Title: The World of Karl Pilkington
Author: Karl Pilkington
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 230
Rating: 4*/5
It’s very rare that a book actually makes me laugh out loud, not just once but repeatedly. This one did it, even though it’s basically just a transcript of The Ricky Gervais Show podcast featuring Karl Pilkington, Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais. That meant that I was already familiar with a bunch of the jokes, if you can call them that, inside of it, but it still made me laugh even though in some cases it’s the third of fourth time I’ve heard them.
But can you call them jokes? No, not really. It’s more like comic dialogue, except it’s unscripted and accidentally genius. Or perhaps it’s total idiocy, it’s always difficult to tell with Karl. Here, we get to see the best of the best, from Monkey News to Karl’s thoughts on controlling the earth’s ever-growing population. It’s pretty typical of Pilkington and the sense of humour that this book appeals to that when he said he’d invented a watch that tells you how long you have left until you die and Gervais asked him how it works, he said, “You just strap it to your wrist.”
All in all then, this was pretty fun, but it’s mostly good for giggles. Works for me.