everyone is saying... he barely even speaks for the first ten or so. Then Ricky and Steve will say things like how fascinating they find him because of things he says off air. There's an episode where Ricky says he may be the most interesting man in the world, and they just start asking his opinions on everything. It's lovely because you can feel them discovering him at the same time as you (as a new listener) do.

Regardless of whether he's a character now, I do believe he's genuinely quite odd. And it's funny. Whether he's putting it on or not, he's funny. I don't care if it's put on.
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Grabbing the XFM shows now, I think it's about time I listened to them.
 
Wilbur said:
I don't find it as funny when it becomes more feature based

I liked the spontaneity of it all
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There are definitely periods of S2 which have too many features, but they calm it down a bit I think

Educating Ricky, Rockbusters and Monkey News are all I need.


'You call up, and you win a prize if yer Mam's heavy'
 
Real or not I can't stand the guy, I know people find him funny which is fair enough but he makes me cringe with most of the stuff he comes out with.
 
Holy shit, I just found out about this guy. He's truly amazing. Like he's either incredibly dumb or incredibly smart and sometimes at the same time.
 
He's definitely real. He is a stupid moron. I recently started going back through all that Karl Pilkington stuff (including Idiot Abroad) and it made me realise how much I actually dislike him.

His stupidity is funny, but his complete lack of empathy for anyone is really really annoying. It's probably why I wasn't that into his individual stuff, Ricky and Steve knew how to get the funny stuff out of him, when he is on his own - that nasty, ignorant side comes out and it's not funny.
 
Qassim said:
He's definitely real. He is a stupid moron. I recently started going back through all that Karl Pilkington stuff (including Idiot Abroad) and it made me realise how much I actually dislike him.

His stupidity is funny, but his complete lack of empathy for anyone is really really annoying. It's probably why I wasn't that into his individual stuff, Ricky and Steve knew how to get the funny stuff out of him, when he is on his own - that nasty, ignorant side comes out and it's not funny.
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Examples?
 
Qassim said:
He's definitely real. He is a stupid moron. I recently started going back through all that Karl Pilkington stuff (including Idiot Abroad) and it made me realise how much I actually dislike him.

His stupidity is funny, but his complete lack of empathy for anyone is really really annoying. It's probably why I wasn't that into his individual stuff, Ricky and Steve knew how to get the funny stuff out of him, when he is on his own - that nasty, ignorant side comes out and it's not funny.
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This is a bit harsh? Any examples of where he is nasty and ignorant?
 
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