Global village idiot

As Marshall McLuhan once foresaw, we’re now living in a global village. Everything in the world seems instantly accessible, almost next door. Because of cable TV, travel shows, social network sites with huge reservoirs of space to post your travel shots, plus books like Lonely Planet and 1001 Places You Must See Before You Die, everyone feels they have some kind of birthright to hop on a plane and experience foreign cultures, see the way other people live. Everyone with the means wants to go out and explore the world and discover its wonders.

Everyone, that is, except Karl Pilkington.

Which is ironic, because Pilkington is the very man that comedy writers/performers Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant decided to send around the globe to explore the New Seven Wonders of the World.

On the Sky1 series An Idiot Abroad, Pilkington is sent packing with a camera crew to explore China (The Great Wall), India (The Taj Mahal), Jordan (Petra), Mexico (Mayan site Chichen Itza), Egypt (The Great Pyramids), Brazil (Christ the Redeemer statue) and Peru (Machu Picchu). In seven episodes, Pilkington explore different cultures and visits some of the most significant locations on the planet. And he comes away as thick and as intractable as ever.

It’s not like those other travel shows — you know, the ones where you learn stuff. Here, Karl —a former BBC sound man whom Gervais and Merchant exploit and ridicule for amusement, much to Pilkington’s financial gain — is allowed to vent his spleen and register his anxiety about foreign toilets, Chinese fire massages, eating eye of lamb in Jordan and animal testicles in Cairo. Everything about travel unnerves Karl, from the vaccinations (“I had an injection in case I’m in contact with dirty chimps. I didn’t know that would become a problem in my life.”) to the way other people live (“Nowhere’s safe. You can never relax.”)

An Idiot Abroad offers something a bit different: a travel show for people who hate to travel.

Far from being happy about this opportunity to explore the planet, Pilkington goes about the rigors of travel with a chip on his shoulder. What was his idea of travel before filming An Idiot Abroad? “Going to Wales.”

Merchant innocently explains why they sent Pilkington out into the world in the first place: “I genuinely thought it would broaden his mind.”

Gervais has no such noble ambitions: “I wanted him to hate it. I wanted him to hate every minute of it for my own amusement. Nothing is funnier than Karl, in a corner, being poked with a stick.”

Those familiar with this trio from their podcasts, books and videos know the shtick by now: Karl is just an ordinary bloke with strange, homegrown theories and opinions about the world which he’d rather keep intact; Gervais and Merchant are public school-educated, therefore feel some inner need to lift lower life forms up along the food chain.

Pilkington will have none of it. Whether visiting China and learning to squat on toilets or sent to walk the length of the Great Wall, he always has some nitwiticism to share on the subject. “Great Wall of China?” scoffs Karl. “It’s the All Right Wall of China. They’re always building everything up to be this big thing… I mean, it goes on for miles, but so does the M6,” London’s main speedway.

In typical Pilkintonian fashion, he sums up a 7,000-year civilization with a blunt dismissal. “China? It’s not what I thought. I thought that’s where they made the iPod!”

He asks why anyone would want to watch his travel show on high-definition TV. “I’ve seen China, it’s all gray. What would you see on HD TV? Everything grayer?”

When Gervais tries to get Karl to be brave about facing new experiences, quoting Nietzsche’s remark, “That which doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger,” Pilkington responds: “That’s not true. That which could kill you makes you weaker, and weaker, and then you die. Wake up, Nietzsche.”

Call me Bruce: Karl Pilkington learns kung fu in Shaolin Temple, Henan, China.

Merchant says he expected two kinds of reactions to Pilkington’s idiot manqué view of the world: those who have traveled the world will think he’s a hopeless dolt, while those who are actually a lot like Karl (and there are many such people) will totally relate to his perplexity and indifference. A win-win for viewers, Merchant reckons.

An Idiot Abroad was a hit when it made its debut last September on Sky 1. In the course of its monkeyshines, it does show there’s much still left to marvel at in the world; but it also shows travel through the eyes of someone who’s not really that keen on learning — someone who thinks the Great Pyramids simply managed to get built because “they had fewer distractions back then.” And in a way, Karl has a point.

It’s tempting to think An Idiot Abroad is a hoax, that Karl is in on the joke. But it’s hard to fake the look of unease he displays every time he’s asked to, say, ride a camel for eight hours across Jordan, practice naked yoga in India, or knock down a wasp’s nest in Mexico.

Visiting the Great Pyramids, he’s less impressed by the 4,000-year-old structures than by the barrenness of the desert surroundings and the constant whirlwind of plastic bags and debris in the air. (“Shitty old nappy swirling around in the air… They don’t put that in the brochure, do they?”)

Along the way, there’s great, vivid photography of the Seven Wonders, but An Idiot Abroad also doesn’t shy away from the squalor, the filth, the less-polished aspects of world travel that people like Karl find themselves immersed in. Maybe, in some way, it’s a public service.

After all is said and done, does Pilkington learn anything useful about the world? Gervais, poking stick in hand, goads Karl into elaborating on the many wonders of the world. He notes that Sir Walter Raleigh brought back potatoes and tobacco to England from his many explorations, and asks Karl what wonders he would bring back to show his countrymen today.

“There’s nothing,” shrugs Pilkington. “Look at the shite people bring back from holiday. If Walter Raleigh did that now, they’d ask, ‘What did you bring back?’ ‘There’s nothing. I brought you a fridge magnet.’”

Maybe Karl has a point. And not just the one on top of his head.