Karl Pilkington

Karl Pilkington (born 23 September 1972) is an English presenter, actor and author. After working with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant as producer on their Xfm radio show, Pilkington became a co-host of The Ricky Gervais Show due to unique and unorthodox opinions and views he often expressed, and Gervais's and Merchant's fascination with them.

He presented the Sky travel comedy series An Idiot Abroad and its followup The Moaning of Life. He made his acting debut in Gervais's comedy-drama series Derek. He also co-created, co-wrote, and starred in the comedy series Sick of It, commissioned and broadcast by Sky One.

Pilkington was born on 23 September 1972 in Sale, Cheshire (now part of Greater Manchester). He grew up in the Racecourse Estate in Sale, and has an elder sister and brother.^{[citation needed]}

He was never close to his siblings, which he attributed to being 10 years younger than them; he once said that it had been "years" since he had last talked to them. He attended Ashton-on-Mersey School in Sale. He said that he never liked school and struggled with the system, at some point losing all interest in it.

He has said he attended school only to sell items to his schoolmates, usually video games that he had purchased and made copies of. He said, "I wasn't going to school to learn, I was going to earn." At the age of 15, he dropped out of school to work as a cassette and disk printer through a Youth Training Scheme programme.

Pilkington moved to London to work as a producer at Xfm, where he was later promoted to head of production. While there, he caused Gail Porter to leave the station in tears after only one show after criticising her performance, which Pilkington defended as an attempt to encourage improvement.

After several years, he began work on The Ricky Gervais Show. Initially, Pilkington was solely the programme's producer and rarely spoke on air, but as Gervais and Merchant began to frequently invite him to make cameo appearances, Pilkington's eccentric personality and unconventional views came to prominence and his popularity increased. He was eventually included as a main presenter on the broadcasts, with large amounts of airtime devoted to his controversial opinions on various subjects: often due to his misunderstanding of the stories.

Pilkington created many features for the broadcasts, including Monkey News, Rockbusters, Educating Ricky and many others. Rockbusters garnered the most attention, with regular emails being sent to the station by listeners in the hope of winning a prize. These prizes were often mundane and low quality and were often referred to as things Pilkington "picked up from around the office". In December 2005, Pilkington stood in on two BBC Radio 6 Music shows for Nemone, co-presenting with Russell Brand.