The Luke and Pete Show - The Crappening

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

It’s another Jim Campbell special! We’ve got some more news on Jim’s eccentric dad and an incredible story about Extinction Rebellion protestors ‘going floppy’. Also on this episode, Jim’s telling us about his night terrors and Luke’s indulging in some extra-terrestrial chat, which Pete usually doesn’t let anywhere near the Luke and Pete Show studio. All that, plus a brilliant email from a pilot who lost his wedding ring AND the story we’ve all been waiting for: THE CRAPPENING! Luke actually downloaded this episode as soon as we finished recording just so he could listen to Jim tell this story again, you don’t want to miss it!Get in touch with with your emails at [e-mail]! ***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!*** Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

hello yes and a very warm welcome again welcome back to thursday's episode of the luke and peach show i'm luke moore i'm joined this week as you guys well know by the great jim campbell hi jim hello how you doing mate i'm good mate how are you very well how do you feel about monday's episode i enjoyed it a lot good reaction people enjoying it yeah glad to hear it i hope that um the uh horrific boarding school stories have flowed in well two things that have happened um well i haven't had to go through all the boarding school stories yet so i won't be doing those today but the other thing is we might make a superstar out of your dad i think he might become a new kim kardashian he could become the new kim kardashian there's a lot trying to think i've

almost gone gone blank on some of the madder things that he thinks. He's big into aliens. Yeah, of course. Massive into aliens. Properly thinks that we're regularly visited by them. Does he? Oh, yeah, yeah. Because he just loves all those TV shows that you get on the History Channel.

Have you seen the History Channel? It's mad, isn't it? It's just aliens and conspiracy theories now. There's not any real history on it. It's really weird. I think they should be forced to change the name of it because TLC,

you have to change its name to TLC because it used to be The Learning Channel and now it's just 90 Day Fiancé and Say Yes to the Dress. No one's learning anything out of shit.

No, if anything, you're unlearning. Exactly. I mean, I love 90 Day Fiancé. It's one of the great unsung heroes of reality TV. Do you know what it's about? Is it about someone

having 90 days to work out whether they want to marry someone or not? Kind of. It's a little bit more, I can't believe I'm saying this, it's a little bit more sophisticated than that. It's an American, because it's an American show, an American who's fallen in love with someone from another country, and under the K1 visa requirements, they have 90

days to propose and marry them. And so they're under pressure. Then TLC massively ham up all the drama. So for example, you get a guy from Kansas who's never left the US but he's met a girl from Brazil on the internet and she's come over or he's gone over there and they've met

and it's all a bit dramatic. It's like catfish but the person is actually real. Real, yeah, basically. Well you do get a bit of catfishing involved. But the thing that's interesting to me, as you well know Jim, I'm a huge America philer, that's the word. I love our American cousins. I've obviously got a lot of catfishing involved. But the thing that's interesting to me, as you well know, Jim, I'm a huge America-philer, that's the word. I love our American cousins. I've obviously got a lot of American family.

But a lot of the people they target on that show are so sheltered, they've never left the US. Part of it will literally be them getting a passport. Yeah. And so it's very exploitative. And so I do have a bit of a, a bit of a,

kind of a bit of a conflict about whether I should be watching it or not. But anyway, so it's pretty enjoyable um oh yes the history channel should probably have to change its name to but you can't change the thc because that's the active ingredient in cannabis so that would probably be a whole new thing so but your dad's into that but what does your dad make of the venus news uh i haven't spoken to him about the venus news actually what do you make about it i'm kind of excited about it, because actually, funny enough, if anyone hasn't seen this,

they're basically... I don't think it was even NASA, was it, who's discovered it. I'm not sure. Some space agency has discovered that there is potential signs of life in the clouds in Venus, and it would be a chemical that is emitted by...

Phosphine? Phosphine, I think. Something like that. That's right. It's something that is a biom... Phosphine? I think that's right. Something that is a biomarker for life, effectively. So the theory is it would just be microbial life that exists in the clouds. Because Venus

is basically literal hell, isn't it? It's the hottest place in the solar system, I think. And I think that's why it was so surprising, because people, scientists and exobiologists have kind of naturally overlooked Venus and thought, well, there's nothing going to be there. Let's go to Mars. I think it rains sulfuric acid. Like it's really

horrific. A lot like Romford. Yeah. But it's not going to be exciting on a scientific level, right? Because of what it means. But it's not like, oh my God, there's actually like crawling through things, crawling around or flying around or whatever. Yeah, which is kind of horrible idea.

So your dad wouldn't have any truck with that presumably? No, actually, you know what? I'm surprised I said that. I haven't spoken to him about that because I had, but he quickly moved on to how it's like, oh,

it's not like the gray ones though, is it? And like, and then he started saying that, um, you know, all of these pilots that talk about it can't be wrong. And my uncle's seen one.

My uncle is like a, he's a liar. That's like his thing. Is that what you say to your dad? and that my uncle's seen one. My uncle is like a liar. That's like his thing. Is that what you say to your dad? He loves lying. Yeah, yeah. So my uncle Stuart... So you've actually got twins

as a dad and uncle. Oh, this is a different uncle. Oh, because I say one of them always tells the truth and one of them always lies. It's like a fucking... It's like a fantasy novel. So it's not your twin uncle.

No, he should do that. He should absolutely do that. But so my uncle Stuart once called up our house put on a stupid voice and said he was doing a survey to see if we had a phone he's just one of those

sort of the jokey uncle yeah and he just lies all the time because he thinks it's funny but dad's like no you should see the change in him he comes over all serious

he's where do they apparently see this you know what I think I'm so tired of this conversation when i'm just just trying to find out if he's having a nice day um i i can't i just shut it down a little bit but he um he just loves it and there's a really interesting thing in the god delusion where richard dawkins controversial figure though he is for some talks about how um if you if you sort of tally up the stats

and you compare it with population increase the sightings of aliens are pretty much exactly the same as they were for angels and demons and things in more medieval times so there's just a certain subset of the population that really wants to believe, wants to see these things

and my dad is very much one of them but to pick but on something to pick up on something you said a second ago because i love that i love talking about this stuff but pete hates it so we never really do um pete you say stuff like well we've got other stuff to worry about let's not worry about that yet or he'll say stuff like the body is 90 water anyway or 98 water anyway and until the 90s no one ever drank water so don't drink any water so he thinks of things like differently to us so he won't he won't think i'm not going to go near aliens or out of space because there's loads of stuff on earth that i've got to worry about first so he never wants to talk about it but one

of the things you said which i find fascinating is that the u.s government themselves have released footage of pilots going what the fuck was that and no one knows what it is so oh yeah it's not completely that doesn't mean it's aliens that could just be experimental aircraft or different countries secret aircraft whatever but it's still interesting right oh absolutely without a doubt but it's the i don't know it's the certainty that some people have that i find really really interesting in that they to them it is clear-cut proof that not just that thing in that video is an alien, but it's clear-cut proof that certain things from the X-Files are based on reality. Do you know what I mean? Some people

so desperately want to believe that there is more to... more than meets the eye. Oh, mate, when I was about 14, I had this book, which was a book of... It was a book based on the X-Files and what it did. It was a big hardback coffee table book. I got it for Christmas, I think. It was actually written by Jane Goldman.

Right. Jonathan Ross's wife, who then wrote... Yeah, it's a screenwriter. Yeah, yeah, but I think she started off writing that kind of stuff. Anyway, so what it had done is it would go through every episode

of the X-Files, and it would say, this is the reality of the situation, right? But it was obviously designed to be like, oh, but you never know kind of thing. And I was fascinated with it when I was like 14.

And it came in two versions. One was a black one, one was a silver one. And me and my mates used to read it all the time when we were 14. And it was very much kind of hung on the idea of that, you know, you never know type thing. And I wonder whether people, I guess just grew out of it or got other interest or whatever. Maybe some people just never grew out of it.

And because of the internet, do you remember like a year or so ago, there was talk that people were going to storm Area 51. And then only about 200 people turned up and they were already caned. So it didn't really happen. It's funny because, I mean, it is fascinating, isn't it? Because I think we're all broadly in agreement that there must be probably intelligent life elsewhere in the universe,

given the scale of things. There's a practical infinite amount of space. But also because of the way it expands, there are regions we will never meet just because it's running away from us faster than we can travel. But there are certain parts of the universe that do make you go like, oh, are you aware of Boots Void?

No. I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce it, but I'm fascinated by it. So it's this void in space, right? And it's something like 220 million light years in diameter. And there's nothing in it. Yeah.

Just nothing's visible from it. Again, like Romford it again like romford much like romford yeah probably not as dangerous as romford yeah and it's it's just yeah i am fascinated by that what is that and for perspective 220 million light years across that is for light to travel from one side of it to the other at the speed of light it would take 220 million years to get there. I mean, that's big. It's massive.

One of the theories, and it is the meme like, I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens, is that it's a Dyson sphere or it's a part of the universe that's been colonized by intelligent life that has managed to put technology around the stars that means it harvests their light

and therefore it doesn't travel to us. But that is almost certainly not true. But it is fascinating to think about these things but at the same time it's like you know little gray aliens aren't abducting your mates dad no why are they always picking not no disrespect to your dad i'm not suggesting your dad hasn't been abducted by aliens or claims that he does he'd love it but if aliens are so clever they can come to this planet without us even realising, they're not going to abduct some fucking idiot in the Midwest. They're going to abduct, like, you know, Elon Musk, probably. Or, I don't know why I chose Elon Musk there.

It's just a space thing. They're going to choose someone clever, who's made an impact on life, and has got an intelligence, and they're going to go, right, you're here now. What's fucking happening on that planet?

They're not going to ask a guy who's a fucking farmer in the middle of fucking Kansas because he ain't going to know. That's the problem I've got with it. They wouldn't choose that person. Unless

these guys are so advanced that the people coming down doing the abducting are like the equivalent. So they're like alien rednecks coming down going, oh, let's fuck with this guy. Stick this thing in his ass.

So in alien technologies, the top people never do that kind of shit. Because they've got better stuff to do, haven't they? They've got Dyson spheres to build and like, you know, So that's the equivalent

of watching like, watching like Britain's Got Talent or whatever. Yeah, exactly. On a Saturday night. They're just like good old boys. Yeah. So when it comes to a Dyson sphere,

that's interesting because there was a report I read fairly recently about the idea that they found a star that had other bodies orbiting it. And when they rechecked it, the light had dimmed massively and they weren't sure why. And they thought it could be a Dyson sphere because for those who are listening

who don't know, a Dyson sphere is, as you said, it's a structure that's built around a star in theory by an advanced civilization to effectively get all the energy from that star and therefore what we're seeing is a star being dimmed because that's dyson sphere around it right that's what people were saying it could be the case i don't know if it turned out to be the case because the way that they monitor whether there are other bodies in that solar system which is so far away is they monitor the light being emitted because they assume that planets are going across it right which dims it slightly which is how we know where most things are isn't it a lot of it is to do with

um triangulation as well yes exactly so like you know we know about all these exoplanets that are like far off solar systems but you know we've never actually seen them it's just based on the orbits of other things being affected by you know X celestial body must be here to have this effect on this one

gravity and stuff like that yeah exactly but shouldn't it look like they're going to find something that's close enough right

you'd hope so wouldn't you it's always fascinating when you get those kind of like things that come out going like oh we found another

earth we found a twin earth and it's like too far away for anyone to ever get to but it is i don't know i want to make it clear that i'm not like cynical about the very idea of of um of extraterrestrial life and and people we did an email thing a year or so ago asking people if i'd ever seen a ufo to email in and we're quite a lot of people email in i mean admittedly most of them on the way back from the

pub like and it was like i can't really i can't really remember quite a lot of people email in. I mean, admittedly, most of them were on the way back from the pub. And it was like, I can't really remember. But a lot of people did. A lot of people do kind of chime in with that type of stuff. Weather balloon is

what is often sort of decried. But the CIA and stuff haven't really helped themselves over the years, have they? Well, I think though, I mean, Area 51 is

something, isn't it? Yeah. I think it's just a testing for experimental technology and aircraft and stuff like that 51 is something, isn't it? Yeah. So whatever it is... I think it's just a testing for experimental technology in aircraft and stuff like that. Yeah, but doesn't it actually help them to have the misdirect of a lot of people thinking it's something other than whatever it is they're doing?

It doesn't hurt, does it? Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. I remember once being a kid and waking up and looking out the back window of my bedroom. Well, it's the only window in the bedroom, but it was out the back of the house. And over in the horizon,

where there was some clouds, I could see some weird white thing moving in weird shapes, right? At that time, I was like, I mean, obviously it's happened because I was about 14. I was obsessed with UFOs and I was half asleep.

And I probably just, my brain was just doing stuff or whatever. And I wonder how many people that's happened to. So how do you know? The solipsistic idea of it where you don't know whether it's just your brain yeah

so you could you could probably feasibly say that someone at least one person who's seen a little grey alien probably did see it it just wasn't fucking there well they're really

well that's exactly right so I'm reading a book at the moment that I would recommend to you and to anyone listening called The Science of Storytelling by a guy called Will Storr which is all about i've read his book the heretics brilliant brilliant yeah yeah yeah and it's all about how our brains model the world

around us which he talks a lot about in the heretics it's sort of an extension of this idea um and he talks at length about about how the brain works and how there's a great example he uses which is kind of similar to what you're saying which is that when you're sort of walking along in a country lane and out the corner of your eye you feel like you see a little man in the top hat and think what the fuck is that and you turn around and it's just a tree trunk your brain did see a little man in the top hat because it basically got it wrong and it interpreted the world around you slightly wrong in that moment or it's wired to be defensive yes that could be a threat so it's better for us to see a threat yes not be there which is i would think how a lot of people experience these things

i mean i've had a lot of out-of-body experiences and night terrors in my life which are a horrible thing but they are a neurological thing yeah and actually so the first time this happened to me one of the first times this happened to me i uh i was in my bedroom in my at my mom and dad's house and i saw my brother walk into the room um that's weird why is he coming and then he walked into the wardrobe and just disappeared that's weird my brother can't do that yeah and then i just feel like you're awake yeah and then i sort of realized i couldn't move and you try and struggle and you try and sort of shout but but nothing happens and then that's when i sort of felt the kind of being pulled out of my body and it is like a malevolent thing as well it does feel like yeah you've there's something in your room messing with you

yeah um have you ever seen that victorian painting it's a really famous that's a representation of it and it is. It is exactly what it feels like. And so I was really worried about this. I was like, because at the time, I'd never experienced anything like it. I was like, am I losing my mind? So I went to a neurologist and they said, I was in my early 20s at the time,

they said, actually, it's really common in men around that age because something to do with your frontal lobes growing. And it was a family party a little while after that. And an aunt of mine came up to me and said oh so um he saw a ghost i was like right i'm gonna work backwards i know i know exactly what has happened here yeah i haven't seen a ghost dad's going around telling people there's a ghost in my room isn't he yes and to this day he insists it is it's like this is my brain yeah i chose this this happened to me not you yeah exactly i told you about this yeah that's funny yeah so was it does it happen ever since uh yeah here and there sometimes just

for no reason sometimes if actually on a particularly hot night sometimes i can sort of sense it might happen but it's funny because i know what it is now so that malevolence still it still feels like it's there but you can sort of ride it out a little bit. The last time, I had like five in a night. Wow. Really extreme, like really, really full on. Rabble tour. Yeah, but it ran my own head in a single night.

So one of them was, it's funny because you're in bed and you're paralysed and you're asleep and you're awake all at the same time. Have you ever experienced anything like it? Yeah, so the only thing I can kind of chime in with is probably when, you know when you get sick

and you've got like a really fever-y, kind of flu-y type thing and your sleep gets really weird and you get sweaty and you never know you're awake or asleep or not

and weird things happen and you can't control it and you can't wake up. You have that kind of hypnagogic state between... Yeah, that's the only thing I've ever had, thankfully, touch wood.

Is it similar to that or not? It's similar to that but it's really extreme. So the first thing I remember from this five-parter was I was in this garden with loads of overhanging really branchy willow trees.

Netflix will take this. Yeah, absolutely. Five parts. So there was this woman. She was a friend of mine but I knew she'd betray me was like was what I

what I sensed from her right and then there was a swing set and she was getting me to go towards this swing and I remember saying to her so you

you're lead you're literally leading me down a garden path this is just really bad writing and then so I was like I kind of get sassy to my own night terr own that's a brilliant

insight into your subconscious isn't it yeah it's so so weird and later on when i so i think i woke up after that point i was like i'm just going to try and ride this out and i posted something about it on facebook and people like oh you should watch this thing take your mind off it's like no it's not that it doesn't work like that if i was just sat there like watching house of cards this little demon thing would just be sat there watching me watch it going, I'm just waiting for you. You go to sleep. I'm going to just,

I'm still going to mess with you. This is quite full on, Jim. It's horrible. It's no fun. And the, but the, the last one, part five was amazing because I was like,

I must've been in the fetal position because I'm so aware of how mental this sounds. Because the final sort of night terror out of body experience, whatever you want to call it, was I was physically in the fetal position, but in my mind I was like on a little roller coaster in that position and I was like just going on this amazing roller coaster to a techno version of Sweet Child of Mine. And then I woke up.

It's a great payoff. Exactly. No one would have seen that coming it was like and it was as fun as that sounds as well all of the bad stuff

had gone by then I was just loving it that's fucking great it was so weird it might be a bit weird for Netflix yeah it takes its turn

I haven't said that they commissioned Dark though have you seen Dark I have seen Dark have you finished it yeah I just lost track of what was happening

yeah so many times I've been let down by it it was one for. I just lost track of what was happening so many times. I've been let down by it. It was one for the more kind of intellectual view, I think. I had no idea what was happening. To put it in perspective, I paused the show so much that my wife started to get annoyed with me. She was like, look, just fucking watch it. You don't know everything because it's not been explained yet.

Just fucking watch it. That's it, isn't it? You sort of forget sometimes that you're not supposed to know what's going on in the show and it annoys you yeah i know what you mean i thought it was a great show i thought it was really um amazingly done i know it's complicated and i know that maybe it was a little bit too clever for its own good but like the writing in it is just incredible and and and i think i was saying this to me me over the weekend actually we're just chatting about things uh generally and i said you know what?

Good on Netflix for making that happen. Because one, it looked beautiful. It's beautifully done. So it probably cost a bit of money. I know things are cheaper these days, but it looked good. Two, they know it's not going to get a big audience because they're cutting themselves out of probably,

I don't know, say 50% of the available audience because it's in a different language. And I don't particularly subscribe to this, but a lot of people will say it's subtitled. I'm not interested, right? And it's also with a load of unknown actors. So good on them for making it. So for every Stranger Things, which breaks the bank,

or for every commissioning of, or buying the licensing for Friends, which breaks the bank, they do this interesting shit as well. Also, I don't know if you've seen, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, which is the new Charlie Kaufman movie. So it's an interesting, strange movie. I'm still getting Ending Things, which is the new Charlie Kaufman movie. No.

So it's an interesting, strange movie. I'm still getting my head around it. A lot of his stuff's quite weird, eh? Yeah, but actually now he's directing as well as writing. Right. That's really kind of gone off the deep end a little bit. I think the last movie he did was called Synecdoche, New York. He might have had one between that with Philip Seymour Hoffman, which was really unapologetically art house and abstract and strange.

And this is more of the same, a little bit more focused, I think. But again, Netflix have just gone like, you're going to make something that most people aren't going to get. Some people are going to actively hate, in fact, but do it. The art is worth it.

And yeah, I like that. It's like someone at a stack podcast, mate. Exactly. It's just art, man. Maybe people need to reconsider and think they don't actually appreciate art. Yeah, I completely agree I think I think that's right

let's take a quick break when we come back though you're going to tell me a story about Extinction Rebellion which you keep forgetting to tell me you tell me that

after the break and then we'll do some emails don't go anywhere welcome back to the Luke and Pete show or as it is known for this week the Luke and Jim show

or the Jim and Luke show because it's alphabetical that's the way I got Luke and Pete past Pete it's is known for this week the Luke and Jim show or the Jim and Luke show because it's alphabetical that's the way I got Luke and Pete past Pete it's alphabetical he said why is it you first does he recognise the alphabet I'm surprised

not necessarily no we went for a stage on this Luke and Pete show when we first started it when it was Luke and Pete summer we'd researched loads of really interesting shit

and Pete just stopped and it would just be a conversation after that but it's cool it's cool. It's cool. I love doing the show. It's lots of fun. I love chatting to Pete

because he is genuinely an interesting guy. I think people might, he gets a little bit of stick because I think people think he's quite affected, but he's not affected at all. No, he's really not. He's really not, is he? He's perfectly,

he's a proper British eccentric. My best friend, Jimmy, you've met. The fruitarian. Yeah, he used to be a fruitarian. He's like that. He's not affected in any way. He's not on any social media.

It doesn't profess to be anything he is in. He's not affected at all. He's a proper British eccentric. He thinks it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I mean, one day he did, on his own, he just went and walked 50,000 steps and went to as many pubs as he could on the way

got really pissed and just came home again and texted us the next day on the WhatsApp group guess what I did yesterday 50,000 yeah I think it ended up being

something like 24 miles yeah he just does it he's not doing the show off he's not got any social media he's just oh this is what I did yesterday yeah

I've got a friend like that as well you know him actually my friend mark um so he um he just like went to cambridge rather than going to work one day like and just like i mean you know it's not he loses job i don't i don't think they ever knew and he's in a new one now so it doesn't matter but he um remember he went to university in portsmouth and he told me that these are probably two different stories, but I'm going to tell them as if they're the same one. He was really drunk one night. He was a student.

He was very young, so very silly. So he went over to the pier in Portsmouth and he jumped off the edge. And it's like, of any pier, that's a really stupid idea. And he hit his ankle as he landed in the sea. And as he was dragging himself out of the sea at night, he swears there was an old man with a dog staring out to sea, which said to him,

She was kind to you tonight, son, but don't you be testing her again. That's Portsmouth all over, that. That could definitely happen. I was expecting you to go, no. South Sea is really trendy now. Fashionable and quite affluent. But Portsmouth's got

some characters in it man yeah I remember two stories we were about to say one was about a mate of mine I'll just tell you very quickly he's actually from Essex

I won't name him because it wouldn't be fair he's a bit like our background working class but he married a very posh lady and she's so posh that she worked

she does like dressage and equestrian and stuff like that. She had a big competition the next day. She laid all her stuff out, and he came back from the pub. He'd been boozing all day with his mates. For no reason, pulled on her jodhpurs, fell asleep, and shat himself.

So that's a story that I share, which didn't go that well. And the second story I want to tell was in Portsmouth, not far from South Sea Pier. Actually, it probably is quite far. So near the harbour, there used to be a pub called The Victory. Those listening from that part of the world will remember it. I don't think it's there anymore. It was one of the roughest pubs I've ever seen.

And I was in there on a pub call. You can tell from the name. I know, The Victory. It's right opposite the harbour. There's another south coast pub. I don't know if it's South Coast, actually. It's called the Never Say Die. You just know, don't you?

You just know. Don't go anywhere near it. Don't even go on the road it's on. So the Victory, we'd never go in there because it was fucking hard. And it was full of blokes with tattoos. And back in the late 90s, the only people who wore tattoos were sailors and criminals, right? It wasn't a fashionable thing, really. Or maybe it was just becoming fashionable

anyway we only went in there because we're going on the pub crawl we thought it's just opposite the harbour we'd get the ferry across from Gosport to go to the to get there to Portsmouth where all the pubs were we just got off the ferry we just have a quick pint got in there during the day so there'd be no one in there had a pint mate said you want a quick game of pool I was like yeah no worries and I'm all right at pool right I can hold my own and we were playing at do you want a quick game of pool? I was like, yeah, no worries. And I'm all right at pool, right? I can hold my own. And we were playing. At no word of a lie, as we came in,

as we were playing, a guy came in, just the dictionary definition of like a Portsmouth sailor hard man, right? Tattoos everywhere. Just slammed a pound coin on the side of the pool table. I'll play the winner. And I was like, oh, for fuck's sake.

I hate that tradition. But I'm also really competitive. So I didn't want to lose. So I beat my mate and I had like oh for fuck's sake I hate that tradition but I'm also really competitive so I didn't want to lose so I beat my mate and I had to play this guy and I thought and then he comes straight up to me

and I was a student at the time 20 quid on this one then like it wasn't even an offer it was like we're doing that and I think I probably only had 20 quid on me for the whole night

right and I thought I'm not going to try it I'm not going to try this I'm not going to try and we played a couple of shots. He didn't say anything. It wasn't even like a social event.

He was smoking as well, because you could smoke them. Just smoking, staring, holding his pool cue. So he's got a weapon as well. And after about three shots, he potted the black and the white. Did you claim your 20 quid? And I was like, oh, bad luck. And he was like, yeah.

I just walked off and I just left the 20 pound note there. So I just took it. It was just so intense. Yeah. I still remember it now and it was over 20 years ago.

It sounds so joyless. It was. No one was getting anything out of it. Yeah. And I wonder if he knew the intensity or whether that was

just everyday life for him. And that pub, I think, used to do a meat raffle on a Sunday, which also tells you everything you need to know. Before the break, Jim, I said Extinction Rebellion. Tell me the story you want to tell me. I want to talk to you about floppy protesters, because it's

been making me laugh all week. So, Extinction Rebellion have been up to their old tricks, and Sir Stephen House, Deputy Commissioner of the Met Police, is not happy about it. So I've just got some quotes here explaining the situation. So what actually happened? So, basically, protesters at Extinction Rebellion protests

have been using a tactic where they go limp if the police try to carry them away. Because it makes it, first, it's non-violent. It stops things escalating because you make it so clear that you're not a threat. But also, it's just a nuisance because you've got to use more police officers to take them away. So, Sir Stephen House, I don't know what he talks like, but I'm just imagining him.

It's the voice of every dad who's had enough. It's a Sunday night, you know, working in the morning. The kids, they've had too much sugar or something. They're acting up. They've been arguing. And it's amazing. So, he said, we've asked them to stop being floppy. And that might seem like a silly thing to say,

but when we arrest them and pick them up, they go all floppy, which is why you see four or five officers carrying them away. It's a complete waste of officer time and a complete pain in the neck. The problem with them going floppy and four officers carrying them away is it looks to the general public like police are overreacting here. We're not making them go floppy. They're just sort of being a nuisance. If they could just behave like sensible adults,

it's a flipping nuisance. And I think the majority of the public would look at that and go, for goodness sake, you've made your point. You've been arrested. The police are treating you perfectly fairly. Just get on with it. I love it.

Can I joke here about the amount of people over the years who've been upset with me for going floppy? That's brilliant's brilliant it's amazing isn't it like i love how much he's missing the point of what they're doing so they're trying to wind you up they've got the right do you know what you just reminded me of my mate um pav i've talked about sometimes on the show and i've talked about on the ramble he's playing golf for the ramble team, Big Pav. He calls his kids the Swindon lot because when his wife goes over there they don't respect him.

I can imagine him talking like that about his kids. That's so funny. Oh listen right, hello at lucanpitch.com is the email address for those of you

who want to get in touch on anything you've heard over the last however many shows and a lot of people listen back or are catching up on earlier episodes.

There are a lot of episodes out there so do not let me deter you from emailing on anything you've heard. Like I say, it's hello at lukeandpeachow.com. Now, Pilot Neil, who's a legend of the show, Jim, one of our pilots who listens regularly, has got in touch again. It's the first time we've had a message from him for a good while. We wonder what happened to him.

Of course, a lot of our pilot listeners and friends have been grounded because of COVID. So they've been getting in touch here and there. But this is the first time we've heard from Part Neil for a while. Now, before I read this email, I need to give it a context. A couple of weeks ago, I think I might have mentioned this to you in the past, but just in case I haven't. A couple of weeks ago, one of our

listeners emailed in saying they were showing off to their daughter and accidentally swallowed their own wedding ring, which they went and had to fish through their own fecal matter to get back yeah shit to fish through the old shit

to get back now Pilot Neil follows up with an email on this kind of subject okay so that's the precursor to what I'm about to read so he says

dear Luke dear Pete it's actually Jim this week but that's okay he wasn't to know hope you're both well thanks for all the

excellent output over the last six months which has helped me fill the time while I've basically been sitting at home twiddling my thumbs. Your recent email about the swallowed wedding ring made me prick up my ears, and I thought I'd share the story of my best mate Adam with you.

While he didn't pass his wedding ring through his digestive system, he did indeed need to go to similar or even greater lengths to save it. Our story takes place late one night in a house in central budapest where adam lived with his hungarian wife having pulled on his pajamas and brushed his teeth at the end of a long day and as part of his getting for bed ready for bed routine he blearily sat down on the toilet and attended to the final pressing issue of the day it's taking the shit uh mission accomplished and having given himself a good vibe he he went to wash his hands. It was at this moment, standing at the sink,

that he had one of those moments of shocking realisation that knocks the breath out of you for a few seconds. His wedding ring had disappeared from his finger. Oh, God. And while he looked around the sink area

for where he could have dropped it, it dawned on him that the toilet bowl behind him had just finished its mighty, gurgling flush. Now, as background to this story, you should know this is a man who has experienced a very similar shock in the recent past when he had managed to pull the same wedding ring off his finger and throw it in the bin while drying his hands on a paper towel in an airplane toilet he had only noticed when he got back to his

seat panicking when he saw his naked ring finger but thankfully found it by returning to the toilet and rummaging through the bin. Now, Pilot Neil doesn't say if that was on one of Neil's flights. I mean, presumably it wasn't. Anyway, so that's the pretext. In the wake of that, Neomissia promised that he'd get the ring resized, but hadn't done so, which of course did little to calm him down now,

as he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, wondering how well the conversation he was about to have with his wife was going to go. And unlike an airplane toilet bin, no amount of rummaging would get the ring back this time. Or would it? Showing tremendous initiative and courage on their own part, his wife pointed out the toilet would flush from the house into the bigger drains that run outside the main road.

Although the ring would surely be lost once it reached the main sewer system, it was unlikely that it had been made that far yet, that he had made it that far yet. And after one short, one-sided conversation, it was agreed that he might yet be able to save a day if he really wanted to. Oh, Andy Dufresne.

Andy Dufresne. It was now the early hours of the morning and this is how he found himself outside in his pyjamas, lit only by the streetlights, prizing open the manhole cover and sliding it to one side revealing the glistening darkness of the Budapest sewer system below.

As it was so late the streets were quiet but an elderly gentleman walking his dog kept a lookout for cars for him and Adam stepped down the rungs to leave his ankle deep in water and prepared for the onslaught.

Because we've all seen movies where people do that, right? We've all got an idea of what it's like to go down a storm drain, but I guess better. Upon the dog walker's call, Adam's wife would flush the toilet in the house and a flood of water would rush down the pipe

where his hope of the spot is ring with the light of a head torch and fish it out. Now, why you have to give him 10 out of 10 for effort, it was to no avail. And although he withstood a number of soakings before he had to return to street level and reseal the manhole, he had to admit defeat. After squelching back to the house

to face whatever reception might be waiting there, he returned to the bathroom and stripped off his soaking, stinking pyjamas to have a shower. It was only when he opened the laundry basket that he saw his wedding ring sitting proudly on top of the clothes he had taken off about an hour earlier when getting ready for bed in the first place. That is amazing.

I think he did get the ring resized after that. Oh, and they subsequently got divorced anyway. I've changed the names to protect the innocent. Cheers. Currently grounded, Pilot Neil. Bless them. What a story. It's an amazing story. It's a shame it didn't work out. It's one of those things that is accelerated bit by bit.

And before you know it, you're standing ankle deep in shit down a sewer because you thought, oh my God, what am I going to do here? And I think every idea has probably made it worse. Yeah. This is exactly why we need to break up. It's the sort of thing she might have said later on.

This sort of thing needs to stop happening. She's packing her clothes in the house while he's in the sewer. Yeah. My husband's in the sewer. What do you want me to do?

Yeah. It happens though, doesn't it? You have these little domestic things around the house. I remember once dropping my girlfriend's tampons down the back of the washing machine

which was in a cupboard and then losing the spatula trying to retrieve them thinking cut your losses cut your losses go to the shop buy some more

we'll laugh about this one day separately not today no no not today we'll laugh about this one day separately in our own houses

my dad actually never took his wedding ring on off rather took it on never taken it off so it's grown around his finger that ain't coming off I think it on never taken it off so it's grown around his finger

that ain't coming off I think it's quite common my father-in-law's similar I think he's just never taken it off and his body's changed shape he's still in he's still in good nick

he's trimmed but I think his body's just changed shape and his ring it looks like it'll never come off it actually looks quite uncomfortable I take mine off as soon as I get home

I just put it on a little dish yeah smart to know where it is. Yeah, I just don't know what's happening. And I think it's the Horncastle family, James Horncastle, you know. I think he has a tradition in his family,

hope he doesn't mind me saying, where I think it's because he comes from a line of people who worked in manual work. They never wear wedding rings. So he never actually wears one. Makes sense. I'm surprised. I mean, this stuff must happen all the time.

Just all the time. And the thing is, though, how do you stay on sentimentato is it that important could you just get another one or is it really important do you think i think i would be sad i think it's the same one i've had so i got married i'd be sad if i lost it but then as you move through relationships people can renew wedding vows and get new wedding rings and all that kind of stuff and your wedding day is a special day right so it's a it's a physical reminder of that day yeah so that's that's on you like constantly so like a bit of a strange comparison but like you know how moving house can be a really emotional thing because all the little things you've kept that you've now got to

put in a box and take somewhere else the reason you've kept them is because they're a memory aren't they yeah and not that it's like you feel like i want to hang on to this because i have no need for this little trinket I picked somewhere picked up somewhere but if I get rid of it I'm throwing away the memory as well because I won't ever have anything to remind me of it

and to kick it off so a wedding ring is like the most extreme and massive example of that you can have so it must be devastating to lose it I'll be

to put it in perspective if I leave the house and I say I jump on the train or whatever and I realise on the train that I've lost my picture you look like Spider-Man

yeah so my wedding ring actually fires webs out of it no if I haven't got my wedding ring on I kind of feel a little bit sad for the rest of the day I'd go back if I could to get it and put it on yeah I've regularly done that if I forget to put it on because I'm in a hurry I will run back and put it on does this mean we're not married anymore yeah my wife's hoping so but um but yeah so it will be sentimental for me. I'm really bad. I think human beings generally are bad at throwing things away. Yeah.

My wife and I have just come to a compromise where we've got so much stuff. I kind of want to throw it away, but my heart's really not in it. And she doesn't want to, but our flat is small. So the compromise we've come to is our new neighbours downstairs recently moved in. So I introduced myself to them.

And they said, all the boxes you've got left over from moving can i have them and because fortunately we've got quite a big attic space so i said to me look why don't we just put the stuff we don't ever use or look at or need or wear in these boxes and put them in the attic then they're out the way but if we desperately want them back we can still get them back so we're going to do that because it's hard for people the extreme end of the scale i was in edinburgh last weekend and i walked we walked past a house that were basically a whore that was living there and it was a massive old beautiful old gray brick edinburgh house you

know you get those ones edinburgh and and the stuff was like piling out of the garland onto the street the proper psychological problem oh absolutely massively did i ever tell you about the crappening? Oh, you have, but you should tell our listeners. Yeah. It's a great story. It's got its own name.

It wasn't a great story to live through. So, it was November the 13th, a couple of years ago. I remember that because it's my mum's birthday, right? And we had...

It's what she would have wanted for her birthday. Exactly, yeah. Forgot to call her because of all this. Yeah. Never forgive myself. So,

what happened was... I forgot to call my dad for his birthday once for a time difference when I was in the US and I was so upset. Yeah. I felt so bad. So what happened was... I forgot to call my dad for his birthday once for a time difference when I was in the US and I was so upset. I felt so bad. Carry on. So we've been having problems with our upstairs toilet.

We've got a pair of plucky little plumbers, Lee and Terry, to come round and they basically pushed the blockage down and we thought it was all sorted. Brilliant. No one else is in, so I flushed the upstairs toilet to check it, going about my day.

And then I hear a noise. And then there's a smell. And basically the downstairs bathroom had exploded. And you're thinking, when you say exploded, do you mean? Yes. Yes. I saw the photo.

I mean what you think. It was absolutely horrific. It's carnage, isn't it? People don't believe it sometimes when you show it to them because they think it's from the internet. And I'm sure it's on some plumber's thing, like meme Facebook group somewhere. Because they came back not to try and fix it,

but to take a video to send their mates. And it was absolutely unbelievable. When I first saw it, I thought, this can't be real. Joe and Terry just played a trick on me and just thrown chocolate mousse everywhere. I mean, we were getting on, but not that well. So I got them to come back. And we had to basically, we had to like move for a couple of days.

It was so bad. And we had to get a specialist to come in who was wearing a hazmat suit, right? And this is what made me think of this. Because it was like quite late at night. And I said to him, so have you ever seen anything as bad as this? He was like, yeah yeah seen one thing worse and this is his first day back from his holiday

by the way all this stuff is piling up he goes yeah seen one thing that was worse so yeah there was a guy's house we had to sort out he was a bit of a hoarder

bottles of piss everywhere and we found some found some letters and yeah it turns out it was a bit of a nonce oh so you've seen one worse thing

and it was literally a paedophile's lair and by the way my question was related to plumbing incidents yeah yeah I meant about

yeah you know I'm not just talking about generally in your life yeah oh what saw a man kill a man I don't mean that

you know oh I was in the I was in a war I mean the plumbing I want to feel better about my plumbing situation sort it out yeah sort it out.

Sort it out. Eventually, we had so many plumbers look at this. We had a couple that were in a company. What's the landlord doing? Oh, I don't want to libel them. I don't want to talk about them or think about them because I'm moving out soon. But we had a company called Ready Steady Jet come along. They had a look at it.

They said they were- Oh, just a husband and wife team? They were a husband and wife team who had got into plumbing together somehow and you would think ready steady flow no but they've gone ready steady jet they've thrown a curveball in at the end yeah i like that about them they were an adorable husband and wife team uh they wanted to put a camera up there and and figure out what was going on with the blockage my letting agent wouldn't let them so they hired someone else to put a camera up there uh wouldn't let them finish they just kept hiring people to

do bits of the job eventually they sent around this guy called les who les was amazing and um he had to lean it turned out to be you know you get those cages that go on top of pipes yeah um to stop birds nesting in yeah in in ventilation pipes so one of those had fallen in and created the blockage and that was that was what was the problem here so So eventually they sent Les round. Les had no idea what he was actually looking for until he got there. And he had to hang off the side of this ledge at the back of the building. And he's scared of heights.

And only learn this as he's learning it. Only learn this as he's learning what the job is. So I've got to hold his legs down while he... Why are you involved? Because they just sent one man for a two person job and they're not good at their jobs this letting agent.

They're the worst letting agent in North London. And you were basically doing your job. I just want my toilet to work.

So Les and he looks like a sort of mini version of Dave Bautista who's a great really charismatic guy. So he's leaning over this ledge

while I'm holding his legs and he's trying to literally put a piece of fishing wire down there to hook this thing out of this pipe, but there's a chip shop below us, right? So that is still a functioning shit pipe. So every time someone uses the toilet downstairs,

he gets a blast of steam into his face. He's trying to fish this thing out every now and then right and like so i'm stood i'm like kneeling on his legs at this point he's gonna fall over and then i see i see a woman look out of a window look over and i look over catch her eyes and then like just the blind shut like something in a john hughes movie right how many people are using the toilet down there well it's a restaurant so you know it's like whoever whoever needs it so it was a fairly constant stream this thing so eventually les gets it out and my other flatmates are home at that point and he and i

it's like we've been through Vietnam today. We are just like... Just do VR once a month. He sent me memes every now and then for a while. So after that, Les is in such a good mood. He keeps telling me about how, as a plumber, sometimes women he visits try to initiate things with him. He's had threesomes. Is that true, do you think?

He had a glint in his eye that made me believe it. I don't think that shoving your face in a shit pipe for three hours is a great fucking, you know... Advert for that. No. No. But I would hope, for Les's sake, that not every job was as horrific as that.

But, yeah, you think it's taken a turn, that story, and it just keeps turning. Yeah, it's a lot to offer, yeah. It's a plumber at the end. Has it been all right ever since? Yeah, it's been a turn that story it just keeps turning yeah it's a lot to offer yeah poor plumber at the end has it been alright ever since yeah it's been fine since in fact I've kept that little little cage

on the on the balcony or not on the balcony but just on the little ledge thing just to know it's there wash it first just to I'm not going anywhere near it

the rain is washing that it's just don't show Lesley it'll get like PTSD you'll get like a flashback Jim there's no way on earth that anyone can follow that story so we're going to have to

wrap it up here mate but it's been absolutely brilliant having you on we'll definitely get you back on when Pete fucks off again which could be any time let's be fair

if he comes back if he doesn't come back I'll see you on Monday bring Les in if you want don't bring the guy with him back there Les would genuinely be an amazing interview

oh would he oh maybe I'll bear that in mind but it's been brilliant it's been the Luke and Pete show for this week only it's been the Luke and Jim show or the Jim and Luke show I this week only. It's been the Luke and Jim show,

or the Jim and Luke show. I hope you enjoyed it. Any plumbing mishaps, any other stories about wedding rings, whatever you want to email in about, hello at lukeandpete.com. We'll be back on Monday. I'm pretty sure Pete will be back in situ.

But for now, it's a goodbye from me, and it's goodbye from Jim Campbell as well. Goodbye. See you soon this was a staccato production and part of the acos creative network