15 February 2003/Transcript

This is a transcript of the 15 February 2003 episode, from Xfm Series 2

They Need A War

Ricky: White Stripes, “Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground” on XFM 104.9. I’m Ricky Gervais. With me, Steve Merchant, Karl Pilkington. We have got a great show lined up for you.

Steve: Absolutely.

Ricky: Today it’s just, uh, yeah. Valentine’s Day weekend. Some love songs.

Steve: Ooh.

Ricky: We got some chat and, of course, the competitions. I’ll tell ya what; I was walking here today and the West End is crammed. There’s helicopters, there’s police, there’s about a million people, sort of, just milling ‘round. Standing around with placards and stuff. I don’t know what they’re doing, but they got too much time on their hands. They-they need a war!

Steve: You don’t read the newspapers, do you?

Ricky: Boring.

Song: Guns N’ Roses- Sweet Child ‘o Mine

OK, Stop Eating Karl, You've Ate All The Food, That's The Plate

Ricky: Ooh, those boys can rock there. That’s the guns with all their roses and “Sweet Child of Mine.”

Steve chuckles

Steve: Oh.

Ricky: On XFM 104.9.

Steve: I enjoyed that.

Ricky: Yeah.

Steve: That was good.

Ricky: It rocks.

Steve: I hope, I hope the audience was playing it loud like us.

Ricky: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uhh, Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant, Karl Pilkington. Well- look at him yawning! How rude is that?

Steve: Karl, what’s wrong with you, man? Have you been up late?

Karl: Little bit.

Steve: Ha! Girlfriend was away, wasn’t she, yesterday?

Karl: Yeah, I always have a problem with that. I always- I- cause you don’t go to bed, do you, early? D’you know what I mean? You sort of think--

Steve: What?

Karl: I just always find that thing that if, you know, you’re used to living with someone--

Steve: Yeah.

Karl: One of you will go, “Let’s go to bed, then.” You’ll go, “Alright.” Um… but when you’re on your own you go, “Ohh--”

Steve: You just forget to go to bed?

Karl: I just stay up.

Ricky: “Okay, stop-stop eating now, Karl. You’ve et all the food. That’s just the plate.” “Oh, right. Okay.”

Steve: Yeah.

Karl: No, I just- I stayed up and watched, um… there was a thing on about Dracula.

Steve: Right. What, “Dracula?”

Karl: And I found a flaw in it.

Steve: Go on.

Ricky: Not-not the fact that he’s the living dead and is--

Karl: No.

Ricky: And drinks blood to stay alive and he doesn’t reflect--

Steve: And he turns into a bat.

Ricky: And you can- go on.

Karl: The mirror thing, he can’t look in mirrors… can he?

Steve: Well, he can look in mirrors but he can’t see himself in a mirror.

Ricky: Yeah.

Karl: Alright, well that still doesn’t work.

Steve: Okay. Go on.

Ricky: It doesn’t work at all, Karl. It doesn’t work anyway.

Steve: No, well…

Karl: Centre-parting’s always really neat.

Steve: His centre-parting’s always really neat?

Ricky: How does he do it if he can’t look in the mirror?

Ricky laughs

Karl: “B-Blood on the Floor” or something it was called. Rubbish.

Ricky laughs

Ricky: I love the flaw in the Dracula film was that his centre-parting’s too neat. How did he do it without a mirror? Ohh.

Steve: Was it a documentary about Dracula?

Karl: No--

Ricky: The real Dracula, the real Dracula that--

Steve: Yeah, the real Dracula. The true story.

Karl: It was just a film. It had- “Blood on the Floor” or something, it was called.

Steve: Yeah.

Ricky: Yeah.

Karl: From 1970.

Ricky: Yeah.

Steve: Right. But you stayed up and watched that?

Ricky: You know there aren’t really vampires in that sense?

Karl: Yeah.

Karl sighs

Karl: Yeah.

Ricky: But it still annoys ya that his centre-parting was too neat.

Karl: Well, if you’re gonna do it, d’you know what I mean?

Ricky: I’d like to see him with a fringe sort of pushed forward.

Steve: Mm.

Ricky: And maybe a hood up. “Alright? I come to suck your blood an’ that, alright? Eh..”

Steve: Just bits of tissue paper all over his face.

Ricky: Yeah.

Steve: Where he's cut himself shaving.

Ricky: “Oh, oh, I can’t see. Bloody mirror’s annoyin’ me now, innit?” I’d love to see that. A little Manc Drac. That would be great, wouldn’t it?

Karl: Well, that-that might be a film that we do in, uh, our movie--

Ricky: Mancula!

Karl: Just-just getting on to that.

Ricky: Mancula! Count Mancula.

Steve laughs

Ricky: “Alright? ‘Ave you got any rave? ’Ave you got any rave music? Ah? Got any Oasis an’ that?” That’d be brilliant.

Steve chuckles

Ricky: (dramatically) “He came from Manchester. Please welcome, Mancula.” “Alright?” That would be great, wouldn’t it? His hair’s a mess. “Well, I can’t see a mirror, can I?” Well, we’ve got a show lined up for you. Um, sad news for Rockbusters fans. It is going to be the last Rockbusters.

Steve: Does that mean that we are doing another one and it’s the last one or--

Ricky: We are doing another one and it’s the last one.

Steve: Ohh, man.

Karl: But it’s a special one, Steve.

Steve: Have you?

Karl: Um, it’s just, sort of--

Steve: What, it makes sense?

Ricky laughs

Steve: First time only?

Karl: No. It’s-it’s, uh, it’s done on accents, cause I’m running out of, like, clues, an’ that to use.

Ricky: Oh, is this bit good as the Jamaican one, uh, “De Trout Spinners?”

Steve: (laughing) “De Trout Spinners!”

Ricky: That doesn’t work at all.

Karl: A bit like that.

Steve: Okay, so go on. What’s-what’s the gist of this one?

Karl: Well, it’s just, um, I’ve binned the sound effects bit. That-that didn’t really work out. So there’s three, sort of, cryptic clues.

Steve: Yep.

Ricky: Yeah. Sort of cryptic, yeah.

Karl: And it’s done on, uh, it’s done on accents. And I’ve sort of worked down the country, so I’ve got a Northern one.

Steve: Mm-hmm.

Karl: I’ve got a Brummie one and I’ve got a, uh, Cockney one.

Ricky: Excellent.

Steve: Alright. Looking forward to that. We’ve got quite a lot of competitions, haven’t we, cause we’ve also got your film competition.

Ricky: He’s, uh, he’s appearing in “The Shining” this week, Steve.

Steve: Excellent. Okay.

Ricky: Um, we’ve also got, “Ooh, Chimpanzee That! More Monkey News From Around the World.”

Steve: (Laughing) “Monkey News.”

Ricky: Uhh…

Steve: Stay tuned for that!

Ricky: But there’s one that I thought we could phase in as we phased out Rockbusters. It’s an old favourite. Karl, it was before your time. XFamily Fortunes.

Steve: XFamily Fortunes. It’s brilliant.

Ricky: Get on the line.

Steve: Is nothing to TV “Family Fortunes.”

Ricky: No, it’s XFamily Fortunes.

Steve: You can’t get him on that.

Ricky: So we’ll be playing that a little bit later, as well, with two lucky, um, people that call up and we’ll be giving away some great prizes I imagine, Steve.

Steve: Excellent. Yeah.

Ricky: Go through those a little bit later.

Steve: Yeah.

Ricky: Um, as it was Valentine’s Day weekend, what about, uh, a lovely song by Lloyd Cole?

Steve: Aww.

Ricky: “Like Lovers Do.”

Steve: I’d love to hear it.

Ricky: Yeah.

Song: Lloyd Cole- Like Lovers Do

It's A Bit Of A Monkey Bonus

Ricky: Lloyd Cole, “Like Lovers Do” on XFM 104.9.

Steve: Is that for all the lovers out there?

Ricky: Yeah. I’m Ricky Gervais. With me, Steve Merchant and little Karl Pilkington. Oh, we’re having a laugh, aren’t we? Little Karl with his sandwich an’ that.

Steve: ‘Ey, he’s chewed it up, hasn’t he?

Ricky: Ohh, having a- orghh. I’m still bruised where you punched me in the shoulder showing that you could box.

Steve: Yeah, to be fair, though, Rick, you do think that you’re now a professional boxer cause you’ve been on the telly.

Ricky: I’m like Rocky Marciano. Yeah.

Steve: No, he does. I mean, he laughs about it, but he does walk around thinking, “Yeah, I could probably handle myself in a street brawl.”

Ricky: In fact, I walk around handling myself.

Steve: Yeah.

Ricky: A lot of the time. Don’t I, Karl? Um--

Steve: And often Karl.

Ricky: Yeah! Yeah. Aw, I lo- cause he’s got his little round head, I’ve got another mate who’s got a little bald head and I like to squeeze it.

Steve: Mm.

Ricky: To see how far- d’you know what I mean? Like an egg. It- you can squeeze it that way, sort of sideways and that hurts, but then squeeze it forward to back; it doesn’t hurt so much, does it?

Steve: Do you know what worries me is I think if you ever actually did crack Karl’s head, I think yolk would come out.

Ricky: (giggling) Yeah, I know! I do- he was forward, drawing, and I gave him a little karate chop on the back of the head and he jumped! He spasmed!

Steve: Sorry, you gave him a karate chop on the back of the head?

Ricky: Yeah!

Steve: To be fair, though, I think I’d spasm, Rick.

Ricky laughs

Steve: If a man crept up behind me and karate chopped me in the neck. That’s probably a natural reaction.

Ricky: Didn’t I laugh? Eh, Karl?

Karl: Yeah, had a right good laugh.

Ricky laughs

Ricky: Oh. So we’ve got lots of, uh, little things to get through. Look at his little face! You alright? We had a little lunch yesterday, didn’t we?

Steve: We did, indeed. That was a nightmare.

Ricky: Yeah.

Steve: I hate going out with you two.

Ricky: I was explaining to Karl, right? I-I like to excite Karl’s imagination, alright? And, uh, um, if it involves chimps or monkeys, all the better. Um, brains he likes. Parts of the body. Deformity. You know, I kno- I know where to, you know, what buttons to push and, um, I told him about this thing- I don’t know if, uh, uh, any of you out there, um, know about this, um, but the-there’s an experiment that they did in the fifties, um, a clinical psychology experiment where a- your two hemispheres of the brain, okay? They’re joined by a thing called the corpus callosum, right? Which is just a little flap of skin, like a little scart lead that joins your two hemispheres. And what they did- they cut that in half and they thought it was a cure for schizophrenia, but what it turned out to be- or epilepsy, I think. I can’t remember. Um, uh, was that your two side of your brains didn’t function together. You couldn’t get information. I was telling Karl all this thing, right. One of the things I told him was that they did it on a monkey and it fought itself over a nut. Like, it’s right arm was connected, you know, by it’s left lobe of the brain and it was fighting over itself. And Karl went, instead of, like, thinking this is amazing, the experiment, he went, “Would it, would it have been happy if you’d given it two nuts?”

Steve chuckles

Steve: Yeah, I know. You started off by explaining it and I remember you mentioned- I- cause I was watching the two of you as you were describing it to him. You said, “Of course, one side of the brain deals with, uh, symbolism.“ And as you said the word “symbolism,” I noticed Karl drift away from looking at you--

Ricky softly laughs

Steve: Pick up his mobile phone and start pressing buttons randomly.

Ricky laughs

Steve: And I'd-I thought, “It was the word ‘symbolism’ that got him” and I noticed- you took a moment longer and I think the first thing you said was, “When did I lose you?”

Ricky: Yeah. I knew I’d lost him.

Steve: It is extraordinary and he doesn’t even try to disguise it!

Ricky: I think I said “nomenclature” at one point, as well.

Steve: Right, yeah

Ricky: And I-I knew I was dicing with death, there.

Steve: Yeah.

Ricky: But, um, you tried to look it up, didn’t you, on the, on the web. You didn’t find anything about it, did ya?

Karl: Yeah, the spelling, the spelling of it’s- what is it, again? What’s the word?

Ricky: Corpus callosum.

Karl: Yeahh. I couldn’t put- couldn’t do it. Couldn’t--

Ricky: No. There’s no point. Don’t bother.

Steve: Give up.

Ricky: Don’t bother.

Steve: Give up.

Ricky: Um, so if anyone knows any interesting facts about that, that, uh--

Steve: I don’t suppose- yours hasn’t been cut in half, has it, Karl? That would, again, might explain something.

Karl: I’ll tell ya what we will be talking about later. I don’t know if you‘re-you-you’re sort of aware of them, Steve.

Steve: Go on.

Karl: Bonobos.

Ricky: Ohh, I told him--

Steve: I don’t know much about Bonobos.

Ricky: I told him about, um- he was looking for stuff. I said, “Put in ‘Bonobos.’” He was having no luck with “Chimp.” Um, and they’re, uh, they’re -they’re a form of Chimpanzee, but, um, they-they’re even closer to us, evolutionary speaking. They’ve got- they’re social, um, groups are more like ours. They’re-they’re more intelligent and he was loving it, weren’t ya?

Steve: So is it, is it, Human, Bonobo, Karl?

Ricky: Yeah.

Steve: Is how it works on the evolutionary ladder.

Ricky: Chimp, Karl.

Steve: Yeah.

Ricky laughs

Karl: So we're talking about 'em.

Steve: So we’re talking about Bonobos. You’re excited about that.

Karl: Yeah, yeah.

Steve: Is that coming up in, uh, Monkey News?

Karl: Um, no. I think it’s a bit of a Monkey Bonus.

Ricky and Steve laugh

Steve: Oh, we always like a Monkey Bonus.

Ricky: Monkey Bonobus.

Song: WC featuring Snoop Dogg- The Streets

I'm Not Annoying Karl, So Why Are You?

Ricky: WC featuring Snoop, “The Streets” on XFM 104.9. Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant, Karl Pilkington. I think we should, uh, kick off with a bit of a competition. I think we should get the…the listeners involved, here.

Steve: Mm-hmm.

Ricky: Phone up if you want to play XFamily Fortunes.

Steve: Now a lot of people, of course, won't be familiar with this because we played this in the very early days of XFM.

Ricky: Yeah.

Steve: Um, do you want to explain the rules or do you just want people to phone in and--

Ricky: It’s like “Family Fortunes.”

Steve laughs

Ricky: We read trivia. Uh, I ask you--

Steve: Do you remember we discussed this before; you can’t say that?

Ricky: Yeah. Um, and so get two on the line. You-you’re competing against each other and so it’s fingers on the buzzers. Um- will you stop chewing, picking your teeth? I-it’s- I mean, even if the listeners can’t hear it, it really annoys me.

Steve: It is a bit like having a chimp in the room.

Ricky: Do you know what I mean, Karl?

Karl: Alright.

Ricky: Have you ever seen him heat- eat hot food?

Steve: No.

Ricky: Honestly, it is like a chimp.

Ricky smacks his lips and slurps like a chimp

Steve laughs

Ricky: “And what ya doing?” “What?”

Ricky slurps

Ricky: Just ge- oh.

Steve laughs

Ricky: God.

Steve: Or like the Cookie Monster.

Ricky laughs

Ricky: Yeah. Ohh. I’m never annoying, Karl, so why are you?

Steve chuckles

Ricky: Do you know what I mean, Steve?

Steve: You are so annoying. I’ll tell- have you been with him- trying to go, trying to have lunch with Ricky?

Karl: Yeah.

Steve: It’s the hardest thing possible. You wander around for hours. Comb- it’s a combination that used to be bad, even before he was a celebrity because he has this- a tolerance level I- it’s extraordinary. I mean, he is irritated by a car honking it’s horn in the street.

Ricky laughs

Steve: It’s, “Oh, I can’t believe it! Let’s go in here. I-I’m so angry. Orghh.”

Ricky laughs

Steve: It- he-he gets annoyed by police sirens, by rain, wind.

Ricky laughs

Steve: Birds in the air. Other people in the streets.

Ricky: They’re the most annoying.

Steve: Children, particularly, whether they’re in a school playground we happen to be walking past.

Ricky laughs

Steve: Whether they’re on TV.

Ricky: It’s just noise that isn’t mine.

Steve: Well, I know, but this is the thing! You are the most irritating man I’ve ever met without a shadow of a doubt.

Ricky laughs

Steve: I mean, you know that, Karl, don’t you? Noises he makes, um. It’s extraordinary. I mean, I’ve been, I’ve been while- I’ve been editing some behind the scenes footage we shot of, uh, making the second series of “The Office.” It’s extraordinary. I’ve had to cut sequences out involving Ricky cause they’ll just think he’s a gimmick, just think he’s an idiot, like some kind of puppet that the rest of us are controlling because he’s shouting, he’s whistling, he’s honking, he’s making noises, he’s dancing around. It’s extraordinary and if you’re out trying to find somewhere to eat with him all these irritants, all these annoyances and it’s, “Oh, that music’s too loud. I don’t like that particular song, I’m not going in there. There’s more than eight people in that café, I’m not going in there.” It’s just extraordinary. I think we need a woman- I’m thinking of hiring a woman, like a PA, to just go out ahead of us. Scout ahead of us. Go in- and you know, she can just sound back--

Ricky: Ooh, sexist.

Steve chuckles

Ricky: Oooooh.

Steve: Or a guy.

Ricky: Ooh, that’s--

Steve: Or a fella.

Ricky: Oooooh, sexist.

Steve: Or a fella. Just to scout ahead--

Ricky: Ooh.

Steve: Phone back--

Ricky: Thinking of hiring a woman, subservient role. He couldn’t hire- oh no. Ooh. Sexist.

Steve: Well, that or a chance to meet a woman.

Ricky laughs

Ricky: Yeah.

Steve: That I’m also paying.

Ricky: It’s like, it’s like paying for it.

Steve: (laughing) Exactly.

Ricky: Slightly more above board.

Steve: Yeah.

Ricky: So if you want to play Family Fortunes call up- what’s the number?

Karl: 08700 800 1234

Ricky: Yeah, it’s just like Family Fortunes. Trivia, we’re competing for some great prizes and, uh, I go, um, “Something you’d--” You know how it goes.

Steve: Ha!

Ricky: And then you go, “Buzz” and-and uh--

Steve laughs

Ricky: Play a- I’m bored.

Steve: It’s not as high-tech as Family Fortunes.

Ricky laughs

Song: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds- Bring It On