The Luke and Pete Show - One Question for the Boss

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Pete’s DIY mission continues and it’s all getting a bit treacherous. He’s discovered some mould and keeps getting electric shocks off his drill. And, to add insult to injury, he’s discovered his old school reports. Luke’s reports, on the other hand, tended not to make it to their destination.Plus, we’ve got plenty of listener correspondence and a story about Mr Bruce Springsteen.Send us your latest stories, questions and comments here: [e-mail] Luke and Pete Show is the sometimes ridiculous, always funny podcast with Luke Moore and Pete Donaldson: two men who have time on their hands and a good idea of how to waste it. Subscribe to get your comedy podcast fix every Monday and Thursday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to the Luke and the Pete Shore. It is Thursday, the 7th of Mayor. I'm Pete Donaldson, and I'm joined by Mr. Lukie Mer. Lukey. How the devil are you doing in this fine, fine weather we're having? It's great, isn't it? It makes such a difference. It does make such a difference.

I have ruined the garden, though. I've knocked my wall down. I was talking about this on a show a couple of weeks ago. Right. That I was planning on knocking a wall down and installing some balustrade. balustrade. Yeah, you said it. It's been very exciting.

What's the latest development then? You just knocked, you just sacked it off or you got rid of halfway through? Not the wall down. Not the wall down, so it's quite dangerous now. That's probably going to stay there for a little while. I'm going to, I've got some iron, I've got some rebar, some steel rebar.

I'm going to put in the, in the cement and fill the cavity wall with cement. So it's nice. You are doing your own Fred Dibner. We talked about Fred Dibner on Monday. I'm doing my own Fred Dibner. Yes, I'm doing my own Fred Dibner. That's right, yeah. But in a very specific way.

very clear. Sarah's annoyed with me. I will get her back. I'll get it back in the second half, Luke. I will have this wall up as soon as I can, but right now it is quite treacherous. Yeah, yeah. It does sound like it's perhaps a job too far.

No, it's not. It'll be fine. I can do the wall bit. I'll do the plastering bit, I reckon. Just got to make sure, just got to make sure I can get the old nails in the wall. I think everything's pretty straightforward from here. And the knocking down on the wall was a right old shit.

I had to get a big saw and I had to spray water into the saw to make it, to make the diamond tip kind of bit kind of, you know, cut the wall in the right sort of place. I just don't think you should be doing this. But the problem is the water was going inside the drill and I was getting like electric sharks off the drill. Not ideal. No. Can you just stop it? But we got the wall down.

I bought a big lump hammer. I'm a man with a hammer now. I've knocked it all down. And look, as balls being knocked down, I've discovered a lot of rot in the decking. So that's another thing I've got. That's not good. It's another thing I've got to deal with.

So I think everything's gone pretty straightforward so far. It doesn't sound like it. On the Fred Dibner thing, because we talked about him on Monday, have you seen that video where he's at the top of that chimney, just knocking it down by hand? Yeah, absolutely wild. It is extraordinary, isn't it?

What is it? Like late 70s maybe? Yeah. And it'd be like me. I had a knock down probably 15 breeze blocks, and that nearly did me in. He's about 300 feet in the air. I know. And he's got this weird wooden contraption that he's just put up around the chimney,

and he's just knocking these bricks off one by one. Just relying on, relying on the, you know, the handiwork of the people who put the chimney up. It's absolutely insane. He climbs up it. No ropes. Yeah. Nothing. It's like that block on Blue Peter who climbed up Nelson's column on that little sort of wool

look at wool rope It's absolutely insane When was that? It was in, there's the famous Blue Peter thing It wasn't John Crave And whoever was on Blue Peter in the 80s In his bell-bottom trousers He climbed up Nelson's column to clean it

I don't know John Knox It's one of those kind of guys who kind of Probably on the lip of Probably around the time John Lennon got shot That was 1980 December. Yeah, he was climbing up the old day. He was climbing up Nelson's Colin.

Absolutely. Can you imagine the smell of bird's shit up there? The reason I know that was December in 1980 is because my mum once described 1980 for her personally as a mixed bag because I was born but John Lennon was shot. I was like, well, I think on balance, should be a good year, surely. Yeah, no. Two wrongs don't make a right.

I think that might be subconsciously why I've always had a negative impression of John Lennon. Do you reckon? Okay. I just always feel like he comes across like the worst guy. But I think it might be because my mum said that. It was in December 1980. I know it was definitely because it stuck in my mind.

Yeah, I was going to say, speaking of the 80s, when I was at home with my parents, having arguments about the troubles when my dad, my mom gave us like a load of, a load of like bits of pay you know like when you go home your mum gives you

like you basically hands over seemingly the fifth record of achievement you owned as a teenager yeah I would get that happen full of full of golf and certificates and you know

edXL history a level fucking awards and stuff yeah but so what so some of the pages illuminated reading

I didn't actually get an A star at GCCC in RA I only got an A Oh, what? And I've been telling them for 20 years that I got an A-Star. I've upgraded it in my mind. No one cares, do they? I'm certainly not in...

But I would say it's a proper R-E course in Catholic school. I mean, it's proper... Could you get A-Stars then? I thought A-Stars came in later? I think you could get A-Stars at Jesus-E at that point, yeah. Right, okay. I'm saying I could go toe-to-to-to with the man we mentioned on the last show, Russell Brand with Bible verse.

Well, you couldn't remember how Jesus died. I think it's complicated. Because they don't, they don't sort of talk about, like if you went to a non-denominational school, they just talk about rolling away the stone and then he comes out and stuff. But it's all kind of like in Catholic school, it's all tied together with, you know,

original sin and fucking purgatory and all that fucking bollocks. And where did, you know, stillborn fucking fetuses go and all that fucking dark shit? You've got nuns and fucking priests bombing around the halls. Pissed. Anyway, I had a, I had a, school report. Sorry, you're back at your parents now.

Is this... I had a school report in my record of achievement. And it's really bombed me out, Luke. Oh, all right. It was a very bad school report. One of the GCSE years... What subject? Pretty much every subject,

apart from art. Part of my team. Mine weren't great. My reports were... But they were just all... It was just all, like... Even like the ones that were, like, trying to be charitable, sort of saying,

Pete needs to, if he doesn't understand something in mathematics, he needs to sort of, it was advanced class or something, but he's saying Pete keeps pretending he understands stuff when he doesn't. That's like, and it really bombed me out. That's harsh. It really made me feel like my whole life's been a lie, and I've just been underachieving my whole life. It really, it really made me sad inside.

If you're a teacher, and you took a dislike to a student that you didn't like to cut of their jib or whatever, would you lay it on thick or would you be fair? You'd like to think that you would you'd have a bit you'd be able to sort of rise above it all but maybe I don't think you would though would you would you've got like a hundred students

and you've got a fucking hangover Yeah You're gonna be like he's a little prick Yeah He's getting it But I'd say Mr Brithwick was very charitable I like Mr Brathwaite But he he was just

I mean you know I dropped it as soon as I could At maths fuck that I'm not taking that on air level But yeah You had to take it for GCCC though right Yeah even a GCSEC you just, I think I've got a B in the end.

I got a C in GCC mass, and I was absolutely over the moon with that. Yeah. But it was just, it was just, every lesson was just like, he doesn't, he doesn't, um, work hard enough. He just, it's done itself. And I'm like, it's really, it's also, it's also, how couldn't I have had two or three of them?

One thing that I was doing all right. What did you get in your A levels? What'd you get in your A levels in the end? AirBC. That's good. It's much better than me. I got, hey, it's more than I needed for fucking. to Montfort, I'll give it that.

Yeah. And you didn't congratulate Dumontford either, did you? No, it's a good point actually. Good point. But the air level but the air level were all like predicted like, you know, fails, ungraded and stuff and yeah. Yeah. A in history, B in English, that's all right in it? I've got four B's four C's two Ds at GCSE

and I've got two Ds near you at A level. Yeah. So. You just need to get into university, isn't it? But the thing is I genuinely, and you're going to laugh at me, for this, right? And so are our listeners, but I need to be honest. I genuinely think some of my reports were bad at A level

because I was much funnier than the teachers. Much more confident than the teachers? Yeah, and they were vexed about it. Yeah. Yeah. They were like, this kid's obviously going to go places and my life is rubbish. It's just two, you know, it's just two different

men, isn't it, with two very different outlooks? I read one bad school report from 20 odd years ago and I'm having a fucking crisis. Yeah. I honestly, at the time I was gutted about it. Right. But now I'm like, yeah, whatever, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. I just, I just don't, you know, I read quite a lot of, um, but the one thing I did, I think I might have told you this before, but I was able to, somehow managed to convince my parents that we didn't get reports at our school. Right. And I used to intercept them and hide them.

Didn't your sister, didn't your sister go at your school? No, but you, but she's much younger so she left after I she started after I left. Oh they've just started doing reports now, honest. Yeah, but then I also used to intercept the referrals home and the detention notices and stuff like that. Right, yeah.

I didn't have the balls. I just thought my house of cards would fall down. But again, I've said it before. You know, the world belongs to you. It came, it came crashing down to earth when the PE teacher, the new

PE teacher was my mum, was basically my mate's mum. Right. Yes. So my mum was basically in contact with her. And every time I got an attention with PE, she would just tell her. How are you getting a detention in PE? What's the technique?

But it would be anything from kind of really innocuous stuff like forgetting your kit to like, or repeatedly forgetting your kit to like, you know, talking or back chatting or whatever. The usual stuff you'd expect of me, I guess, like back chatting and, you know, stupid jokes and stuff. But the one thing I would say is that, so fairly recently, a friend of mine took a job at a very nice public school, one of the most expensive public schools in the country. And in the Easter holidays, I went to go visit him. I was meeting him and I said, I'll meet me at my work. You come and have to look around and we'll go where we're going. So I did. It was unbelievable. It was

basically like Hogwarts. And it did get me, and I'm going to look, fine, whatever. I'm not going to have a debate about private schools, but whatever. But it did get me thinking that you just reminded me of it because you mentioned maths. When I went to, like, genuinely, when I went to comprehensive senior school, so like year 7 to year 11, I remember having to go to toilet in the, all the way over in the maths block, because that was the only toilet with toilet paper in it. I don't think that's going to be the problem at some of the best public schools in the country. So the divide is huge. And the thing that annoyed me about visiting my mate in Peter House College, Cambridge,

was that I was meeting people with the exact same exam results as me. We've said it before. We spoke about this before. But going to Cambridge or Oxford or even like Durham and stuff, that was kind of like set up to sort of say, well, you know, you need to be one of the basically the prefects in the school. That sort of level. you know somebody who's you know really really achieving a lot and and to be quite frank ask kissing the

fucking teachers um to even be considered to even to even to even go to even be you know be be um go for a meeting uh for cambridge or peter house is the oldest cambridge college as well is it right okay yeah i i i i i i i went and he was one of the you know the the the richest um kids in in in in in our school um and you know one of the high achievers in english and history and stuff and he went there and he had a terrible fucking time. Yeah, well, I've had plenty of people who've been there and had to say the same thing. I mean, I know Cambridge University pretty well because my wife

went there, but it's not for everyone, is it? I mean, it could be incredibly intimidating if you're 18 years old. I mean, fucking hell, it's not rocket science to see that that could be really... But it does annoy me when Alex Gonzalez who had to reset all his exams, and I don't think he got that many good exams in air level, he just swaned into

Lancaster. Who has, like, porters and little colleges, and they've got their own little sort of, it's like a campus university. And like me, who had to travel two miles to get to bloody university every morning. De Montfort's not great, but from Stanley Road, from Stanley Road up the way. Yeah, I was just kind of, and that's another thing. Somebody, I think, pointed out on.

You're on the poster for De Montfort, though. Can Gansela say that? Yeah, exactly. Good point, actually. No. He was on the darts team and that's it. He was on the pool team and that's it. Nice.

Yeah, I mean, you're on the. poster for De Montfort University, mate. It doesn't get any better than that. No. It does not get any better than that. Good point. Peter, let's have a break. When we come back, we've got to do some correspondence from our lovely listeners, okay? And they should get in touch with their university stories. We wouldn't have any of those for ages? That would be lovely. Good point. Welcome back to the Luke and Pete Shore. I'm Pete Donaldson, and I'm joined by correspondence. Yes. Should we do a battery first? We've got a battery in here. Let's do a battery. Oh yeah,

we've got a battery. Lovely stuff. Lovely. Okay, Ewan's got in touch. Morning. chap's previous email about the sauna world championships here making a submission for the battery daddy some ken star batteries found in a handheld fan ken star stay cool ewan i like the logo it's very basic uh like a serif font and uh it's uh yeah it's it's pretty classic what's a syrif font what does that mean it's like a it's basically a font that looks like that i forget what let's have a look serif font There are many different serif type of fonts, right? Tell me about it.

Yeah, it just basically looks like that. Serif type faces can be... Oh, God. We're going down a rabbit hole here. It looks like that. It looks like that. It's a seraph font. Kenstar, you say, well,

yeah. Listen, thank you for filling what I was checking. Kenstar has in fact been seen once before. What he wants? Wow. They were Kenstar super heavy duty. Our friend Fergus sent those back in June of 2024. So technically speaking, if you want to adjudge it so, Peter,

you have the authority to call this a brand new player because they're just Kenstar. They're not Kenstar super heavy duty. No. You know what, Luke? I don't think we can have that. I appreciate the, I appreciate it. Hard-dast master you.

Yeah, I appreciate you and mustering. But I think we really have to, we have to stop at the word Kenstar, I think, in this particular case. Fair enough. Otherwise, it's a bit of technicality, isn't it? I completely agree. Yeah. Completely agree.

All right. And what about this from, on YouTube, one of the comments on our YouTube videos, which caught the notice from Mary. Hello to you, Mary. She's talking about Mallort. Should I give you a quick refresher on Mallort?

It's a wood, was it a wormwood-based spirit that is a Chicago specialty? Yes. A bit of a rite of passage in Chicago. Quite a recent phenomenon as well. We mentioned that when we were in Chicago doing a live ramble show, our lovely attendees took us to a couple of bars

and they insisted that we get the Mallort down us which we did and it was dreadful Terry says there's a bar in New Orleans called In fact in America they call it New Orleans Don't they New Orleans They call it the rise of sun

Thank you very much for that worthy interjection Mary says there's a bar in New Orleans called Pep's Pub Where they take a polaroid of you While drinking Malort and then you have to write down what you think it tastes like and they hang it on the wall. Oh, lovely.

It's fun to read what everyone likens it to. We thought when we had it, it tasted like rotting, cut grass smells like. I think that's a fairly accurate description, actually, Mary. So thank you for that. I'm not a man who has, like, shots of alcohol these days. I don't think I've actually been drunk since my son was born. That's getting on for three years ago now.

Okay, that sounds like a child. I don't think you can you, Peter? No, I can't. I'm, I've got issues. So, Pep's Pub is, it's not on, what's the major, what's the main street where everybody drinks in? It's off. What is it? I can't remember. Bourbon Street, Bourbon Street. That's right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the drink that everybody seems to drink there is the hand grenade, which is a big stupid green, green drink that's served in like a grenade sort of thing. But, yeah, Pep is off. Is it pronounced Bourbon Street? I think so, yeah, bourbon. I think Bourba. I think Bobber's a biscuit, isn't it? I just always, and I should preface everything like this sort of saying, I always do this. Never a good thing. I always do a lot of stuff. Red brick universities, you talk about this. Before somebody pointed out that Red Brook University,

I was using it like Red Brick Universities being Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, the big ones. Right. But it's not. It's Red Brick is the down at heel, the more down at heel ones compared to the old ones. So my university is a Russell Group, University. right is that different what's that oh I think just red brick indicates not one of the major two or three you know not not one of the big boys um so there we go I went to university college London which is a very very good university Peter and I thank you very much for mentioning that where was your campus middle sex they put campuses all over the place Gordon square Bloomsbury thank you very much

oh lovely stuff is that no way soas is Bloomsbury he did you go and so us so us versus that university I was at the Institute of America's University College of London right on Gordon Square. Nice. There's a good Japanese garden, SOAS. I think it's still there. Soaz is a brilliant campus. It's really interesting to walk around. I do recommend if you go to, I love New Orleans,

and I'm gutted that WrestleMania wasn't in New Orleans. It was briefly in New Orleans. And just, and try and get off, off grid and try and go to some of the more hipstery parts of those kind of places. And it's absolutely lovely. Oh, beautiful. I'm just looking at street maps of Bourbon Street and all over the place. Very nice. I mean, so, notorious BMT on Rambled Discord, there's a little Luke and Pete show channel on the Rambled Discord. He says, on the subject of saxophone solos, what I said a couple of shows ago is I said that the song that opens with a saxophone solo is the hallmark of a confident songwriter.

Yeah. And notorious BMT says two good saxos on two Bruce Springsteen songs. prove it all night and jungle land the live version of jungle out of the No More Nook Show probably the peak I'll have to confess here and this could be a gap in my knowledge it could just be that I'm a man of impeccably poor taste

and I'm happy to accept either charge I'm not really a Springsteen die I don't really go in for the boss I understand that we need to have him I think it's good that he exists several of his songs I like but I know people get obsessed with him so Alex Siegel who runs into talent

a talent agency we occasionally work with He is obsessed with Bruce Springste. He goes to watching about five times a year. For me, he's not that kind of artist. I can't get stuck into him more than a song or two. The big hits, basically. I think basically you have to... I think the river is beyond reproach as an album,

a lot of his songs are beyond reproach, I'm sure. But like, I think with him, he's been gone on a long time. He looks great. His live shows... His live shows are... can descend into jazzy, bluesy, kind of like wigouts, which I find tedious. And also I find that there's just too much stuff.

He's just written too many songs, really. And didn't he get the plug pulled on him at the Emirates a couple years ago? He did, yeah. I interviewed him once. Did you? Are you interviewed the end of his? Basically, at the end of his sound check in Oslo, we got to ask one question each

with our little dictophones on the ends of our outstretched arms Did you make it count? As he kneeled down. I've told the story before but the guy next to me who I was with who managed to write four pages for the time

like a big pullout in the magazine his music journal. It's like proper old school Cliff Richard Glasses kind of like older than me kind of jobbing kind of musician and music journalists kind of managed to get like four pages out of like literally one question about asking whether he, you know, he can still sing about his roots when he's a multi-millionaire.

Yeah, a question is he's been asked a million times, but I asked about that situation. I look forward to getting back to London because last time he had the plug pulled on him. He liked my question because it was a softball one. Yeah. And you can't get, look, you've got an outstretched dictaphone at the end. in a sea of Italian journalists asking him about his Italian heritage, you've got to make it count. You've got to just give him a nice softball question.

I like that Bruce Bringsstein looks down to you, quite literally looking down on you, and saying, that man there, I'm pleased to see him because he's only going to give me the softest of sopings. He's not going to ask me about my Italian grandfather. He's not going to ask me about being rich and out of touch. He's going to ask me what my favourite Mad Caddy's song is.

Exactly. Isn't my favorite flavor of Haribovies? Oh my God, you absolutely did me. There's been a video going around where somebody has basically taken their brother, I think their brothers' text to them and used AI to create like an emo kind of mid-west emo-songs out of it.

Yeah. And I think you posted it on Instagram. And my God, like, there's no great dis that some of your favorite music can be itped so readily and easily by a computer. Like, it sounds so accurate and so good. But it's not real. It's not real music.

It is really if you can listen to it and enjoy it. I make me on. There's a whole load of them, though. There's a whole load of different genres and stuff. But going back to the boss and his long concerts, he has released a live album back in 2017 of a, a show that he did

which is the longest concert he's done I think and it's a whole record of it and it's four hours and six minutes 33 songs in length yeah amazing I mean he was doing he was he wasn't sound checking even for his proper show in Oslo it was the start of his Wreckingball tour which isn't a bad album

actually wrecking ball the song's pretty good and he uh he was he ended up doing about cracking on for three hours in that Oh, this concert is from that same tour, apparently. Right, okay, yeah. This is Helsinki, yeah. But he also did an acoustic set when people were coming into the auditorium. Like, absolutely batch it.

Insatiable, insatiable for the performance. Insatiable. Yeah, absolutely, man. At least I suppose you know, if you're going to pay through the nose of a show, which happens. Yeah, you're going to get your money to us. And obviously, you get to see Silvio Dante as well on stage. Is that, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, little Stephen.

Not Gus Van Sant. Stephen Van Zandt. Stephen Van Zand. Similar name. Very, very different man. Well, he was obviously in the TV show. Is it Lilliehammer? He was, yeah.

And obviously, I think that's set in Oslo, is it? Is it set in... It's set in Lilliehammer, Pete. Hence the name. Yeah, but where is Lilliehammer? It's in Norway. Is that in Norway? Right, okay.

Fine. So he was obviously, one might suggest a bigger star than Bruce Springsteen. So he was... We were in the same hotel as Sont. and people were just fucking losing their love because he was obviously a big star because he was in the TV show

Lilyhammer but I think it's also because he was one of the main people in the Sopranos Yeah maybe I don't know but I mean yeah He was Silvio Dante

and the Sopranos man I know yeah fine You look like a little gargoy Yeah I wonder actually I've not seen him in anything other than the Sopranos I'm not going to judge him on this because I think Sylvia O'Donthe is a

A thin performer It's a great character I have seen him really hammer And he's a big I'm not sure he's an amazing actor. No, no, no, he's not. I think you can kind of, in the Sopranos,

you kind of forgive it because there's so many heavyweight performances. It actually is a little bit of light. You're not overwhelmed by the fucking chewing of the scenery, right? But like Silvio, it's funny because I think in the Sopranos, Stephen Vanzan plays Silvio,

and I think his actual wife plays his wife. And she's not an actor either. So it's kind of interesting the dynamic. Fantastic. Yeah, good on them. What a lovely little bit of work. All right then. Shall we get out of here?

Yeah, let's go. Let's go. Why not? Let's go out of here. We've been in the local pitch short gang. You can come into the looking pitch of your gang by, we've got to basically grab your arm and twist it. Chinese burn.

Basically, to give you a Chinese burn before you can enter the gang. But that's the only entry restriction we've got for the, for the club. But you can't be in if you cry after the shardies burn right?

Exactly. You've got to be a big, big strong boy. Hello, loop pitcho.com is the way to get to show on

the emails and we'll see you on Monday. The Luke and Pete Show is a stack production and part of the ACAST creator network.