This is definitely hearsay, but I have a friend who knew some assistant that worked on a few Ricky and Steve projects, years ago. It recently came up in conversation, and my friend heard this pretty surprising story that I definitely hadn’t heard when he passed it on to me.

It’s not recent, in fact it was around Life’s too short, either just before or just after the series aired. Ricky, Steve and a producer (and the assistant, the source of this story) were travelling back to their hotel in a limo after some award ceremony. Basically they got into an argument about future projects (maybe Ricky floated the idea of an Office follow-up before the Brent film idea was finalised?). It got pretty heated and Steve kind of slammed his fist against the wall. But he hit that button that lowers the window between the driver and the passengers. Everyone kind of naturally looked through the now open window: little monkey fella sat behind the wheel.

The compilation makes it so much funnier because you hear Ricky say it's the last monkey news every time followed by "alright, now for monkey news."

Without a doubt the funniest parts of Karl's stories are when he ALWAYS gets to the bit where there's some sort of mysterious character who's 4'8 and really hairy, and Gervais just loses his shit immediately

"You'll never guess what"
"Go on"
"Monkey stood on a chair cooking veg" 😂😂😂

44:00 “Karl you must know this isn’t possible”
“It was an automatic” 😂

I love how much power Karl has just by saying “forget it”. They always crumble and let him carry on 😂

20:00 real anger from ricky. Live it

19:54 I know Rickys laugh is legendary, but Rickys anger is just as good.

I L O V E that Ricky and Steve have to constantly coax Monkey News out of Pilkington and then the entire time they shut it down, yell over him and call him an idiot.

“Two monkeys have married… in Romania” hahaha

"Something's said' followed by Ricky screaming and putting a record on may be one of the greatest moments ever aired.

“don’t talk shit”
“don’t talk shite twice”
“don’t talk shit all your life”

Ironically Karl is far more emotionally stable than Ricky.  He takes such abuse from Ricky and just carries on.  Ricky hears one impossible story from Karl and literally has to be restrained by Steve every 10 seconds.

Had to thump it in the head! 😂

Im amazed these three havent made their glorious return to podcasting. They blazed the trail where others tread.

59:10 Chimp Spa is arguably the greatest ever Monkey News.

1:00:11 "It's actually run by a couple of chimps" followed by Ricky's maniacal laughter is just timeless.

20:20 I have never in my life heard Ricky sound this angry. Omg it’s so funny. Karl is the best, keep annoying him.

Love when Karl breaks character and starts laughing

Love how Ricky cancels the Monkey news after every story and does the jingle every week after 😂

I like how every story hinges on the dramatic monkey reveal, even though 1. The feature is called 'Monkey News', and 2. Karl starts every segment with "Righ', so there was this monkey"