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What Karl Pilkington is up to now 12 years after Idiot Abroad

Home> Entertainment

Published 11:33 16 Feb 2024 GMT

What Karl Pilkington is up to now 12 years after Idiot Abroad

The Ricky Gervais fan-favourite has forged a career for himself since 'An Idiot Abroad'

Joshua Nair

Joshua Nair

Featured Image Credit: ITV

Topics: Ricky Gervais, Travel, TV and Film

Joshua Nair
Joshua Nair

Joshua Nair is a journalist at LADbible. Born in Malaysia and raised in Dubai, he has always been interested in writing about a range of subjects, from sports to trending pop culture news. After graduating from Oxford Brookes University with a BA in Media, Journalism and Publishing, he got a job freelance writing for SPORTbible while working in marketing before landing a full-time role at LADbible. Unfortunately, he's unhealthily obsessed with Manchester United, which takes its toll on his mental and physical health. Daily.

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@joshnair10

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Karl Pilkington was a massive fan-favourite when he starred in An Idiot Abroad from 2010-2012, but what has he been doing since?

Originally thrust into the limelight by friends Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais, Pilkington only had brief appearances on TV prior to his famous travel show.

He was also part of The Ricky Gervais Show around the same time, fuelling fans' desires to see more of the hilarious character.

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Karl Pilkington with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant during a press tour for 'An Idiot Abroad' in 2011.
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

The 51-year-old has previously compared himself to Homer Simpson when talking about how his career has evolved since An Idiot Abroad, and he too has changed.

The Sky comedy-documentary followed Karl as a man who has no interest in global travel, being sent to visit various different countries in the world to experience their cultures.

Gervais and Merchant stayed in the UK to monitor his progress, as Karl was often left perplexed and sometimes confused at the differences in food, culture and lifestyle overseas.

It was the main selling point of the series, though he has since primarily built a career in TV off the success the documentary series generated.

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Many people have been curious as to what he would be doing now, and it turns out, it's more than you'd think.

One of his most noted roles was on Sick of It, you can watch the trailer below:

In Sick of It, Karl is struggling to get his life back on track after being dumped by his girlfriend, and is constantly being criticised by the voice in his head, serving as his alter-ego, the real him who is not afraid to speak the truth.

The comedy-drama series ran on Sky for two seasons to generally positive reviews.

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The Sale-born actor also starred in The Moaning of Life, a series with a very similar premise to An Idiot Abroad, except Pilkington got to choose where he travelled to.

He also saw how people in different countries deal with some of the problems in the modern world, such as marriage, happiness and money.

Karl also had a role in Ricky Gervais' series Derek.

Away from acting, the Brit has also done some advert voice-overs you may have missed on TV, with one of his more notable ones being for SMARTY mobile.

You may have heard him say the famous line: "Less malarkey, more smarty."

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Karl Pilkington signing DVD copies of 'The Moaning of Life 2' in 2015.
Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage/Getty

Fans shared their thoughts on Karl's involvement with advertisements on Reddit.

One user posted: "That’s awesome, good for him. Little effort, steady money!"

Another wrote: "Fair play to the bloke. He probably gets a decent pay to do these ads, super easy, audio only, and he can live his life without loads of people shouting his heads like a f***ing orange. He never wanted fame did he back in the day and he seems very introverted, so fair play to him."

A third put: "I legit thought Karl was going to say Bulls*** man," in a reference to a famous scene from An Idiot Abroad.

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