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.

I think it probably best, uh, Rick,

if we return to the very beginning of time, the dawn of man.

Because, of course, uh, even in primitive prehistoric ages,

medicine was practiced in some ways,

from the, uh, research people have done...

Cave paintings and the like.

Uh, Karl, I wonder if you would just give us your initial thoughts...

On, um, you know, the, uh, the medicine of the ancient world.

Uh...

You, you're not...you sound like you're... If you haven't studied it or...

Or you're being... You being modest? Are you being modest?

Never, never really thought about it.

I know that, um, Tutankhamun,

- he, uh... - Tutankhamun?

He, he died of like a, of a knee injury.

So, they didn't have that much medicine knocking about back then.

Right, where did you get this information from? It sounds vague.

It came off a chariot. They're dangerous things.

He came off a chariot.

Honestly, it's...you're gonna make yourself look daft here,

because that's what happened.

Imagine that. In a room,

with Karl Pilkington, we make ourselves look daft. We make ourselves look daft.

How would we have... That would be incredible.

Shall we move on to, um...

The ancient world in terms of Egyptians,

the Greeks, the Romans, of course, cause they made huge advances.

Particularly the Romans, who understood, of course, the importance of sanitation.

You know, famously, you know, streets were clean.

Yeah. Don't you think that...

If we hadn't have cleaned up as much, that...

I don't know, we'd be stronger.

What? Uh, well, well I know what you mean.

Yeah, they, they say... They're saying now...

They say let your kids eat dirt.

Yeah of course, well that, that's exactly what, um, uh, immunization is.

Giving you a bit of the disease.

Yeah but it's gone mental now. Whenever a baby's born,

he's drugged out of his eyeballs.

It's only about a week old. They're giving him all sorts of shots.

Like what?

Loads of stuff, stuff for whooping cough.

Yeah, you don't want whooping cough.

Tutankhamun could have died of whopping cough.

No, but, but they give it loads of stuff.

And, uh, now it's like you...

I don't know, it's making us weak.

There's this big thing, you know, about the super bug...

Where people took half the course of antibiotics.

It was almost like an immunization,

to the bacteria and virus against the antibiotic. Yeah.

That's, that's what I mean. So, yeah...

We need some germs, as you'd call 'em. But

there are some that we have eradicated.

I mean I think it was, uh, in our lifetime,

that they eradicated smallpox from the world.

There are rumors, of course...

Uh, that both Russia and America still have

the smallpox virus under lock and key, which they could theoretically...

Breed and use in a chemical warfare situation.

Well, there was a bit of a scandal a few years ago.

I think ten years ago, where...

In a, a university laboratory,

someone came across a marked yogurt pot, in deep freeze, that had smallpox in it.

When you say it was marked, was it like someone's put their name on it...

Cause they don't want someone to, uh, to eat their smallpox yogurt?

No, no. No, I, I think they, they...

You know, they looked into it, and it was the deep,

frozen, um, smallpox virus.

What I mean is, it's under lock and key or, or...

Or frozen, minus... Well, that's not good enough, is it?

Why? Under lock and key and all...

It's just, it's not good enough. Get rid of it.

Why are they keeping a little tub of smallpox knocking about?

Well they're not, they're not meant to be.

Well, that's a lesson... Yeah, but what was it doing there in the first place?

That's, to me, that's like in James Bond,

where they don't kill him when they have the chance.

There's always that little thing of, "Oh let's play with danger.

"Let's keep a bit." Yeah.

Well it's probably... Next to AIDS in the Kia-Ora bottle.

I don't, I don't understand why you, why you'd, why you'd store that.

Well, there's probably a presumption.

It's probably an overhang from the, uh, Cold War.

Where people were thinking...

Well, listen, what if Russia's still got some smallpox?

We better hang on to some smallpox.

It's just clutter, though, as well, isn't it?

You say, we're obsessed with keeping stuff.

And it's the same with germs, we can't even say, "Get rid of that."

We won't be needing it. Smallpox...

We'll keep it, just in case. Get rid of it!

Don't, we've got this obsession thing again at saving everything.

You say that but, of course, famously, Alexander Fleming

discovered, uh, what may be the most important breakthrough...

Um, of the 20th century, which was the first antibiotic, I think, in 1928.

And he discovered that cause he, uh, left a bit of old bread out...

For awhile, and it went all moldy in his kitchen.

And he thought, "Oh, what's that?"

- Oh, let's have a look. - I know but it's...

Like I've said to you before, it's, it's down to him being scruffy, more than anything.

Well, no... It just seems like...

There's a lot of scruffy kitchens around.

But, think if his cleaner had come in and gone,

"Oh, Mr. Fleming, oh, you, oh, you..."

You disgust me, you fucking filthy, scruffy cunt.

I'm gonna throw this bread away.

He's gonna go, Um, uh, Maude.

What did you do with that, um, old bread I left out?

It had gone green, sir, so I chucked it away.

Oh, Maude, you dopey, fucking slut.

You've just caused millions and millions of people to die.

Keep out of my fucking kitchen!

I know, but, but don't put it there.

It's the same way, smallpox in a yogurt pot... So you're on Maude's side?

It's a yogurt, in a yogurt pot. Wow.

You're asking for trouble.

But what if Maude had come in and thrown that away?

Again? He couldn't, he couldn't shout at her.

She's doing her job. I'd be annoyed if it was still there.

Yeah. Just don't put like...

Yogurt pots with smallpox in the fridge for a starter. Yeah, but you...

Yeah, but you were saying earlier, um...

"Oh, let's let babies eat mud. Don't inject 'em."

- Yeah, but... - "Let 'em crawl around a dirty floor.

"Clean up the floor and no one would die."

I did say that. But we've gone too far now.

Babies are coming out mad.

Oh, they can't handle anything now.

They're coming out all maddy.

All maddy? Get ill... Yeah they get ill easy.

They're not tough babies anymore.

We're ending up with a load of weak people who need looking after all the time.

That costs a lot of money.

And they can't do anything. They're useless.

Now that doesn't happen in, in other nature.

If a little, weak bird is born...

You see Bill Oddie saying, "That won't last..."

He says, he says, "That won't last a week," and he's right.

You watch and say, "Oh that, that third baby that came out died."

And what's your point, Karl? And he's right.

That modern medicine, which can help people live to the age of 75, 80...

They shouldn't be doing that? They should let people just die off?

I just... Well, here's something, right?

Go on. The estate that I grew up on...

- There's a woman there. - Yeah.

Scruffy Sandra. Her name is.

I like her already. Oh, it's great. It's so descriptive.

Now... She had no chance, even if she cleaned up her act.

Yeah. She'd come in looking like Pretty Woman.

You go, "All right, Scruffy."

No... What's the point? What is the point of...

- Oh, fuckin' hell. - So, so the thing is,

she used to always get on these buses called, "Dial-A-Rides"

that were sort of like posh taxis.

You could call for one that come round to your house.

Yeah. And it would pick you up and you'd pay like 50 P.

But it would pick up a bunch of other people as well?

Yeah, yeah on the way. So it, it...

It would take ages to get to where you're going. And what a nightmare that is.

No, oh it's, it's, it's good, though.

It's kind of a bit of a day out, old people used to love it.

Cause you'd get to see things. Right. Right.

And, uh, you'd hear a call coming in on the radio, that, you know...

Scruffy Sandra is being picked up . And you go, "Oh, God."

And she'd always have loads of bin bags with her for some reason.

Now the thing is...

Well, she sounds clean.

She, no, she stunk. Well she's taking out the bin bags.

Was she homeless?

No, she wasn't homeless. No, she used to just, uh...

She just didn't bath and that. She just stunk.

But the, but the weird thing is...

Why didn't they call her Stinky Sandra?

She never was ill. Right.

- People didn't sit next to her. - Yeah.

- Because she stunk. - Yeah.

Now because of that, anyone who might have had a bit of flu,

or a cold, never sat next to Scruffy Sandra.

Right. Cause she stunk.

But that was good. That was like a protection thing for her.

Cause she knew that because she stunk,

no one wants to sit next to her.

She wouldn't pick up the, the germ.

Right. Now, but this is quite...

Your point is, in order to fend off illness,

you have to not bathe, and so you stink?

So you're saying, that it wasn't that she'd built up an immunity.

It was that she stank so much, that flu wouldn't come near her.

This is such a specific example.

It's, it's not applicable in any other scenario.

There's always colds, there's always flu.