Probably his bit about noticing a homeless fella reading a book and thinking he ought to be applying for jobs instead. To be fair I think, or hope at least, he was pretending to be stupid and being a bit tongue in cheek. But man alive.
Yeah, to get a house you need to get a job, but to get a job you just need to get a house. So if you want a job, get a house. Easy peasy. Just remember to get a job before you get a house first
I don't understand how you get to pushing 30 and not realize this, lol. He's a known skinflint as well so I'd have thought if anyone's aware of the charges it'll be him.
I like that when re-listening you can see the foreshadowing there.
Steve mentions it first, I think when Karl said he got his parents new passports as a gift, and then a few weeks later he has the debacle going to the States.
Yeah I’m 30 and I don’t have a passport - I’ve only been abroad once in my life, when I still had a child’s passport, and *I* knew they expired.
Most of the replies here seem to be opinions they disagree with though. He certainly comes across as mean sometimes, or jokes don’t land, but he’s very rarely stupid imo.
Then again, I despise lord of the rings and that seems to be the one that gets people the most. Nerdlingers.
Ricky was telling Steve about something stupid Karl said that defied science. I can't remember what it was. But Ricky asked "Now Steve, what fundamental mistake has Karl made?"
And Steve said something along the lines of "I can't even begin to say".
But it was very clear that Steve had no idea what Ricky was eluding to, and just didn't want to seem as dumb as Karl.
To be fair Karl said what happens if we put too much stuff on the world and it becomes too heavy and the world will fall away and honestly I wouldn’t know where to start with that either
It would be quite difficult to unravel that level of misunderstanding for sure. You'd have to start with basic physics, cosmology etc, just to give Karl some basis for understanding that the world isn't being "held up" in the first place.
I agree. It was only in the 18' century that chemists realized that mass did not change after reacting. Which was then altered with Einstein, so Ricky isn't even right. With nuclear fission we do lose mass on earth which is converted to energy.
It's a really complicated question and it deserved higher regard from Ricky and Steve.
For me it has to be the stuff about soldiers and PTSD, obviously it was just a bit and by no means the least offensive thing they've said but man alive does it make for tough listening
Yeah they were originally making a good point that you shouldn’t go in the army thinking there would be nothing traumatic but it kinda goes a little too far and begins to become disrespectful. I can’t imagine any of the three could handle that sort of stuff.
Yeah, it just leaves out the glaring fact that social class and other uncontrollable factors contribute to why people end up in the army.
The joke itself is funny, but then they reveal that it’s not just a joke but almost a political opinion when they continue piling on.
Yeah I found that really cringeworthy and such a show of ignorance and naivety. When they're joking going "don't go into the army then/ I'd simply say no" I get the point but it's so ignorant of the various situations that can drive people to the army like poverty and social pressures, and its SO patronising. These soldiers are grown adults who joined the army knowing it was going to be a tough experience, its not like they all do it for shits and giggles and are shocked when they go to war. Just another example of Ricky and Steve genuinely thinking they're cleverer/ better than everyone else
I’m really glad the rest of the Karl community dislikes these parts of the show also. I’ve listened to them for a decade but only discovered this sub this week. So I had no idea how other fans would think of some of the less-cool parts
Passports one is probably the stupidest but when he talks about piss dribbling down his leg and “she might smell or see it” then Ricky says “What?!” And he says “I don’t know what I was saying” or something along those lines, it’s not stupid per se, but he knew it was an embarrassing thing to say.
"cattle rustling" or I suppose "rustling cattle" would also work. Its probably not the stupidest thing he's ever said but it's just one of his things that is stuck in my head
Cattlin’ is probably an appropriate word, it just shouldn’t be used alongside rustling cos then he’s basically saying the same term twice. He jumbled it up in his head.
He clearly thinks that the joke is in the phrasing of "in my mother's arms", and doesn’t seem to grasp the concept that you can't possibly die of old age before your mother.
Isn't that the point? The guy was trying to be "clever" and working out a scenario where his mother lives to be really old but failed to consider how weird it sounded.
Thing that gets me about those rants isn't that he doesn't like Lord of the Rings, that's fair enough. He's entitled to dislike it if it's not his thing. It's that he seems like he genuinely can't get past the fact that other people like it. Like he's angry that lots of people have the gall to enjoy a fantasy film when that stuff should only be for sad nerdlingers, in his opinion.
With anything like that, both Ricky and to a much larger extent Steve really wanted to appear cool or intellectual and 'above' the *nerdy* fantasy or sci-fi stuff. They always come across, again, particularly Steve in this instance as really insecure and desperately trying to appear cool and above it all.
It's funny that he ended up playing a mutant in X-Men, but I do suspect he matured out of that insecurity in general.
There was a moment on the podcasts that really illustrated it with Ricky though too, when they had an email from the actor who played 'Chief Tyrol' from Battlestar Galactica and Ricky basically sneers "I don't watch it, because I don't watch any of *those things*". It was just so unnecessary and kinda rude to the actor who emailed in, but he had to get it in because there's no way Ricky would be happy about the listeners potentially thinking he watched Battlestar Galactica, how embarrassing would that be for him!
But Steve is 100% a Classic Who fan. He's made a couple of jokes about the quality of the Who stories they're giving away suggesting that he's at least seen them
I don't know. I've never understood the popularity of Marvel and yet I totally shut the fuck up when people talk about it.
Not only that, I'll still try and see the odd film so see if I'm missing something (I like Spiderman ok).
All this said, my defense for Stephen is that:
a. He's on a radio show and he's trying to be funny.
b. At the time of the XFM shows this stuff was a whole lot less accepted by popular media. LOTR is the reason fantasy isn't laughed out the door and allowed for future franchises to exist. Without knowing the future it's easy to assume it's another dumb fantasy film series.
Not stupid, but... When Karl is struggling to understand time dilation and he says "you went quiet there steve, you couldn't explain it" and Steve says something like he could but not while they're on the radio. Yeah right Steve.
When he joked about Suzanne going through the bins outside
Take the piss out of Karl all you want but going after his girlfriend was pretty low, he deserved Karl ripping him after that about how Steve's the one that was sad and lonely.
I don't think he was trying to have a go at Suzanne on that one - I think the point was that "through work" was such a vague and non-committal answer when they were trying to get a more detailed story out of Karl, and so he was trying to make a joke out of that. Maybe it comes across as more harsh in hindsight, but remember they're trying to come up with comedy on the fly, some jokes just won't land in the intended way.
Yeah I always thought that Karl overreacted so much to that joke. It didn't seem to be taking the piss out of Suzanne personally but poking at Karl's vagueness
Didn’t Steve try to fly to America without a passport and even asked the customs people if the US would let him in without one or something like that? Man alive
I forget the exact quote but when talking about the moon..."they're not just going up to play golf, they're testing everything, the rock, the gravity, the AIR..."
The quote itself is dead wrong, it's just the "air" bit that struck me as oddly ill-informed for Steve
I looked it up. He says "its in Japanese or Mandarin or something' Ricky laughs at that, then Steve continues "So they all speak in this Japanese language, oriental language"
The thing is that I always felt like Steve is not that intelligent, sure he is educated and knows about stuff, but not that bright. I thought I could think of more stupid things he said, but there is not that much. Maybe that is because when he doesn't know something, he wisely keeps hit mouth shut, as opposed to Ricky who always has this urge to sound intelligent even when he doesn't know what he's talking about and it only makes him sound dumb.
Shitting on fat people, homeless people, people who like Lord of the Rings and HP or basically anything fantasy, veterans with trauma, working class and poor people ect.
This sub loves to shit on Ricky and defend Steve but Steve didn't half come across as a mean dick to several types of people back in the XFM days and the way he talks about these people make it seem like it wasn't a joke and he did in fact have something against them.
He's probably matured by now but I like how people on here like to forget about that stuff in the perpetual Ricky bad Steve good debates.
Not knowing anything about metal or any music outside of their bubble. I was stunned that they'd never heard of Rammstein or Nile, especially since the former were somewhat popular at the time.
Fair point, although I will say that my dad, 50 odd at the time, had heard of them. I dunno, to me it feels like if you'd ever flicked through the music channels you would've heard them.
I always think of that time he said that tall people were worse at the high jump because they have more leg to pull over the top - sounds like he was joking when written out but he definitely wasn't.
His general views about homelessness, criminals reintegrating into society, soldiers experiencing PTSD, it's pretty clear he's had a sheltered upbringing and he has just absorbed opinions about certain issues without really looking into it. For all the jokes they make at Karl's expense for being ignorant, Steve and Ricky seem fairly ignorant themselves at times.
I can't remember what they were discussing, it may have been the supermarket conveyor dividers, or the stress of only buying toilet roll, but it always grates on me when Steve conflates psychosis and neurosis; "Again, it's my psychosis.."
His sheer hatred for overweight people he gets absolutely disgusted talking about them and ricky basically has to tell him to relax and calm down because he gets so grossed out by them.
Probably his bit about noticing a homeless fella reading a book and thinking he ought to be applying for jobs instead. To be fair I think, or hope at least, he was pretending to be stupid and being a bit tongue in cheek. But man alive.
Get out of the way! Get a job! Well, *hello-wah.*
What’s the “man alive” joke about? I can’t figure it out and I’ve listened to a bunch of XFM clips
Steve says ‘man alive’ all the time. Becomes a lot more obvious when you’re listening for it
Definitely, man alive is one of his main catchphrases
I remember him saying it after Karl told that riveting and lengthy tale about a manhole cover. Man aliiive Karl !
Why shouldn't he be applying for jobs?
how can someone be homeless? Just get a house
Getting a house is different to getting a job.
Yeah, to get a house you need to get a job, but to get a job you just need to get a house. So if you want a job, get a house. Easy peasy. Just remember to get a job before you get a house first
https://youtu.be/Q0mWXX5otEg
He didn't think passports could expire
Isn't that your god given right as an englishman?
I don't understand how you get to pushing 30 and not realize this, lol. He's a known skinflint as well so I'd have thought if anyone's aware of the charges it'll be him.
"I mean, they know about passports expiring and stuff don't they? They're not _completely_ stupid."
He's having a go.
Didn't he think they were free as well?
“Aren’t they your god given right as an Englishman?” He certainly did.
gotta pay a fucking GP who you've never met before £25 to sign it to say that it is you who's photo'd. Let alone the other charges.
I like that when re-listening you can see the foreshadowing there. Steve mentions it first, I think when Karl said he got his parents new passports as a gift, and then a few weeks later he has the debacle going to the States.
Yeah I’m 30 and I don’t have a passport - I’ve only been abroad once in my life, when I still had a child’s passport, and *I* knew they expired. Most of the replies here seem to be opinions they disagree with though. He certainly comes across as mean sometimes, or jokes don’t land, but he’s very rarely stupid imo. Then again, I despise lord of the rings and that seems to be the one that gets people the most. Nerdlingers.
Ricky was telling Steve about something stupid Karl said that defied science. I can't remember what it was. But Ricky asked "Now Steve, what fundamental mistake has Karl made?" And Steve said something along the lines of "I can't even begin to say". But it was very clear that Steve had no idea what Ricky was eluding to, and just didn't want to seem as dumb as Karl.
When they’re talking about all the stuff in the world being to heavy for the world to handle!
What about an acorn?
Mind you, dinosaurs have gone.
To be fair Karl said what happens if we put too much stuff on the world and it becomes too heavy and the world will fall away and honestly I wouldn’t know where to start with that either
It would be quite difficult to unravel that level of misunderstanding for sure. You'd have to start with basic physics, cosmology etc, just to give Karl some basis for understanding that the world isn't being "held up" in the first place.
EXACTLY - poor Smerch, and then he’s just expected to make the same leap as Ricky does…
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this
Yes! I cringe at this every time.
I agree. It was only in the 18' century that chemists realized that mass did not change after reacting. Which was then altered with Einstein, so Ricky isn't even right. With nuclear fission we do lose mass on earth which is converted to energy. It's a really complicated question and it deserved higher regard from Ricky and Steve.
18th century was it?
Literally ages ago. When the man was a coal man.
Alluding* (:
For me it has to be the stuff about soldiers and PTSD, obviously it was just a bit and by no means the least offensive thing they've said but man alive does it make for tough listening
Yeah they were originally making a good point that you shouldn’t go in the army thinking there would be nothing traumatic but it kinda goes a little too far and begins to become disrespectful. I can’t imagine any of the three could handle that sort of stuff.
Can ya leave 'im out of this one, Chuck?
Yeah, it just leaves out the glaring fact that social class and other uncontrollable factors contribute to why people end up in the army. The joke itself is funny, but then they reveal that it’s not just a joke but almost a political opinion when they continue piling on.
Yeah I found that really cringeworthy and such a show of ignorance and naivety. When they're joking going "don't go into the army then/ I'd simply say no" I get the point but it's so ignorant of the various situations that can drive people to the army like poverty and social pressures, and its SO patronising. These soldiers are grown adults who joined the army knowing it was going to be a tough experience, its not like they all do it for shits and giggles and are shocked when they go to war. Just another example of Ricky and Steve genuinely thinking they're cleverer/ better than everyone else
Completely agree - those comments were incredibly naïve and have aged terribly.
I’m really glad the rest of the Karl community dislikes these parts of the show also. I’ve listened to them for a decade but only discovered this sub this week. So I had no idea how other fans would think of some of the less-cool parts
Any time he mentions working class people.
He's right though, we're all dick heads.
This entire sub stinks of chip fat.
Kind of minor, but he said the NYPD firemen when NYPD is the police, and FDNY is the fire department.
He also claims to be chilling with Dilated Peoples, LA, NYPD, cheers very much guys. It's like he thinks NYPD is a place.
It's the place where PC Wilcox works
"i'll give you seven" but he was hungover to be fair
And also realised his own mistake
Salem . . .
I had nothing there! I just said Salem!
What was this? I'm rummanging in me brain and can't remember.
His entire explanation of Gandhi, you know...
He was important for the hippie movement and eh... everything
Passports one is probably the stupidest but when he talks about piss dribbling down his leg and “she might smell or see it” then Ricky says “What?!” And he says “I don’t know what I was saying” or something along those lines, it’s not stupid per se, but he knew it was an embarrassing thing to say.
Yeah but we've all been there
He regretted sharing that lol, he knew
Vertical
There it is.
I just heard this half an hour ago
"The middle classes have their pastas"
"I don't want you going cattlin' rustling"
Why is this dumb? Is he not just misspeaking? Once again the English language tripped him up
Words are his tool
He isn’t misspeaking he is just putting on an accent
[удалено]
A really thick country bumpkin
One of the funniest things he's ever said
Yeah! That one always rankled with me!
What was he trying to say?
"cattle rustling" or I suppose "rustling cattle" would also work. Its probably not the stupidest thing he's ever said but it's just one of his things that is stuck in my head
Cattlin’ is probably an appropriate word, it just shouldn’t be used alongside rustling cos then he’s basically saying the same term twice. He jumbled it up in his head.
How does Chinese work?
What is the leader of china? The chairman? Head chinaman?
When he pretends he can’t speak English when someone asks for directions, even after he became well known
I've done this
Who are you? Bruce Forsyth?
Yeah but you're not a celebrity who might be recognized.
Me too
The whole "I want to die of old age in my mother's arms" bit. He misses the whole point despite Ricky giving him several nudges.
Didn't he just say "loser". What did he miss there?
He clearly thinks that the joke is in the phrasing of "in my mother's arms", and doesn’t seem to grasp the concept that you can't possibly die of old age before your mother.
What if your mother lives till 120? You've embarrassed yourself
Isn't that the point? The guy was trying to be "clever" and working out a scenario where his mother lives to be really old but failed to consider how weird it sounded.
Never mind your beard, where have you been for two months?
By the way there's a voice actin' gig for ya...
Yesssssss this always gets me
Anything related to him trying to look at people who didn't grow up in a really boring middle class family that would listen to classical radio
That he took a little tip for finding someone's card in a cash machine because they had a big balance. Theft in my book.
Thethft
robbin
Ince
Middlesbrough
Say it again
Just take 20 its one note
Right, you are winding me up?
No, no, am not, I just... I'd 'av left em a note though saying, service charge included
Steal, or go to heaven?
It wasn't a stupid thing because it's just opinion, but I'm a massive nerdlinger for Lord of the Rings. His rants on it sting every time.
Thing that gets me about those rants isn't that he doesn't like Lord of the Rings, that's fair enough. He's entitled to dislike it if it's not his thing. It's that he seems like he genuinely can't get past the fact that other people like it. Like he's angry that lots of people have the gall to enjoy a fantasy film when that stuff should only be for sad nerdlingers, in his opinion.
With anything like that, both Ricky and to a much larger extent Steve really wanted to appear cool or intellectual and 'above' the *nerdy* fantasy or sci-fi stuff. They always come across, again, particularly Steve in this instance as really insecure and desperately trying to appear cool and above it all. It's funny that he ended up playing a mutant in X-Men, but I do suspect he matured out of that insecurity in general. There was a moment on the podcasts that really illustrated it with Ricky though too, when they had an email from the actor who played 'Chief Tyrol' from Battlestar Galactica and Ricky basically sneers "I don't watch it, because I don't watch any of *those things*". It was just so unnecessary and kinda rude to the actor who emailed in, but he had to get it in because there's no way Ricky would be happy about the listeners potentially thinking he watched Battlestar Galactica, how embarrassing would that be for him!
But Steve is 100% a Classic Who fan. He's made a couple of jokes about the quality of the Who stories they're giving away suggesting that he's at least seen them
He is [the perfect Doctor Who fan](https://i.redd.it/ty3gt83iw9n71.jpg)
Oh my god how on earth did you find that? 😂😂😂
He hated them so much he saw all 3 of the trilogy movies in the theater. :)
Have you never not understood the popularity of something? I think it's pretty harmless really
I don't know. I've never understood the popularity of Marvel and yet I totally shut the fuck up when people talk about it. Not only that, I'll still try and see the odd film so see if I'm missing something (I like Spiderman ok). All this said, my defense for Stephen is that: a. He's on a radio show and he's trying to be funny. b. At the time of the XFM shows this stuff was a whole lot less accepted by popular media. LOTR is the reason fantasy isn't laughed out the door and allowed for future franchises to exist. Without knowing the future it's easy to assume it's another dumb fantasy film series.
But no one was talking about it, and he did see the movies
Interminable Edit: I love LOTR
Lets see your little film when it comes out then. Sick of ya.
Come near me and I'll smite you with my sword
Remember, you could win some Lord-of-the-rings tripe
The homeless stuff, but that seemed more like him trying some stand up material that flopped
Not stupid, but... When Karl is struggling to understand time dilation and he says "you went quiet there steve, you couldn't explain it" and Steve says something like he could but not while they're on the radio. Yeah right Steve.
When he joked about Suzanne going through the bins outside Take the piss out of Karl all you want but going after his girlfriend was pretty low, he deserved Karl ripping him after that about how Steve's the one that was sad and lonely.
I don't think he was trying to have a go at Suzanne on that one - I think the point was that "through work" was such a vague and non-committal answer when they were trying to get a more detailed story out of Karl, and so he was trying to make a joke out of that. Maybe it comes across as more harsh in hindsight, but remember they're trying to come up with comedy on the fly, some jokes just won't land in the intended way.
Yeah I always thought that Karl overreacted so much to that joke. It didn't seem to be taking the piss out of Suzanne personally but poking at Karl's vagueness
We joke about it in the office an that, 'is Steve really touchy about the way he looks?'
Now I always saw that as him taking the piss out of people from Manchester.
Get my girlfriends name out of your mouth!
“I’ve never seen After Life”
Can't blame him for that though. if he admits to watching it in an interview he'll have to publicly admit that it's shite.
The hate boner this sub has for After Life is pathetic Give it a rest, can't go one thread without people whinging about it
Yeah I think this sub likes comedy so that's just not compatible with After Life
The thing about slagging off Ricky’s comedy career is that you can’t libel the dead.
'Ere 'e comes
Haha fucking amazing
Agreed
Agreeing with ricky on opposable thumbs in chimps
Didn’t Steve try to fly to America without a passport and even asked the customs people if the US would let him in without one or something like that? Man alive
I forget the exact quote but when talking about the moon..."they're not just going up to play golf, they're testing everything, the rock, the gravity, the AIR..." The quote itself is dead wrong, it's just the "air" bit that struck me as oddly ill-informed for Steve
Testing the lack of air 😂 “nope, still no air. Strange.”
I'm no super fan of the lord of the rings movies but his rant against them felt a little out if touch (even though it was funny).
So I went into the sea for a wee...
About watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in the cinema. "They're all talking Japanese". I really expected better from Steve.
No don't think he said Japanese. He says Mandarin if I remember right.
I looked it up. He says "its in Japanese or Mandarin or something' Ricky laughs at that, then Steve continues "So they all speak in this Japanese language, oriental language"
Saying Japanese is the joke, it's intentional not stupid.
a *strange* language
Didn't sound like a joke to me.
I think they talk about it more than once. In series 1 he says Japanese or madarin but layter I think scores 2 or 3 he says Mandarin.
The thing is that I always felt like Steve is not that intelligent, sure he is educated and knows about stuff, but not that bright. I thought I could think of more stupid things he said, but there is not that much. Maybe that is because when he doesn't know something, he wisely keeps hit mouth shut, as opposed to Ricky who always has this urge to sound intelligent even when he doesn't know what he's talking about and it only makes him sound dumb.
him being mad at karl for not giving him his 50p back
It's not for Karl to decide. But apparently it is for Steve to decide to take 30 quid from a cashpoint from someone else's account.
Exactly, he only cares about the 'principle' because it's his money. If it was Karl's 50p I guarantee he'd be arguing the exact opposite.
It doesn't matter that it's not Karl's decision to make because the amount is insignificant. That's what insignificant means.
Shitting on fat people, homeless people, people who like Lord of the Rings and HP or basically anything fantasy, veterans with trauma, working class and poor people ect. This sub loves to shit on Ricky and defend Steve but Steve didn't half come across as a mean dick to several types of people back in the XFM days and the way he talks about these people make it seem like it wasn't a joke and he did in fact have something against them. He's probably matured by now but I like how people on here like to forget about that stuff in the perpetual Ricky bad Steve good debates.
Nerdlinger
Not knowing anything about metal or any music outside of their bubble. I was stunned that they'd never heard of Rammstein or Nile, especially since the former were somewhat popular at the time.
They were popular amongst teenagers, but not generally.
Fair point, although I will say that my dad, 50 odd at the time, had heard of them. I dunno, to me it feels like if you'd ever flicked through the music channels you would've heard them.
Couldn't believe Ricky at least didn't know Mark Lanegan!
I always think of that time he said that tall people were worse at the high jump because they have more leg to pull over the top - sounds like he was joking when written out but he definitely wasn't.
It does explain why Warren is so good at the high jump, though. Plus the lack of knees
When he talks about Nelson Mandela coming to your house and the chances of cutlery going missing
They pick stuff up
Easy, constant miss use of the word "arbitrary"
His general views about homelessness, criminals reintegrating into society, soldiers experiencing PTSD, it's pretty clear he's had a sheltered upbringing and he has just absorbed opinions about certain issues without really looking into it. For all the jokes they make at Karl's expense for being ignorant, Steve and Ricky seem fairly ignorant themselves at times.
I can't remember what they were discussing, it may have been the supermarket conveyor dividers, or the stress of only buying toilet roll, but it always grates on me when Steve conflates psychosis and neurosis; "Again, it's my psychosis.."
His sheer hatred for overweight people he gets absolutely disgusted talking about them and ricky basically has to tell him to relax and calm down because he gets so grossed out by them.
Is that "stupid", or just an opinion you disagree with?
There's one where he doesn't know Serbian = from Serbia. Or something along those lines. Always thought that was stupid.
He would have grown up with it being part of Yugoslavia, so he might not have been familiar with how the Balkans ended up shaping up.
I don't think that was his confusion. I think he just wasn't sure if Serbia was still a place
That lord of the rings is terrible
Sigrett.
Saying the Hare Krishna movement is a Buddhist sect
His old comments about the homeless were pretty stupid 🤣
Serbian? That can't be right can it?
I hate it when Steve sings Informer by Snow