The World of Karl Pilkington

Steve: Is he a medium that can contact the dead? Is that right?

Karl: Yeah, he just chats to ’em and that. Passes messages on.

Steve: Nice of him.

Karl: So I said, ‘Tell us summit a bit weird and that.’ So he said, ‘What do you want to know?’ and I said, ‘Just summit weird.’ So he goes, ‘Alright then, here’s one for you. There’s this pub out in the country and there’s this mug.’ You know them old mugs that they have, where they used to leave their own cup knocking about, a tankard thing. So there was one of them mugs in there right, and everybody …

Steve: Tankard, let’s call it a tankard.

Karl: Tankard, yeah.

Ricky: ’Cos you’re the only mug in this story.

Karl: So this tankard’s knocking about, right, and everyone who’s running the pub keeps going, ‘Oh I wish they’d stop leaving this tankard about’ right and they pick it up …

Steve: It must be a pain, having a small tankard in a pub – that must be a real grind.

Karl: So they picked it up and they said, ‘We’ll have to wash that’ and they popped it on a different sideboard. Next thing you know, that person who’s touched it died.

Steve: Sure.

Karl: So they kept getting new staff and they thought ‘What’s the connection here?’, right.

Steve and Ricky laugh.

Karl: So someone notices, and they go, ‘Yeah, it’s a bit weird. It’s that cup, right.’

Steve: Tankard.

Karl: ‘It’s that tankard’ and that. So they get a vicar in and they go, ‘Look, there’s a lot of weird stuff going on here. This tankard – every time someone touches it, they die.’ So he said, ‘Leave it with me.’ He gets his special water out, he comes round, does a little prayer, sprinkles it. He goes, ‘Right, not a problem, don’t worry about it.’ And he picks it up and chucks it in the bin. Guess what …

Ricky: What?

Karl: He dies in a crash on the way home. Because he

picked it up.

Ricky: But Karl, you’re telling me this like it’s fact.

Karl: Derek Acorah, he told me.

Ricky: But Karl, I have no opinion of that story, other than I am pretty sure there was absolutely no connection between touching the tankard and him dying. That’s all I am sure of. I’m not gonna even contest the chain of events. All I’m saying is: there is no connection possible because I believe in logic and the laws of the universe. So when you’re telling me about miracles and strange things you may as well be telling me about the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny. It’s absolutely ludicrous.

Karl: So what would it take, though, for you to go, ‘Oh I’m actually a believer now?’

Ricky: I can’t answer that question because I would have to base my beliefs on some of your premises, which I can’t do. It’s like you saying, ‘But what if you found out that two and two equalled five?’ I can’t. It’s a necessary truth. I would have to go back and fundamentally disagree with what I think ‘two-ism’ and ‘five-ness’ is.

Karl: You’ve never been in a situation where you’ve gone, ‘This room feels a bit weird?’ I mean like if you’ve been to Cornwall on holiday, and stayed somewhere and you’ve gone, ‘D’you know what, I’m sure summit’s died in here.’

Ricky: I’m sure something has died everywhere.

Karl: I’ve got a mate, right, who is staying in this big stately home, right, and I mean it’s bigger than Buckingham Palace this place, right. I went down there and from outside you go ‘Oh this is brilliant’. It’s like summit out of To the Manor Born. But then when you get in, it’s a wreck. No one’s doing any vaccing-up or anything, and there’s like rat poison everywhere, windows are smashed. Doors kicked in. I think they’re going to have it done up, but it’s going to cost like £80 million. I have got a little torch and we’re wandering around looking in all these different rooms, right, and I’m asking him ‘How’s it got in this state?’ And he was saying how it was a mental home at one point. And a place for drug addicts. Have you ever been in a hospital when it’s been shut down or a school when there’s no kids in it and it’s got that sort of bad atmosphere of weirdness?

Steve: Yes, for the sake of argument.

Karl: So we’re wandering about and I say, ‘What’s in this room?’ And we go in and all the floors are a wreck and rotten and stuff. And I looked at the wall and there was a little piece of paper stuck on the wall right, and I said, ‘What’s this here?’ And so I wandered over, right, got right up close to it and someone had wroted …

Steve: Somebody had ‘wroted’?

Karl: So there is a little sign there and it says ‘Flies’, with an arrow. I thought, ‘That’s a bit weird.’ So I follow the arrow, which goes to this corner, where there’s a shelf with about three thousand dead flies on it. And a condom stuck on the top! That’s weird innit?

Ricky: That is weird.

Karl: Then I see there’s loads of bits of paper on the floor. I picked up this bit of paper right, and it had written on it, ‘Need nappies, dummy, blankets’ – and I turned it over, right, and it said, ‘None of this now needed – baby dead’. Now that’s weird innit? That’s what I’m talking about when you get a bad vibe.

Steve: I don’t actually understand what point you’re trying to make, Karl. Didn’t you just tell us that it was once occupied by ‘drug addicts and mentals’, so haven’t you put two and two together and thought that was probably who wrote it? That doesn’t mean it’s paranormal. You walk into a building, it’s a big, terrifying empty house. It’s terrifying in as much as it’s cold, and dark and draughty. It doesn’t mean that you’ve got some paranormal sense. ‘I’m Karl Pilkington and just like Derek Acorah, I have sensed something strange and evil in this room. Wait a minute, there’s some flies and a condom. I was right all along.’

Ricky: Flies and a condom was weird, but the note … I just think of his face when he saw that. By torchlight … You must have been terrified.

Karl: It’s a bit odd, innit?

‘I don’t know the detail on that bit but ...’ (#u708ecdba-8f76-5a97-b2a5-d39d670b4f9a)

Karl: This is one of the first Monkey News that I did and I think it’s worth hearing again, just in case you forgot about it, ’cos it’s sort of classic Monkey News. It’s about this monkey that was knocking about called Ollie. It was called Oliver, and it was in this zoo, and it was the only monkey in there, right.

Ricky: Oh, this is the one they think was the missing link. They thought it was half human, half ape because it had a bald head and looked like you, which doesn’t mean it’s half anything.

Karl: What happened is, it was in the zoo and stuff and it was getting a bit lonely ’cos it was sharing its time with an elephant and a giraffe and they didn’t really get on that well.

Ricky: No, no, no, no, no. Wait. They do not put chimpanzees in with the other animals.

Karl: But let me tell you …

Ricky: Well it’s not true.

Steve: Gervais, it was obviously some kind of flat share. They put an advert in the Students’ Union. ‘We’ve got two rooms to let …’

Ricky: ‘African mammal wanted.’

Karl: What I’m saying is, there was other elephants for elephants to knock about with and that. The monkey, it was the only one there. So what happened is, the zookeeper felt a bit sorry for him. He was like, ‘Oh look, he’s looking all fed up and that.’ And like you say, I think he went a bit bald because he was bored and all that. So the zookeeper started to get pally with him and so at lunch time, when the zookeeper was sat on the wall having his ham butties or whatever, he would sort of go, ‘You alright, yeah?’ And Ollie used to come over, closer and closer, right. Anyway, within a month, he was sat on the wall having his lunch with him, right.

Ricky: What wall?

Karl: Just a little wall in the zoo.

Ricky: So he let the monkey out? The monkey could just wander about? He had his own door key?

Steve: These blinking latch-key monkeys.