More Moaning. Karl Pilkington

photographic evidence that I was around at all. The only evidence of my existence in my teenage years are the X-rays of the wisdom teeth I had done. These days, it’s gone the other way – everyone is photo obsessed. Kids are growing up with every movement being photographed, and even before they have left the womb parents have enough scans of their kid to fill an album. It’s no longer ‘Here’s Billy taking his first steps’, now it’s ‘Here’s Billy using the placenta as a trampoline’. They may as well have a photo of the dad’s bollocks in there to show where they were before the womb!

      I met Trina in a busy studio where dancers, artists and musicians practise their craft. She showed me a few images of her work that she had on her iPad. They were really good. There was one of around nine people intertwined to make up an image of a motorbike being ridden by a woman. There was one of a skull and another of a temple. On first glance you can’t see the people involved, but on closer inspection you can see a lot more than you might expect.

      KARL: Are they totally nude?!

      TRINA: Yeah, they are totally nude. But in my work I try to obscure the body, because I don’t want anyone to stick out solely as an individual. Except for maybe one focal person. It just depends how shy they are – if they need to cover up for whatever reason, I just throw them in back. People who are more confident, or if their body is needed for a particular piece, come forward.

      KARL: Bit nervous now.

      TRINA: Yeah, that is totally normal, to be honest with you – like we haven’t even gone out to a café or had a dinner yet and you are going to take your clothes off for me!

      Art seems to be the only place people accept nudity these days. The Greeks started it all off when they made naked sculptures of known athletes of the day. Apparently most athletes did their events in the nude back then, so this was the way people were used to seeing them. I saw one statue when I was in Greece of a fella sprawled across a rock, head tilted back, and his legs akimbo. He looked like a pissed-up bloke on a stag do, so I don’t know what sport he did. I suppose he could have been the Freddie Flintoff or Gazza of the day.

      To be honest, today’s runners may as well go back to being nude as them Lycra pants they wear don’t really hide much, do they? It’s plain to see that if Usain Bolt went back to the old ways of running in the nude he would have an advantage getting over the finish line before anyone else. It can’t have been easy running in the nude, though, having a couple of testicles slapping against your legs.

      The only good thing is it must have given them more encouragement to run faster as it would have sounded like they were being clapped along.

      I popped on some jogging pants and a T-shirt and went into the studio where Trina tried to relax me by introducing me to all the other volunteers. It didn’t help much as there were six girls and one bloke . . . who looked like Leonardo DiCaprio. I stood there in front of a big mirrored wall. I shouldn’t have been there at all. It looked like S Club 7 with one of their dads.

      KARL: Would everyone agree that it is harder for a man to be naked?

      JAMES THE MODEL: I would agree, yeah.

      TRINA: But you have one thing hanging out there – we have two.

      KARL: No, no, no, but . . . I kind of think that they are all . . . the same. Breasts.

      TRINA: You think that women are all the same?!

      KARL: Breasts are, yeah. Everyone sees breasts every day, but you don’t see knobs every day. There are loads of magazines with topless woman, it just goes over my head. If you suddenly took your top off – I would be like ‘fine’.

      JAMES: I think that male genitalia are much more offensive to the public eye.

      KARL: I think it looks horrible as well. It’s just not very nice. I don’t think anyone wants to see it in a picture.

      TRINA: I do. I think over fifty per cent of the population, females and homosexual males do want to see that. (giggles)

      KARL: Not mine they don’t.

      TRINA: I don’t look at the male that way. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. To be honest, I feel more uncomfortable when people are in their clothes, than when they are nude, because I am so used to these people.

      KARL: Really?!

      TRINA: Yeah.

      Another problem I was worried about was getting a bit active down below. Being nude is one thing, but if it got excited, that could open another can of worms. Quite an appropriate phrase. I didn’t know how mine would react as it has a mind of its own. I can be sat on a bus or train and the slightest tremor can set it off. It goes up and down all the time for no reason, so much so that I reckon it could conduct an orchestra by itself at times. I tried to subtly bring the matter up.

      KARL: And if there’s any sign of excitement?

      TRINA: Sorry . . . what’s that?

      KARL: Just saying . . . if I get a little bit of excitement . . .

      TRINA: (blank expression)

      KARL: A little bit of movement, little bit of stiffness? Is that . . . ?

      TRINA: Errmmm . . . you mean . . . ?

      KARL: HARD KNOB!

      TRINA: Oh. To be honest with you, I have painted, I don’t know, at this point about a thousand people and it has only happened twice.

      I’ve never been a fan of odds. And odds on knobs don’t work. I can’t control it. If it wants to get active, it just will. It could end up hailing me a cab back to the hotel if it gets out of hand. That’s just reminded me of a joke.

      HOW DO YOU SPOT A BLIND MAN ON A NUDIST BEACH? IT’S NOT HARD.

      Before we got into any positions Trina got us to warm our bodies up by doing some basic stretches followed by some slow walking.

      KARL: What’s this about, Trina? Why am I doing this slow walking?

      TRINA: So, this is a practice that helps you to master your body and your focal awareness, so that you can stay concentrated inside the pose and use your body like an instrument, like a performer.

      I was pretty good at it. They should do a race in the Olympics like this. Usain Bolt is the fastest man ever, so surely no one is ever going to beat him. And I don’t get much enjoyment out of things that are over so quickly. It takes these runners longer to tie up the laces on their trainers than it does to do the race. Usain Bolt does the hundred metres in forty-one strides! The Red Arrows are another thing I don’t enjoy as they are too fast. By the time you hear them above you, they’ve gone! So let’s see who can do the slowest hundred metres.

      Before anyone got nude, Trina got to work on designing how the lion of Leo would be put together. One by one we were called over and added to her vision. I couldn’t make out what she was doing. I couldn’t see the shape of a lion at all. I was called over and was asked to kneel down and get into a tight ball, and was crammed in between the others. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I first thought. As we all crunched together, Trina and her assistant came over and moved arms and legs into place, criss-crossing limbs up and over each other. If I’d have had an itchy leg it would have been difficult to locate which leg was mine to scratch. An arm was pushing against my head while my face was being pushed into someone’s knee. It was like playing Twister on the London Underground in rush hour. This went on for around thirty minutes, then Trina told us all to relax. I was pretty stiff and had problems standing up as my legs had seized up. I wandered around the studio looking like a newborn deer. As I was starting to get the feeling back in my legs Trina asked everyone to quickly trim any hairy areas of the body before she applied any paint. Now, trimming my body isn’t a job that can be done quickly, as I’m quite hairy. I eventually gave in to Suzanne having a cat recently as she argued that I