The Ricky Gervais Show

For the past few years, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant,

and Karl Pilkington

have been meeting regularly for a series of pointless conversations.

This is one of them.

Testing. Is that all right?

Hello, and welcome to The Ricky Gervais Show, with me, Ricky Gervais,

Stephen Merchant...

Hello.

And the little round-headed buffoon

that is Karl Pilkington.

Hi.

Um, I thought we could play, uh, Room 101.

Room 101 of course is taken from George Orwell's 1984.

Mmm-hmm. Room of all your fears and terrors and so, uh...

Is there a copyright issue here? Can we just steal this idea?

Uh, well yeah, well let's play Room 102.

Clever.

This is the room next door to Room 101, which is worse, in my opinion.

So Karl, these are things that really annoy you.

Uh...

Slugs, is in there.

Slugs.

So, um, then there's... you have to put a case forward,

and me and Steve decide whether slugs go in, or whether they stay out,

whether they've got a purpose.

It's just 'cause I'm having a problem with slugs.

At the moment, there's a lot of slugs coming in the house.

- Why? - Don't know.

I just... they can get where, like, water can, you know what I mean?

'Cause they're boneless, aren't they? So any little gap...

So is water boneless? There's not many bones in water.

No, that's what I said.

Why... why banish them all to Room 102, slugs, because they're harmless, aren't they?

All I know is, they're clogging up me piping.

I had to go out and buy a plunger.

I hadn't seen them since, like, comics when I was a kid.

And I suddenly thought, I need one of them things that I always saw in comics.

I never thought I'd need one of them in me life.

I've got slugs in me pipes.

So I went out, three quid it was. I had no idea what the going rate is for a plunger.

Gave it a bit of plunge. Uh, and I think it was slugs.

Like, all like bits of black stuff came up.

I think it was slugs in there, like broken-up slugs.

Well hang on, hang on, hang on, it could just b black gunk, couldn't it?

No, no, it looked very sluggish.

Because, remember, I've had a problem with them anyway.

I'll go to the toilet or whatever, look 'round,

there's a slug climbing up the wall out of the shower basin thing.

Are you sure it's a slug?

Yeah, definitely. Definitely slugs.

I have to keep chucking them out, because I don't like killing anything.

Right.

I didn't want to kill the slugs with slug pellets, so I bought some copper ribbon.

Right, they don't like going over that, do they?

They don't like that. They get a little shock.

They get a little charge, yeah.

But now that should be a warning. But instead, they're diverting.

They've done a diversion. They've gone up the wall and across.

Now it's like, that's a warning. That's like having a "No trespassing" sign.

Yeah. And they're just going, "Bollocks to that."

And they're getting in,.

And now, you get to a point when you do say,

well, if they carry on like this, I'll have to kill them, because they're not...

How much...

They're not playing by the rules.

I don't know what they're doing, and I don't know what their purpose is.

They just sit there, still. I don't see 'em doing anything.

I was looking at one close up...

Well, what do you want them to do? Be reading Rousseau?

What do you want a slug to do?

In the same way you see a bee collecting pollen... good, it's doing it's little work.

Ants carrying big leaves, or whatever.

But slugs just sat there... They're all doing the same thing.

They're all doing the same thing. That slug is out, it's eating.

But it's not... It's finding food.

There's no food. There's no food in our kitchen for a slug, believe me.

There's not enough there for me, sometimes.

But never mind a slug. There's nothing for it.

Definitely not in the shower. What's it doing?

So, I told you ages ago about how they cause more problems than good.

They eat, they eat cabbage...

Right.

Um, when they shouldn't be.

Um...

They get in letterboxes and nick stamps.

They don't nick stamps.

They eat the stamps.

They like the glue on it.

Right. Right.

Is this a big problem, though?

Is there an epidemic of slugs eating stamps?

But I think it is, and that's why they're so slow.

I think they're sweating glue.

All right, they're eating all them, and that's why they're sticking to stuff.

Have you ever picked up a slug? Well sticky.

They give off this glue. It's like all the glue that they're eating off stamps.

They panic, and when they sweat, they sweat glue.

Sweat! Think of a drug... a slug...

What do you mean, they sweat glue?

You're making up nature.

It makes sense.

That is not...

This is just a nonsense theory.

It's just what I've noticed on them.

Right. Rick, do you allow slugs in Room 102?

Well I just wanna... I think we should, you know,

you know, if they're gonna be gone forever, then we should...

we should put a case forward. They're amazing creatures.

What do they do for the world?

They're food.

It's not good enough, that. Not good enough.

What do you mean?

Well, that's the ultimate sacrifice. Surely them being food...

I'm just having problems with them at the moment.

I spent three quid on a plunger,

and I don't like the idea that every time I get up in the night

to go into the toilet or whatever, I gotta put the light on,

'cause I might have a bit of sluggage between me toes.

Sluggage! A little bit of sluggage between my toes!

Right, okay. We need to move on. So, you're not putting them in?

I'm not putting slugs in.

All right. Slugs have not gone in Karl, I'm afraid.

What's your next one?

Ok, number two.

Um,

people who don't want to do what the brains would be better at doing.

Right, okay. Now, I've gotta get around that sentence.

Now tell me again?

Brains that don't wanna do what their owners are good at.

Ah, so now it's the brain's fault.

Can you just expand on that point please, KP?

Do you know, like... people decide what they want to do.

Right.

Don't they, for a living? Well, sometimes they're not good enough.

Right.

You mean they have a dream, and they can't fulfill it

because they haven't got the skill or...

Yeah, but that doesn't mean they're not good for anything.

No.

It's just that they haven't unlocked the thing that they're good at.

Of course. So I mean, that's...

There's much bigger issues there that, um,

poor, working-class people don't get the same opportunities.

When you're worrying about whether you're gonna live through the next few days,

you don't start thinking, "Oh, I wonder if I can play the cello?"

Can I refer you back though, Rick? You made an interesting point there,

but I fear that's not exactly what Karl was saying.

Go on. I don't think that his point was quite that profound.

Uh, yeah that's kind of what I meant.

Yeah, I don't know.

There was something to do with the brain not allowing its owner...

Yeah, because that's the bit that annoys me.

Fair enough if a brain hasn't decided what it wants to do because you don't...

What is this... Let him, let him finish.

Oh God, this thing about the brain... Let him finish. Shut up.

Because it hasn't, it hasn't found its destiny-type thing.

The brain hasn't found its destiny.

But, when someone is good at something,

and they know the brain is good at something,

but then they don't want to do it,

and they want to go off and do something else.

Now they say in this country the problem is we haven't got enough tradesmen.

Right.

Not enough plumbers.

Right.

There's enough plumbers' brains.

I don't know what the fuck that means! Shut up! Let him speak.

What are you talking about? Shut up. Let him please finish.

Let him finish.

Because this is like the slug beds and pillows again.

Brains have not changed over the years. The brain is exactly the same.

But it's the owner of the brain that's in charge. The brain could be going,

"I want to go for a walk."

But if your body's too lazy to get up and go and see the stuff,

the brain isn't gonna get what it wants.

It doesn't make sense, Karl. You are your brain!

All right. Let's go to the extreme.

People with no legs, who want to be swimmers.

Don't be stupid.

Oh, God! Oh, God.

And he's so annoyed! Is this a big problem?

It's, it's madness, isn't it? It's mad that the brain wants to do that so much.

The brain's in the wrong, in the wrong body almost.

Yet... are you with me?

No! No.

A plumber, a plumber...

A plumber who can plumb is annoying when he jacks it in as a living,

because there's other brains who can't do plumbing.

They don't get their head 'round it.

I don't know what this means. I don't know what you're putting in Room 102,

'cause you're saying it's like this brain's wandering around...

Who's to blame? Looking for a body, and it goes,

"Oh, I'll choose that body."

"Hang on, this body doesn't even want to do some plumbing."

It's a matter of taste. It's just a matter of taste.

Sometimes it's... I'm not putting the brain in. It's just people...

Uh, if I had a really good skill,

I'd hope that, that I'd use it.

So people who don't fulfill their own potential.

Is that a better point?