Free The World of Karl Pilkington by Karl Pilkington, Stephen Merchant, Ricky Gervais

corner of the room, not if it could control a spacecraft.
    Karl: It’s the next step up. The monkey’s not sat there going, ‘Oh, I’m a bit under pressure here, it’s a rocket.’ All that it’s knowing is, ‘I am getting a banana if I hit that button.’ That’s all the monkey is thinking about.
    Steve: But how can they be sure that it’s going to press the button at the right moment?
    Karl: Because it’s got headphones on. They’re telling it when. It’s not willy-nilly.
    Steve: What’s to stop it just hitting the buttons at any old time because it’s a monkey and it’s not a human?
    Karl: Because it’s trained now.
    Ricky: Oh it’s trained? It’s fully trained? Yeah, go on …
    Karl: So listen, so what happens anyway, they …
    Ricky: Oh this is absolute rubbish.
    Karl: … They popped the monkey in there. It’s got its headphones on. They’re going ‘Right, hit the green one’ and I think there’s something there, a little chute, and a banana comes out…
    Ricky: No, you are making this up. There is no way that they made a spacecraft that had a banana dispenser. There is no way in this world.

    Karl: So you’re saying that it’s easy to send summit up to space but you don’t believe there’s a little banana machine?
    Ricky laughs .
    Karl: So it comes to the launch day. Monkey is sat in there. Everyone is ready. Bananas are stocked up and all the rest of it. They go, ‘Right hit the green button’ and the rocket goes off and what have you.
     
    Ricky: No, they would not make the monkey launch the rocket. Karl, you are living in a cartoon world ...
    Karl: So the rocket goes off, right ...
     
    Ricky: This is absolute bollocks.
    Karl: … It’s all going well …
    Ricky: It’s not going well. There is no way a monkey launched a rocket, you idiot.
    Karl: So it’s all going on and so they’re going ‘Hit the left button’ and …
    Ricky: Oh, the ‘left button’? Oh, well done spacecraft command. ‘This is Houston. Hit the left button.’ Oh brilliant. This is what happened in Apollo 13, they said ‘Hit the left button’!
    Steve: So it goes left …?
    Karl: So it goes left, heads for the moon and everything, and everything is going well. They get it up there, it does whatever it does. It reverses and it comes back. So then …
    Ricky: You are brain dead! I would rather have the monkey drive me home than you.
    Karl: So the thing is, it lands back. It does a good job and everything. It gets out and …
    Steve: … It’s sick of bananas …
    Karl: … This is where it turns a bit sad because after it’s done that mission, right, because it happened and it was all safe and everything, the next one would have been to send man. But the monkey enjoyed it and it was like ‘Well I want to do it again’.

    Ricky: How did they know he wanted to do it again?
    Karl: Just the way it looked.
    Ricky: Ahh fuck off! ‘Just the way it looked!’ You are a maniac.
    Karl: So the thing is, right, after it had done that it was on such a high it could never get that high again. There was nothing that it could do and it sort of ended up killing itself because it could never get that buzz again.
    Ricky: Right. That was absolute bollocks. None of that is true, except that they sent a monkey into space. Absolute drivel.
    Steve: So in your mind it committed suicide? It went on a crazy bender – drink and drugs and women – and then it was found in a motel room?
    Karl: It does happen. You hear about it.

‘Well, it’s out there in book
form.’
     
    Steve: Karl, a lot of people are absolutely fascinated to find out how you met Suzanne, your girlfriend of how long?
    Karl: Er … ages.
    Steve: And they can’t comprehend how there is a woman out there for you.
    Karl: Well there is someone for everyone, in’t there. That’s always my thing. And it’s reassuring I think. You know, we’ve chatted about the face transplants and there’s a face for everyone.
    Ricky: ‘There is a face for everyone.’ It’s