Why Karl Pilkington has stopped his moaning on his TV comedy The Moaning of Life

HE made a TV career out of whining, but Karl Pilkington’s latest series of The Moaning of Life may be his last lament.

CLAD only in his undies, shoes, and a motorbike helmet in New York’s Times Square, carrying a handpainted sign exhorting passers-by to ‘sloe-o-o-o-w d-o-o-o-wn’, Karl Pilkington is having the time of his life.

Ricky Gervais, who loved his friend and radio producer’s straight-talking grumpiness so much he sent him out to explore, star in — and moan about the world — in hit series An Idiot Abroadwould barely recognise his 43-year-old mate.

Is that really Pilkington throwing caution to the wind, cracking a smile and confessing to experiencing an adrenaline rush so extreme after delivering his offbeat performance art that he found it difficult to sleep?

Well yes, Pilkington admits from his home in the UK, (where he is ‘sat in my car. I always do interviews in the car, it’s a little thing I like doing’), it was his favourite part of filming series two of The Moaning of Life.

Changed man ... Karl Pilkington is back on the road in search of answers to life’s big questions in the second serious to The Moaning of Life. Picture: Supplied.

“The feeling I got from it, the fact that Matthew (Silver, the performance artist with him) was really happy with it.,” he says.

“I got up that morning thinking ‘I can’t do this’. I say at the start of the segment: “I’m probably not going to do this’ because it’s sort of embarrassing, innit?

“We were meant to be doing it in Central Park, and then Matthew said ‘it’s too dark, let’s do Times Square’, and you’re in the busiest place in New York ... and I kind of … I don’t know the adrenaline kicked in.

“It helped that I really like Matthew. If you get on with someone it can be quite infectious and you sort of don’t want to let them down.

“The director was stood there not saying anything. It was sort of ‘where’s this come from?’”

Pilkington’s second series of The Moaning of Life is as offbeat as ever. Back on the road in search of answers to life’s big questions, episode one sees him in New York exploring the point of art, where, as well as his Times Square stunt, he meets artists who make sculptures out of dog poo (his own sculpture, which he entitles Loch Mess Monster, is a revelation); strips to a G-string to become part of a painted human sculpture, and tries to create a masterpiece from his own vomit.

Let his hair down ... Karl Pilkington said his stunt in Times Square was an adrenaline rush. Picture: Supplied.

The ‘Art’ episode was a last-minute inclusion in the series.

“That episode was meant to be about intelligence, but two weeks before we started it I said ‘I’m not that interested in intelligence’, because the only thing that had made me want to do intelligence was they said I might be able to play Pacman with an ape, this intelligent ape,” he says.

“But then they said ‘the ape’s dropped out”. I mean when an ape’s dropping out of a program then … bloody hell. Then I said ‘I’m quite into art’ and the director was ‘what are you talking about? You’re not into art.’

“But the thing is with art, you’re allowed to have an opinion.

“When I did the Seven Wonders of the World (for An Idiot Abroad) there’s a lot of pressure on you to like it. I always felt like I was being forced into being amazed when I wasn’t.

Idiocy ... TV writer and producer Stephen Merchant, Pilkington and Ricky Gervais on the forerunner to The Moaning of Life, An Idiot Abroad. Picture: Supplied.

“So I went into this with a different mindset thinking ‘I might like it, I might not, but if I don’t I’m allowed to say’,”

The ‘different mindset’ didn’t make some of Pilkington’s artistic adventures any less confronting.

As he tells the cameras: “It’s not all flowers in vases like it was years ago ... now it’s proper weird sh-t.”

He baulks at going totally nude in episode one, earnestly explaining that while he understands that’s the point, he wants to keep a vital part of his anatomy under wraps — for his partner Suzanne. The segment is hilariously edited, but not suggestive or sexual — Pilkington has a serious premise for keeping his nude-coloured G-string on.

“I mean, I want to keep a bit or me, for my girlfriend Suzanne, for life away from TV, because everything else of me is on the telly,” he says.

In the vomit-painting segment, he is in fine Pilkington form. “This is not a normal way of creating art.” he says, as he fails to deliver, then adds if anyone wants him to create a piece of sick art they’ll have to ‘fly me cat over’.

Monk-ee business ... Khenpo Karten Rinpoche and Karl Pilkington. Picture: Supplied

Later episodes see Pilkington trying on the life of a Buddhist monk, returning animals to their homes. That all goes well until the monk gets seasick while returning live fish, and also returns his lunch of clam chowder to the ocean.

“I really felt for him,” Pilkington says.

“I’ve never seen someone be sick like it. But he was a proper monk — even though he was so sick he didn’t swear, he didn’t say ‘get me back to land’, he just smiled.”

Pilkington warns this series may be his last.

“This is probably the last thing I’m going to do,” he says.

“Really, I think I’ve been everywhere and done everything now. I think you once you make art out of dogs — t, you’re running out of things to say.

“I’ll do a book about it and expand on it, but I think you know you have to call it a day at some point.”

THE MOANING OF LIFE, TUESDAY, 8.30PM, BBC KNOWLEDGE

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