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The cult of Karl

December 2nd, 2006 · Posted by Skuds in Life/Technology · 1 Comment · Life, Technology

I am a late arrival in this whole podcast thing. The first one I ever listened to was one of the Spizz podcasts last month – I won’t link to it right now; for some reason all his sites seem to be down at the moment.

I had seen all the publicity about the Ricky Gervais podcasts but only this week did I actually download the ones which are currently on the Guardian website. I put them onto the iRiver so I could listen to them on the way to work and found them to be very entertaining.

I wouldn’t mind catching up on the old ones, and would be quite prepared to pay the fairly small amount they cost but they are only available in a couple of DRM-protected versions. On Audible you get them in the proprietary Audible .aa format which very few players support – certainly not my 3-year-old machine.

The other option is iTunes but I really do not want to install that bloody software on my computer again – and the iRiver doesn’t play Apple AAC files anyway. I would quite happily pay for an mp3 or unprotected wma, but we are not trusted with them. I guess I will have to buy the CDs one day. In the meantime I will have to make the most of the current free podcasts which are plain mp3 files. The next one is due out at Christmas – at least I now have a reason to look forward to Christmas this year. (Bah humbug!)

Anyway, I still can’t make my mind up about Karl Pilkington. Some people think he is a fictional character played by an actor, in which case he would have to be a genius at improvisation, either that or the whole thing is superbly written and realistically acted – and we know how well Gervais achieved the realistic effect in The Office. If he is real then he must have unlimited patience to put up with his treatment by the others.

Whatever the truth, he seems to be a bit of a cult figure so it comes as no surprise to find that there is a website devoted to him. Several. The best has to be the Pilkipedia – an entire wiki just about Karl Pilkington. OK, its actually about him, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant but its named after him.

Reading through that site and the official Ricky Gervaise site you start to realise what a media empire Gervaise has managed to build up what with the Ofice and Extras TV shows, DVDs and script books, the CDs of XFM radio shows and podcasts, the Flanimals books, the stand-up shows and everything. I can’t complain about it though. The Flanimals thing does nothing for me, but the rest of it all is right up my street.

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One Comment so far ↓

  • tyger

    I haven’t listened to the latest Gervais ‘casts, but I have them on my iPod waiting. I would recommend the Adam and Joe XFM podcasts and the Russell Brand one (seriously, he’s far less annoying on the radio).