06 December 2003/Transcript

This is a transcription of the 06 December 2003 episode, from Xfm Series 3

More Listeners Than This Show

Song: Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl

Ricky: Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl on Xfm 104.9. I’m Ricky Gervais, with me Stephen Merchant, over there little roundy bald head of Karl Pilkington. Good news and bad news. Good news is: boys are back in town, we're here for two hours.

Steve: Hello!

Ricky: Bad news is: we have no Monkey News, ummm...Gay Fella News, or Little Chinese Fella News.

Steve: Really!

Ricky: We're going to try and, you know, leave that for a week...

Steve: Yeah...

Ricky: ...and then maybe come back to it

Steve: Yeah...why do I get the feeling within twenty minutes we'll be talking about little, uhh, little gay...

Ricky and Steve: ...Chinese...

Steve: ...monkeys!

Ricky laughs

Ricky: Karl, think of that.

Karl: We have got Monkey News.

Ricky: Have we?

Steve: Really?

Karl: Oh yeah

Ricky: Brilliant.

Steve: So we've already broken that promise.

Ricky: Oh okay..I thought we were going to try and sort of talk about something else. I've just done The Jonathan Ross Show and they, they don't talk about the same things every week, it's weird.

Steve: Mmh

Ricky: It is weird.

Steve: Mmh

Ricky: But umm, or as Karl says "weird, innit?"

Steve: Yeah.

Ricky: So umm, gave this show about five plugs.

Steve: Nice one.

Ricky: Yeah. So uhh, I think we'll get upward of 800 people listening...

Steve: Oh oh oh, double!

Ricky: ...for the first two minutes...

Steve: Yeah.

Ricky: ...and then turning back!

Steve: They're already switching over now.

Ricky: I'd, I'd have thought so, yeah.

Steve: I spoke to my friend yesterday, he's a little bit of an odd fella, and he said that he, for his own amusement, he had an ipod in his car, and he bought a little, sort of, transmitter, and he could transmit the music from his ipod to, sort of, just beam it, kinda, as he was driving along to, sort of, passing cars.

Ricky: Whaddya mean? Make their radio play it?

Steve: Well, but if they had it in the right frequency, yeah. Ahmmm, I mean pointless, completely pointless, but not dissimilar to this show I imagine in terms of the number of listeners.

Ricky: Yeah, but I was gonna say, what's the chances of people having this frequency on?

Steve: Absolutely pointless.

Ricky: So it's probably about the same, yeah.

Steve: Do you know what it reminds me of? When I was, when I was young I wanted to get into radio, I was excited by radio, when I was sort of in my, I dunno, I was eleven or twelve, my friend and I, we, uhhh, got a little mixing deck and we used to host our own radio show.

Ricky: Brilliant.

Steve: From his bedroom. We didn't have a transmitter so we put some speakers in his front garden, in some bushes and sort of broadcast it to people who were walking by.

Ricky: Again, probably over the week more listeners than this show.

Steve: Almost certainly. I love the idea, it never happened, but I was always hoping that some, maybe some girls would come by and just sit and listen "These guys are great! I don't know where these sounds are coming from, it seems to be that bush but..."

Ricky: Or Noel Edmonds coming along going "Who are these guys?"

Steve: Yeah. "Can they stand in for me when I'm on holiday?"

Ricky: Yeah.

Karl: I did, did I tell you I did, sort of, pirate radio?

Ricky: No, go on.

Karl: Did, uhhh, got into -

Ricky snorts

Ricky: Normal radio but you had an eyepatch on, go on.

Karl: Uhhh, dad was in hospital, right, and uhhh, he was havin' some operation done, right, an' uhh went to see 'im and didn't have that much to say to him, right

Steve: Well, he's only your dad...

Karl: So I was sat there - well it's awkward though innit, when someone is ill?

Ricky: Yep.

Karl: And you don't know what to say -

Ricky: Boring innit? Boring!

Karl: So I was flicking around on that little radio thing they 'ave, and I 'eard, like, they had a radio station in the 'ospital, so I said "Aw, I'll go and join this" so I wandered off to go and find it.

Steve: Yeah.

Karl: Uhhh, sort of joined that, did a little show on there, thought I can, sort of, get out to the masses 'ere. Me mate made a little transmitter, did a little pirate radio show from the, uhhh, got kicked out because they found out and apparently I put the station at risk 'cause all the stuff could've been taken off us.

Ricky: But from a little acorn, sixteen years later he's on a show with less listeners.

Steve laughs

Steve: Yes.

Ricky: Brilliant.

Steve: Can you imagine if you're, you've gone into hospital, you're already pretty depressed, there's the fear of these bugs, superbugs, in the hospital.

Ricky: Yeah.

Steve: Maybe you've got some quite serious illness, you know...

Ricky: Yeah.

Steve: You don't know if you're gonna make it - his voice is what you're hearing to cheer you up!

Ricky: "Alright, weird innit? Saw a programme about a parasite the other night, yeah, 'parrently they get in through your eye and eat their way out through your genitals"

Steve laughs

Steve: Yeah.

Ricky: "Anyway 'eres Radio'ead"

Steve: "You think you've got it bad!"

Ricky: Yeah, exactly, play a record Karl!

Karl: Bit of Stone Roses?

Ricky: Awwww, Fools Gold, classic

Song: Stone Roses - Fools Gold