Read Online The World of Karl Pilkington by Karl Pilkington, Stephen Merchant, Ricky Gervais - Free Book Online

your question?
    Karl: Someone said, ‘What do you think of him?’ and I was like, ‘Oh I don’t know.’
    Ricky: He famously pondered his own existence. ‘ Cogito , ergo sum ’ – ‘I think, therefore I am’. He was thinking, ‘How do I know all this is true, everything around me?’ and he thought, ‘Well I can see it and I can smell it and I can hear it’ and he went, ‘Oh yeah but my senses can be fooled. I could be dreaming’ and he thought, ‘Well that’s true, I could be dreaming, but if I’m dreaming then at least I’m alive, at least I have some sort of consciousness, so if I am even thinking about anything, I am, I exist.’ ‘I think therefore I am’. ‘ Cogito, ergo sum .’

    Karl: But we don’t need to know the Latin bit. Why is everyone always going back to Latin? It was ages ago.
    Ricky laughs .
    Karl: Were Latin people always in a rush, because there seemed to be, like, words for full sentences. Why couldn’t they just take their time and say what they wanted to say? It’s just like, ‘What was the rush?’
    Ricky: I’d love you to teach Latin.
    Karl: What about Plato?
    Ricky: Right, he’s Greek.
    Karl: Would you say he’s a bright bloke?
    Ricky: Yes I would. I would say he’s a very very bright bloke.
    Karl: Right, let me tell you this, right. If he’s that bright, d’you know how he got killed?
    Ricky: No.
    Karl: Got hit on the head by an egg.
    Ricky laughs .
    Ricky: He’s not so clever then is he? Boooo …
    Steve: What’s the story with the egg? 

    Karl: He was on holiday or something, right, and …
    Steve: He was on holiday?
    Ricky: In Greece probably.
    Karl: He was having a walk about and a bird was flying over his head.
    Ricky: This bird was what – a great auk? What size bird killed him with an egg?
    Karl: It was a big one, yeah.
    Ricky: Was it? Was it an ostrich on a hang-glider?
    Karl: The way birds used to crack the eggs open to let the kids out, they used to drop ’em on rocks.
    Ricky: What bird is this, dropping its egg to let the kids out? You are a maniac.
    Karl: And Plato had a little bald head. So from the top, the bird’s there looking down, and it goes, ‘Oh there’s a little rock, I’ll drop the egg.’ It hit him on the head – killed him.
    Ricky: I’m letting too much go now because I am so desensitised to this nonsense. The bird saw Plato and said, ‘There’s a rock down there’?
    Karl: Yeah.
    Steve: Well if these birds are killing people with bald heads, you’ve got to be terrified.

    Karl: But listen, this is what I am saying before about knowledge and that – how knowledge is hassle – or success is hassle.
    Ricky: Now I think that was Newton – ‘Knowledge is hassle.’
    Steve: But why has Plato’s intelligence got anything to do with the fact that this bird dropped its egg?
    Karl: Because he was intelligent and he is probably earning a nice few quid by giving out whatever messages he gave out, he could afford to go on holiday to exotic places. If he was working in a factory, he wouldn’t have been on this beach with big birds dropping eggs, so in a way it backfired. His knowledge killed him.
    Ricky: And I think that was Kierkegaard – ‘His knowledge killed him.’
    Steve: Where have you got this stuff about him being on holiday?
    Karl: Well he was. He shouldn’t have been on the beach. He was only there having a break from doing what he does. It wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t on holiday.

     

 

‘That’s what codes are all
about, innit?’
     
    Steve: Any nicknames? Did you ever have a nickname, Karl?
    Karl: Not really. I mean there was a lot of people on the estate that I grew up on. You know nicknames are big things on estates. A lot of me dad’s mates had them. What their nicknames did was tell you about them. The Elephant Man is a good name because you know what you’re gonna get. If someone said, ‘Elephant Man’s popping round in a bit’, it wouldn’t be a shock when he walked in. So it worked in that