Karl Pilkington is an English television presenter, author, comedian, radio producer, actor and voice actor. Pilkington gained prominence as the producer of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's radio programme on XFM. He appeared on The Ricky Gervais Show, presented the Sky travel comedy series An Idiot Abroad, and made his full acting debut on Gervais's 2012 comedy–drama series Derek. Pilkington is a co-founder, along with Gervais and Merchant, of RiSK Productions, a television production company. Pilkington also starred in the Sky 1 travel documentary comedy series The Moaning of Life. In 2018, Pilkington starred in a new scripted comedy series, Sick of It.
Pilkington moved to London from Manchester to work with XFM as a producer, where he was later promoted to head of production. While there, he unintentionally caused Gail Porter to leave the station in tears after only one show; he criticised her performance, which Pilkington defended as an attempt to encourage improvement. After several years he began work on The Ricky Gervais Show. Initially, Pilkington was solely the programme's producer. As Gervais and Merchant began to frequently invite him to make a cameo appearance, Pilkington's quirky persona came to light and his popularity increased. Pilkington was eventually included as a main presenter of the broadcasts, with large amounts of airtime devoted to his unusual thoughts on various subjects, or various childhood stories. He also increased in popularity due to the many features he created for the XFM shows, including Monkey News, Rockbusters, 15 Taiwan, Educating Ricky and many others. In December 2005, Pilkington stood in for two BBC 6 Music shows for Nemone, and co-presented the shows with Russell Brand.
Celebrity
Pilkington's presence on The Ricky Gervais Show podcasts significantly increased his fame. He has often been mentioned in interviews given by Gervais, and is often the victim of Gervais' practical jokes. After Pilkington said, "I could eat a knob at night" rather than for breakfast on the podcast, Gervais encouraged his listeners to sample the sound bite and mix it into dance music. The phrase spawned several dance music mixes, T-shirts, and other merchandise. Many of Pilkington's quotes have since gained publicity, particularly on the Internet. Reuters, commenting on this issue, described Pilkington as a "phenomenon" who had made "Internet history". On 23 November 2010, while appearing live on Richard Bacon's Radio 5 Live afternoon show, Gervais surprised Pilkington with an on-air phone call. This led to a conversation where Pilkington, who claimed to have been interrupted while grouting his kitchen, said he had not yet been paid for his work on An Idiot Abroad and concluded the interview with an off-the-cuff link into the hourly news. Pilkington has worked independently of Gervais and Merchant on several projects. He appeared as a guest on the shows Flipside TV and The Culture Show, and appeared in several short films as part of the Channel 4 project 3 Minute Wonders. Merchant and Gervais have repeatedly denied claims that Pilkington's persona is their creation. In an on-air response to similar claims made by Chris Campling during a broadcast on XFM, Merchant stated that he would be "ashamed" if the radio show was scripted, and added that "I would not have squandered a character that good on this poxy radio station". Gervais concurred, pointing out that writing a single series' worth of six half-hour episodes of shows such as The Office and Extras took the two of them up to a year. An interviewer for The Daily Telegraph concluded that Pilkington's persona is genuine.
Television and DVD
Pilkington appeared in an interview on Ricky Gervais's live stand-up comedy DVD, Politics. The DVD of Gervais's film The Invention of Lying contains a special feature called Meet Karl Pilkington which documents his participation in the movie as a non-speaking caveman in another special feature, The Dawn of Lying. He was given a small role in the final episode of Extras. In September 2010, Pilkington presented An Idiot Abroad, a light-hearted travel documentary series that aired on Sky1 and that was produced by Gervais and Stephen Merchant, in which he visits the New 7 Wonders of the World while being directed by Gervais and Merchant into various activities along the way. He wrote a book to accompany the series. Following the success of the first series, Pilkington starred in the second series subtitled The Bucket List, which debuted on 23 September 2011 on Sky 1. The premise of the series involves Pilkington trying to experience "ultimate things to do before you die" except that the list of activities is not entirely of his choosing. In June 2011, he won the Best Presenter award for An Idiot Abroad at the Factual Entertainment Awards. The third series of the show, An Idiot Abroad: The Short Way Round premiered in November 2012 and showed Pilkington and Warwick Davis travelling the Marco Polo route. Pilkington has performed voiceover work for such clients as One Stop Office Shop, FreeView, Vodafone, HMV, Sony PSP, WHSmith, Wickes, and Unilever. He made his acting debut on 12 April 2012 in the Channel 4 comedy-drama Derek, portraying caretaker and bus driver Dougie. He left the show after the first episode of the second series. In 2013–2015, he starred in a two-series Sky 1 documentary called The Moaning of Life. In 2018, he co-wrote and starred in a Sky 1 scripted sitcom called Sick of It.
Charity work
In 2014, Pilkington designed and signed his own card for UK charity Thomas Coram Foundation for Children. The campaign was launched by crafting company Stampin' Up! UK, and his card, along with those designed and signed by other celebrities, was auctioned off on eBay in May 2014.
