3 Stages Of Karl Pilkington: The Oxy'moron'

2. The Record Breaking Podcast Although still relatively unknown at this juncture, the shift from radio to podcast of The Ricky Gervais show introduced Karl to a significantly wider audience. The podcast broke all sorts of records with over 300 million recorded downloads as of 2011. Free from the shackles of radio censorship, no topic was out of bounds for the trio. Signs of Karl's popularity began to manifest as thousands of emails were sent into Karl posing philosophical questions, providing illustrations of him in various mediums and even sampling a now infamous Karl Pilkington quotation, "I could eat a knob at night," into dance tune remixes. Old features like 'Rockbusters' and 'Monkey News' returned as well as new ones including 'Karl's Diary' and 'Karl's poems.' The diary, written for an entire year by Karl, provided a great insight into the way his mind works in the life he lived away from a recording studio. We found out about his fascination with studying bugs which often resulted in completely unrealistic and nonsensical conclusions about their behaviour, the seemingly mind numbing tasks he gave himself each day since leaving XFM such as grouting and visiting the cobblers and the insightful albeit short conversations with his long term girlfriend Suzanne, who we come to both admire and pity for suffering through Karl's theories. Spanning over four years, the podcasts became more specific and themed to certain topics giving us even greater insight into just how widespread Karl's ignorance and misguided thought process had become. The shows success led to it being animated for television, breathing new life into the hilarious wonderings of Karl, further increasing his popularity. Top 5 Podcast quotes: "I was walking past a sex shop an' that. One, it was open early which I never understood, it was about eight o'clock in the morning. Who needs butt plugs then?" -Podcast Series 1 Episode 2 "I think there is some bacteria that has better lives than that." -Podcast Series 1 Episode 5 On dopplegangers - "How would I know which one I was?" -Podcast Series 2 Episode 1 "You can only talk rubbish if you're aware of knowledge." -Podcast Series 2 Episode 6 "That's the problem with them fables, they're putting animals together that wouldn't meet. I don't know where a scorpion is knockin' around with a frog." -Podcast Series 3 Episode 2