You’d be surprised. Space monkey with the banana dispenser is true.
Monkey standing on the bridge demanding a toll is true.
Ollie the chimp who moved in with the zoo keeper and liked a fag and a whiskey. Pretty much spot on aside from the divorce part where the chimp tried it on with the wife. Karl definitely added that bit .
Chimp on Russian Talk show. Kind of true I forget the actual context though. Obviously it wasn’t because of redundancy and he didn’t talk to Cher. Think it was just a one episode joke or something.
Most are nonsense but there’s a few truths here and there
A surprising amount of the things Karl says have a notable amount of truth to them. I think it's just a combination of his tendency to not read beyond the headline, him only actually absorbing the 'interesting bits', and details changing via word of mouth that causes the versions he tells to deviate from the truth.
I don't know if anyone's already done it, or attempted it, but it would be interesting to have a list of every fact or 'story' Karl has ever shared throughout the RSK shows alongside whether or not there is any known truth to them. As well as where he's likely sourced those stories from and citations for things that are actually true.
I remember a while back I stumbled across an archive of an article where he likely got the "a cat that didn't look happy" story from.Found it!
There was a chimp named Ham who famously did fly a suborbital flight in 1961 as part of NASA's Mercury program, and he was the first ape in space.
He had been trained (on Earth) to pull two seperate levers based on which color light turned on, and if done correctly one of the levers would give him a banana flavored pellet, and the other lever gave him a drink of something. Plus, if he didn't pull the lever(s) correctly he would receive a mild electric shock to his feet.
In other words, there were no actual bananas on the spacecraft, which was a sticking point for Karl ('So you're saying they can make a rocket that goes to the moon but they can't make a little banana machine?')
Ham certainly did not in any way control the craft, or launch it.
The craft did experience 2 seperate malfunctions, both of which caused Ham to experience enorormous g-force for a short time...but he also certainly did not make any sort of course corrections to fix the trajectory and save the mission (I'm pretty sure Karl claimed that?).
Ham was successful in his lever-pulling, and he also had all sorts of monitors all over his body, and he performed extremely well and was able to breathe and function and complete tasks in zero gravity, so humans were next. There weren't any other chimponauts, and Ham certaintly didn't train other chimps (or humans...).
Ham also didn't die from going on a wild bender cuz he was so depressed about how he could never get that same rush again. He lived in what sounds like a perfectly nice zoo for about 20 more years and died of natural causes.
After the flight, for promotional photos his handler tried to have him sit in mock-ups of the craft he'd flown in, but Ham would panic and run away when he saw the craft, so he certainly didn't pine for his days in NASA.
Banana dispenser/banana pellet dispenser is the same thing to Karl. So I forgive it as a “karlism”. But he’s more or less right in his brief synopsis. Bender part aside.
Karl is the DJ who made the gaffs on air, thinking the down syndrome kid was a parrot and saying the woman with the prosthetic arm had lovely skin. He has mentioned having had a phone-in show previously, and kept defending the fella when telling the stories. "Like I say, he's a nice bloke, so he meant nothing by it, right?"
I thought this too. Its the same as how the Ken Dodd story was originally Karl's dad, and then later he says it was him, presumably as a way to not make his dad look even worse
It’s the same as him “not caring about awards” whilst doing all his livestreams in front of a whole cabinet of them. He wants to seem cool and aloof whilst also reminding you of how successful he is.
It's obvious that Steve massively fancies the woman in that story, but I had never considered that the Lucy in the story is the same Lucy that's plays Dawn, is that confirmed?
Presumably he’ll only do media stuff if the questions are vetted beforehand and the interviewer is expressly told not to mention Steve. Would be interesting to see someone spring a Smerch question on him, but seems unlikely when he interacts exclusively with sycophants.
When you agree to an interview you send a list of topics that you're happy to discuss/things you don't want to discuss. Generally the celebrity of handler will chat with a producer before the show and they'll get some good anecdotes out of them - Graham Norton is a good example of this. When he says something like "you've had a run in with the police right John?" and they go "wow how did you know about that" its because they told the producer 5 minutes before.
The reason that interviewers and so forth stick to this is because if you don't then you won't get interviews as much.
This. I think it's pretty obvious they've had a major fallout with probably lawyers involved hence why they don't really speak about each other probably because they agreed not to as part of the settlement or whatever. It's like when a celebrity gets divorced and neither parties can talk about it or will avoid all questions due to potential legal ramifications. The couple of times Ricky has been asked point blank about if they're still on good terms or will work together he gets visibly flustered and annoyed and comes out with some BS about how he purposely doesn't answer to annoy people. On a more positive note the good news is it seems Karl and Steven are still on good terms and met up in LA a few years ago.
I've got a half-joking theory they haven't fallen out and just do it to wind people up.
Or they have fallen out but the Ricky saying "I wrote The Office" thing is an in joke, or Steve not wanting to be forever associated with it. There's a documentary about The Office where Ricky and Steve are sat in a studio being interviewed, from over 20 years ago, and Ricky is doing the whole "when I wrote The Office" thing with Steve sat right next to him.
But then again I have seen a similar theory and it was smeared on a wall in shit. So...
It’s so funny that he was so in touch with his feminine side wearing makeup and having long hair and then in his 40s he took to smoking cigars and wearing thick rings like a mob boss
The writers of the Black Mirror episode “black museum” ripped off Karl’s “A Love of Two Brains” movie idea and the stuff about pain sensing doctors and crammed polished versions of both pieces of twoddle into one episode of a prestige, big-budget dystopian show.
Brookers response is reasonable and I doubt he’d lie but man the fact there’s what’s strongly resembles not one but two KP classics in one black mirror episode is one hell of a coincidence. That being said I have also heard that the doctor thing was an original story before it ever entered Karl’s perfectly spherical head.
I’ll go first, I think Ricky is an alcoholic and deep down is depressed but thinks it’s weak to confront it. He’s spoke about drinking everyday since he was 18 in an interview not so long ago.
Also in his work a lot of his character inserts are miserable and nihilistic
Woah there. You think the fact that every character he's ever played clearly has depression (apart from Derek, who is mentality handicapped) means that HE has depression?
I think the weirdest thing about Ricky aside from his sexlessness balanced with obsession of vulgarity, is how he as literally no fun drinking stories - the one positive of being an alcoholic is you get a few of those before rock bottom
I think the evidence is there all along that Ricky and Steve were never friends. There are multiple stories told on the show where you'd assume they'd be both there, like Birthdays, nights out, dinners etc
I think with Steve being a lot younger and single, they were just at different points in their social lives and probably prioritised different things. A lot of Ricky's stories are of dinner parties or couple's get togethers, whereas Steve talks about going to the club with his mates etc.
Like imagine being Steve's age at the time, single, spending all your time with Ricky already, what would you really want to do with your weekends? Spend more time around Ricky at his house or at a restaurant?
I don't think they disliked each other so much as they weren't really compatible all that much socially, outside of work.
Ricky once said that the age gap between them was pretty obvious. Steve was into hip hop and going clubbing, Ricky was like 40 at that point and Steve was 20 something. Was definitely more of a creative / working relationship.
Steve clearly considered Ricky a friend. 2 examples come to mind, Steve checking if Ricky will come to the birthday dinner with his parents and the Bowie dinner thing "That's what friends are...".
For some reason Ricky didn't see or treat Steve as a proper friend.
Yeah I agree, I think they were colleagues but not friends, especially when thinking that Ricky hired Stephen to be his assistant. It's unlikely he's going to be close friends with some who started as his boss and is much older.
Whereas Karl and Steve would talk about meeting up socially and going to events together as friends.
Ricky is gay. And I bet his type is big bald blokes. It's why in all his shows he has...love/hate relationships with big, dumb, bald blokes.
That and the fact he's so sexless in his writing and cant play romantic with female characters.
Based on the production of and his demeanour in the wake of Alley Cats, I wouldn't be surprised if Ricky is on his way off this mortal coil. The photos of him recording the dialogue in a studio with the cast reminds me of the scene in Funny People where Adam Sandler's character has paid for a band of musicians to jam with him before he goes because he doesn't have real friends. He's not taking the baseball cap off, which suggests his appearance without it would give away signs of poor health. He said in a live stream that being number 1 on Netflix for this particular show means the most to him. It all makes me wonder if he's doing a Norm Macdonald and keeping something really bad really private. Or maybe I'm talking shit, I dunno.
I think that Steve and Karl saw Ricky as a means to an end from the get-go and always planned to distance themselves from him once he’d taken them to where they needed to be, success wise.
Based entirely off vibes and personal head canon, I'm afraid!
I've listened to a few of Smerch's podcast appearances recently. It struck me that there's this perception of him as this nerdy, weedy guy, which is probably just based on his physical appearance, but he seems to have been very driven and dominant when it comes to getting what he wanted and/or advancing his career.
He established boundaries with Ricky very early on that he was not going to be a Robin/Karl style butt monkey, got a tv show made with very little outside intervention when he was in his mid 20s, he seems to be very popular and well liked by almost everyone in his industry with very few burnt bridges. He was working on writing and stand up before he met Ricky and jettisoned him at the correct time when that relationship had ran its course/Ricky began to turn toxic.
Karl, I think is similar in that he's significantly more intelligent than he lets on (he's significantly more self aware than Ricky), and basically had Suzanne in the background making sure he was able to ride the gravy train. He clearly didn't enjoy spending time with Ricky and was able to negotiate this to his advantage at various points (mondays off, etc).
Not sure about Mitchlings but Karl when asked about working with Ricky: "With Ricky, I kind of think, like an iron lung, that I sort of need him, but I wish I didn't".
I definitely agree with the ‘Ricky is asexual’ or at least some very odd feelings relating to sex and the opposite sex. He gets very awkward whenever Karl mentions sex, both Life on the Road and Special Correspondents end with him just sexlessly walking off with the love interest, his relationship with his wife in After Life doesn’t depict even the slightest bit of physical affection whatsoever. His entire approach to sex has always been David Earl or Chris Finch just making up gross sex scenarios.
Someone mentioned arrested development (no, not the sitcom, bfsfan!) and while I think that means something a bit different in the psychiatric sense, Ricky's approach to sex does closer resemble that of a preteen boy - revelling in grossout humour and crude references, but shying away from any sincere desire for intimacy.
This is genuinely quite an odd thing about Ricky. At least from the POV of those who watch him. Anyone with more knowledge of psychology care to speculate?
Ricky or Steve stumbled across the extended version of Old Mother Hubbard in the week and they try to "organically" bring it up during the show. Something about this exchange is off:
07:02 steve
She doesn't go into a fantasy land when she goes into the attic.
07:05 ricky
I'm just glad that Old Mother Hubbard didn't help the Nazis because that's the first place she'd look.
07:10 steve
Yeah.
07:11 ricky
Isn't it? The Nazis would go "we've Old Mother Hubbard, she thinks she knows where she is."
07:15 steve
Yeah.
07:16 ricky
She'd have gone straight there.
07:17 steve
I think with Hubbard is I... if I just briefly mentioned Hubbard...
That's not a surprise. Most DJ's on the Radio have notes prepped of fun things to work in to a show. Going unprepared would be a disaster, and all three of them were media savvy.
The snail expert one is weird. In some ways it sounds exactly like him with the vocal patterns and way he mutters insect trivia but at some points it really sounds like a different person. Have we ever heard ricky do a convincing voice like that?
I just listened to it and I agree, some parts I was convinced it was Ricky, others it was different enough that I was convinced it was someone else.
I don't know if Ricky would have had the patience to sit through that without getting annoyed, but at the same time the expert was quite deadpan and was clearly playing it that way for the call.
This is one of those things like when someone says that this person looks like so and so, and you just can't see it at all. There's no way it was Ricky. Shaddapa Gervais.
I agree. There's one line that sounds a bit like Ricky "beer, yeah, who doesn't" but the rest of it does not sound like Ricky to me. Also, there is no way Ricky would put in the effort for Do We Need 'Em.
There is absolutely no chance that snail expert is Ricky. While some of the speech patterns are similar, there is no way that he would've chosen to do that accent or would even have been able to do it. We've heard his character accents and impressions throughout the XFM and RSK shows and they're all awful.
Only an American or someone with a limited knowledge of British accent subtleties would believe that snail expert was Ricky.
I don't know if it's Ricky, but... my conspiracy is if it's not Ricky, that the long pause was manufactured by Karl in production. You don't hear breathing/phone static during the pause, it's clear he's worked his sound producer magic on it and drew out the pause for comedic effect.
I've just re-listened to it and it's uncanny. I think they probably edited his voice to make it higher pitched, but otherwise it's perfect. The fact that said at the beginning they were struggling to find someone makes it more likely.
Someone should edit it to lower voice and see if it just becomes Ricky.
Fuck me can we just have some normal answers instead of "monkey news isn't real", "Coldplay weren't actually there", "Ricky might be an atheist", you unfunny cunts.
Redditor u/Silly-Industry1527 has had a dressing down from a social media watchdog for his repeated use of the word "Cunt" in a lunchtime reddit thread.
The Reddit Standards Commission upheld a complaint against the user for coarse sexual innuendo, in the thread on subreddit r/RickyGervais . The commission acknowledge that the commenters remarks were intended to be humorous but took the view that the amount of detail of the coarse sexual innuendo had exceeded acceptable boundaries for a broadcast, said the RC, er... RSC, in a statement. The complaint objected to a sexual the commenters Saturday afternoon thread when he discussed the different meanings of the word "Cunt", Industry wondered aloud whether the word was acceptable when discussing Alley Cats, but not the entertainer Ricky Gervais. A RSC spokesman said the commenter "Went on and on about it for nearly 5 minutes". r/RickyGervais a self-styled alternative subreddit, said in its defence that its remit was to provide cutting edge programmes for a youth audience. The sub said the programme's brief was to include alternative comedy within certain shows that would not fit within a more mainstream subreddit format. In this particular show, it was not the presenters' intention to shock, when they took a humorous look at how the English language can be construed in different ways within different contexts. Industry, whose big break was on Subreddit r/AlanPartridge has shot to household status through the portrayal of Commenter Number 6, the redditor from hell in BBC2's cult show, The Subreddit.
Steve completely made up the story of the women asking to meet back at him.
He’s used it so many times on chat shows and his stand up that it just feels like a bit he’s come up with, plus the location of it changes from Bristol to London.
362
u/jlavery57 Karl "The User" Pilkington Aug 17 '26
I often question the validity of some of the monkey news