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 a little round-headed buffoon. That is... Karl Pilkington.

Right.

Let's accept, right, that at some point,

about 13, 14 billion years ago, there was nothing.

There was no space for there nothing to be in.

There was no darkness, no light, no, nothing.

Okay, literally nothing, except...

What is nearly a point in space that contained

everything in the known universe, okay?

Suddenly, that...

Exploded and in a matter of minutes,

the universe was pretty much as it is now.

And in all the debris, in all the dust,

things started to cling together, one of which was the Earth.

Can I have Karl pick up the story from there?

Um, probably nothing for quite a bit.

- Okay. - Yeah.

Just sort of floated about. Yeah.

But it wasn't causing a problem cause it wasn't annoying anyone.

No. No. See we don't get a chance of that these days.

You pop something down, someone says move that.

Dangerous, what is it?

- Yeah. - Back then, nothing.

So it's hanging around and...

If you leave something somewhere, something will sit on it.

Right.

Okay. If you leave something somewhere, something will sit on it.

Yeah. Yeah, something, something had to sort of happen, didn't it?

I tell you what it's like. Go on.

In the same way, uh, penicillin happened. Go on.

Go on.

It was, the bread was sat there. It goes off. RICKY: Hmm.

Air would have, uh, created the greenness.

Oh God, this sounds like the Bible.

That is, that is like the Bible, "Air created the greenness."

That's amazing. Oh God. Carry on, carry on.

Cause I wanna, I'm, I mean, I'm learning here, I'm learning.

And once you've got something that leads to otherness.

This is like, this is like a monk,

so he sat down.

Oh, that's amazing. We all sat cross-legged listening to the wise old man.

Yeah, I know. What are you gonna do?

"I'm gonna write a thing about everything was created."

Well, hang on, carry on, cause I'm interested. Really? Yeah.

So where are we? So we've got, so we've got, we had greenness and now we've got something?

So the air created the greenness and then, what is it?

Then we have, what was... Otherness. KARL: Just otherness.

From the greenness. Because once you've got, once you've got...

From greenness comes otherness.

Once you've got one thing, others come.

Yes. The air created the greenness, then you got otherness.

If you create something, others will come. Oh...

"Build it and they will come."

But he's sort of, he's sort of right...

Yeah, no, no, no, no, I'm not saying greenness, but take me, take me on...

Continue this, this, this story, cause this is fascinating.

So what, we are we now then? What...

If I was to stand on the earth at this moment in time, what would I see?

Um, not that much. You wouldn't wanna stay.

But there's greenness.

Little, little patches of greenness.

Little patches of greenness, okay.

Little bit of rubble knocking around.

Barney. You have rubble, there's a bit of rubble, okay.

Um... We've still got a long way to go. We wanna get to life.

Don't we? So, let's...

Skip forward, Karl, to life.

So, so, so everything was right, okay?

It was the right distance from the sun, okay.

- Yeah but even if it wasn't, we'd have... - It has weight...

We would still have been created.

No, we wouldn't have. We would. Something would have done.

No, we wouldn't have.

I want to hear Karl's opinion on this, Rick.

I am not interested in facts. I want to hear Karl's opinion.

So, are you saying, um, if, if the atmosphere...

Right, around the earth, wasn't about 99%

nitrogen oxygen with 1% other gases,

we'd have still had something else?

Something that would have been around.

What would it have been? I'm not saying it might, it might be better than us,

it might be worse than us. What would it look like?

Um, well, it's, it's hard to say, because they say, don't they,

that it's the conditions that mold ya into the shape and color.

Sure. Mmm-hmm.

And, uh, you know, everything else... that makes you the person that you are.

Okay, let's take Pluto, we know that's the farthest away.

- So, it's, it is dark and cold there. - Right.

What, how do imagine the creatures that will develop there? Will...

Big eyes and hairy.

But how did they evolve? How did they evolve, though?

Because we evolve, hang on. cause they can't just...

You always say animals change to suit the conditions. What? Yeah.

I'd have thought if there it's dark, you don't need eyes.

Because things that live underground or at the bottom of the ocean, they don't...

They don't have, uh, eyes or, or color, cause there's no point.

Yeah, but what I'm talking about... Are we saying we're living inside Pluto?

Or on the top of it, like we do here?

Why would we live inside Pluto?

There's no, it couldn't support life full stop.

But, but, um, this is one of the most ridiculous conversations we've ever had.

He's seriously considering whether he'd live inside or outside Pluto.

Cause everything's based on a ridiculously false premise.

No. We're saying now that the world's overcrowded. Karl, listen. Right.

There's too many people on it. Right.

We're running out of houses.

People are living in basements.

Now that's only one step away from, from being moleish.

From being moleish.

We're already going underground because we're running out of space.

We're being moleish. Yeah.

Okay, right. Come on, keep going, let him, I wanna hear his point.

Is that like being Amish?

So what you're saying is...

Moleish people, they don't acknowledge that the crust of the earth?

So you're saying, within five years...

There's gonna be sort of mole-like people living in basement flats with no eyes?

But hold on, though, in your, in your, according to you...

The lower they go, the colder and darker they go,

the hairier and better eyes they'll have?

Uh, well it depends. Now, I was only saying...

They'd have better eyes if they were on a dark planet where they're outside.

So they still have to look out for things that they could trip over.

If we go, if we go, if we're going underground...

Sole concern. Yeah.

That's the whole evolution... We don't wanna trip over.

I don't want to graze my knees.

You've got knees. They've got them on earth. Coincidence, isn't it?

Hub, hub.

Do you recycle?

Don't really do all, I don't separate stuff.

I don't sort of put... There's the cans, there's, there's the paper.

You don't do that? You just throw it away, do you?

Yeah. Oh, that's bad...

That annoys me. That annoys me when you just put it in a landfill, mate.

Come on. Yeah.

But I haven't got all the bins. That annoys me...

There isn't enough room for all the bins. Yeah we have to do...

You've got a recycle box you stick outside. Yeah.

- What are you on about? - Recycle box, yeah.

I haven't gone one. Well, no, you gotta, you gotta ask for one.

I tried to get rid of a, um, a sofa, right.

I was getting a new sofa, had the old one.

You try and get rid one of them, it's murder. Right?

I called up the council and said, "I wanna get rid of it."

They said, "We're not coming round there till Friday."

It was like a Monday. I said, "It's in the way so I'll put it outside."

They said, "You put it outside, you'll get a fine."

I said, "Yeah, but you don't know where I'm gonna put it outside."

Yeah. No. "It's not outside my house."

So they said, "Well you do that, we've got your number now..."

"What's the sofa like?"

"It's a beige one."

"Well if we see that, right..."

So, um, they said,

"If you, if you wanna pay to have it collected, we can come get it tomorrow, 30 quid."

I said, "I'm not paying for it. That's madness."

So hung up, annoyed.

Called me dad up.

He said, "Oh I saw this thing on the telly..."

"Saying that you can donate your furniture to people that haven't got a sofa."

"Look it up on the Internet."

So I looked it up, there's a firm that does it.

Right.

Uh, right cheeky sorts. Called em up.

I said, "I got this sofa here."

"I wanna donate it to someone who hasn't got a sofa."

They said, "Um, what's it like?"

"Is it in good condition?"

"Yeah, it's all right, yeah."

"Well, why are you getting rid of it?"

I said, "Because we've moved into a bit of a bigger place",

and the sofa looks daft in the corner.

""It's too small, so I'm getting a bigger one. There's nothing wrong with it."

"How big is it? How many people does it sit?"

Said, "Depends how big you are."

"You can sit two people on it but it's not the comfiest, but it's in good condition."

"I's none of your nonsense like stuff. It was expensive when I bought it."

He said, "Right." He said, uh, "Is it safe?"

I said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "Is it fag proof?"

So I said, "I don't smoke."

He said, "Well and go get the, um, lift the thing up."

He's got me running around looking at me sofa when all, I'm giving it away.

Had to lift it up, it had a picture of a fag on it.

I said "Yeah, it's got a picture of a fag on it."

Uh, hang on. And could I just point out, uh...

A fag is a slang for cigarette.

When he says, "Is it fag proof?"

He's not gonna open the cushion and someone's gonna go...

"Yoo-hoo, it's me. Ha, ha, oh..."

So I should explain that straightaway.

So anyway, turned out it was fag proof.

They came, picked it up, took it away.