Meet the funniest man on the planet

Karl Pilkington stares balefully at my tape recorder. ‘How long have you got on it? Six hours! Bloody hell.’ The unexpected star of The Ricky Gervais Show is fretting about why The Spectator wants to interview him. ‘I don’t understand why I’m in it. I normally read magazines which do things in little bite-size bits, like, how they’re making cows with more muscle. Bits of info like that that might come in handy.

‘I like to learn stuff cos I didn’t do well at school. I think it’s better this way round cos when you’re a kid you want to play out on your bike.’

If Karl Pilkington did not exist, it would take a genius to invent him. Which is ironic, because this is precisely what some critics seem to think has happened.

The official version of his rise to something like fame is this: Pilkington was a producer at Xfm radio when he was chosen to work on a show with Ricky Gervais, creator of The Office, and his sidekick Stephen Merchant.