3. XFM
The genesis of Karl Pilkington's introduction to fame is actually rather sweet. When Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, fresh off the success of the first series of The Office, returned to a radio station that had previously fired them, Karl was provided as a 'producer' (the reason for inverted commas for this description will become apparent soon enough) to essentially push the buttons and do all the menial jobs Ricky and Steve were too lazy to do. Over time, Karl slowly began to emerge from his shell when probed by Ricky or Steve to comment on a topic of discussion. Whether he was providing a biting yet hilarious retort on Steve's luck with the ladies or questioning the necessity of certain animals it became all to obvious that Karl's mind was a veritable goldmine of comedy waiting to be picked at. Over the next two years features like 'White Van Karl' (Steve would pose the questions of a tabloids White Van Man section to Karl with hilarious results) 'Rockbusters' (Karl's take on Blockbusters in which he would provide cryptic clues to a band or artist which changed each time he read them and often made no sense) 'Educating Ricky' (A play on the film title 'Educating Rita' where Karl would educate Ricky on 3 different topics with pun laden titles, the majority of which provided no education whatsoever) and 'Monkey News' (Karl's humorous yet often farfetched stories of Monkey related news from around the world) established Karl as the primary reason for tuning in every Saturday. Gervais himself often pointed out that the show's title of 'The Ricky Gervais Show' was completely inaccurate as it had become all about Karl Pilkington. Top 5 XFM quotes: "I don't check my balls, I don't like the feel." -Xfm 13 April 2002 "A hairdresser once said to me, 'You've got the hair of a Chinaman.'" -Xfm 04 May 2002 "What I've done is, taken a popular saying from the show, something that crops up quite a lot in the show. The first thing that sprang to mind was 'There's this hairy Chinese kid'..." -Xfm 15 March 2003 "This has got a bit heavy. Can we do Cheeky Freak of the Week?" -Xfm 28 June 2003 "Well yeah, I thought, 'What's the point in spending time with her, spending money on her and stuff and then she's gonna die on me.'" -Xfm 29 November 2003