The Luke and Pete Show - The Six-Sheep Threshold

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

We kick off today’s episode with a look back on the good and the bad of 1990s cartoons and satire, before taking a moment to appreciate the late, great John Virgo.What’s more, there’s some battery business and listener correspondence to attend to. A Network Rail gentleman tells Luke and Pete a bit more about animals being hit by trains.Send us your best stories, questions and comments here: [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Luke and Pete Show. It is Thursday the 12th of February. Many happy returns if you are celebrating a birthday. If you are celebrating a birthday, you are celebrating a birthday on the same day as International Darwin Day. Good. And also Abraham Lincoln as well.

Oh, good. And the death day of cartoonist Charles Schultz. Again good. Um, that was the death, that was his death day, actually. Oh, death day. Because he, it would have been strange if he was born in the year 2000. That's weird. So he didn't witness, um, September 11th.

So he never got the, um, chance to become, um, radicalized like the Dillbert man. Yeah. He also died recently, didn't he? He did, really, he did die recently. After taking some very poor medical advice. Yeah. I think, I, I think he, he did it in parallel with, um, good medical advice. But, I mean, I didn't do the full Steve jobs.

You cannot excuse. some of the things he said. No. I don't really have, I have an awareness of what Dilbert is or was, but I don't know that much about it, and I know that he was essentially a dreadful racist. He was, um, the Dilbert

was very good, like sort of early, like the kind of, um, the web comic era, everybody was just trying to do a Gary Larson Farside or a Dilbert or a Perry Bible fellowship, uh, including myself. I had a lot of cartoons on there online for a little while.

and everybody wanted to be like them doing funny satirical stuff and he was like he made so much money out of Dilbert because everybody, it's that kind of timeless thing it's why your stone's called Steve Austin and Mr McMahon characters work because everyone's got an idiot boss

that you hate and everyone wants to kind of get one over on him and that was Dilbert that was just a guy, an IT professional dealing with stupid questions from idiot sort of middle managers and stuff It was a very universal message. The Farside was a massive hit in our household.

Oh, massively. There was not, I don't think there was a single desk calendar that didn't have a Gary Larson. Yeah, we used to get the old annual and stuff or whatever it was. The thing where you'd have a collection of them every year at Christmas and the calendar. Yeah.

And some of them are, I can remember one particular Gary Larson Far Side cartoon, which was, it was like a woman saying to a man, a wife saying to a husband. I'm leaving you, Pete, because you're this, this, this and this. You never say this and you always do this and this and this and what's more, you have the head of a chicken and the man's head was a chicken's head. Yeah, nice.

And my parents just thought that was the funniest thing ever happened. Did you ever have, and it was, I completely agree. This is very much the Mercury maze era of my household. What's Mercury Mays? I told you, when we had a maze, it was the... That's right. ...theirdering it had Mercury and then it was gone there, right. It was that era.

Lovely. It probably just fell into a crack into the kitchen floor or something. I don't know. Killed a rat or two. I loved it because it was like basically Terminator 2. Yeah, who knows? It might pop up at any point and, you know, take the form of one of your parents. You wouldn't need more.

You wouldn't need more of it. but is that your dad's doornail? Did you ever see Max Cannon's Red Meat, which was very popular around about that time as well? I've never heard of it. I'm going to look it up now. It was in like a lot of like a... There was a couple of like compendiums that were very popular

and it was very offensive. Just, just... But like subversive offensive. It was like, it was real... It was like characters like Milkman Dan and... Is it mainstream? Johnny Lemonhead. It was relatively mainstream for that kind of like,

you know, people who wanted like American stuff. you know, it was the kind of, it was, it was, it was just kind of like, it wasn't rude, it was just, um, it made this kind of a town of like horrible creatures and characters that would kind of, um, and it would be very simply drawn. It wasn't particularly well put together. Although the characters were very detailed. He only ever used the same character three times in a, in a three piece. Um, and, uh, if you've never sort of experienced it and, um, you like that sort of thing, um, probably has a, aged very well but um that's certainly something i was very do you also remember around um the knities um crapsden villas yes that was um channel four wasn't it yeah so i went to a bit of a bit of spit an image type thing around some people who live in like this fictional terrible wasn't it was stop motion wasn't it yeah yeah yeah it's like but it was like um grim they lived in like a terrible

part of um in the city london basically but the reason i want on a deep dive with that is because the woman who created that is now one of the main voice actors in Pepper Pig. And I was watching Pepper Pig with my son a couple of weekends ago. And I was thinking, do you know what? This voice of like Mummy Rabbit is really, really familiar. And I can't work out who it is. And I can't work out why. It took me fucking ages to place it.

And because I didn't want to look it up. and eventually I realized it was from that because I think she did all the voices and stuff as well but that's quite funny isn't it like from Crapsom Villas to Pepper Pig which my son is obsessed my son is obsessed with Pepper Pig right he's in there

he's in there is he right yeah Matt Mike these days have you ever seen Pepper Pig I've seen bits of it yet yeah so I'll go in there so all the different animals that are friends or parents of the characters or whatever

before they speak they make the traditional animal noise that they would make, right? So obviously they're anthropomorphic say animals and they speak like human beings, but they have the features of the animals and they make the noise. So for example, like Danny Dog,

he'll talk to Pepper because it's his friend, like a normal person, but before he talks, he'll go, like that. Nice, to indicate that he's a dog. Yeah, and Pepper always goes, before she talks, right? So these days, when I go in to see my son,

he'll say, is it a nursery day? And if it isn't, he knows he's allowed to watch a bit of TV in the morning. Nice. If I say no, he'll go, I want to watch pepper pig. That's excellent. And if I say it is a nursery day, so there's no TV, he screams at the top of his voice for 15 minutes.

He starts putting fox in the electrical. Everyone in the neighbour hates me. That's what he does. My daughter has graduated from Mr. Tumble. We'll not watch Mr. Tumble now. Oh, my son, this dislikes Mr. Tumble. But we'll watch Justin's house, which is a grown version of Mr. Tumble. No, I don't think she does.

She doesn't seem to anyway. She didn't seem to see the connection. Even though when Mr. Tumble occasionally turns up on Justin's house, it's just, Mr. Tumble, sorry, Justin has just kind of decided that he's going to just leave Tumble behind. Yeah, how would you take the daughter you have access to to see Tumble live? Yeah, yeah, and he didn't do any Tumble. He didn't do any Tumble, and he played... As discussed,

cold players, I will fix you at the end and got a bit teary. I don't know if he's leaving behind the whole jamboree. Is he, he's shacking the whole thing? What's he going to do next,

you reckon? I don't know. He's a king of the format? Pretty naughty stuff. Maybe like a naughty adult pantal. Like Jim Davidson's babes in the wood? The thing he's always wanted to do. He was quick on YouTube yesterday

with, this would record a few days in advance, but obviously John Virgo passed and I was like, oh, that is so sad. You fucking mop up that. Mop up that ad sense, mate. Terrible time to do it.

January. Awful, Jim, awful. Awful luck. Virgo was a legend. Was he a professional snooker there? Yeah, he was, yeah, yeah. He wasn't like, well, he was kind of played in this. So he won a big, I think he won one ranking tournament

towards the end of the 70s. And I think he was kind of on the wane when that big snooker explosion happened in the 80s. But he kind of paladed into his TV career pretty well. Nice. And he's just this dead pan, Mancunian kind of type. But he would, the thing about, Virgo was that he was like a real student of the game and he was a brilliant commentator

and he just had that manner, that timing, that quality of the commentator. Because Snooker is quite a tough sport to commentate on because I think that, and we talk about this in terms of football commentators a lot where we say like, you know, they just never shut up. Like if you listen to a football commentator, the worst would be like, so when you get like a Champions League game and it's Fletcher and McCoyst and fucking McMahon. They get itchy, don't they? They get really itchy.

Yeah, there's three of them. which is completely unnecessary and they never stop talking it's like listening to a podcast over the top of the game where Snooka is a lot more measured

and the timing you're almost it's one of the few sports still left where the style of commentary is just to punctuate the action which makes it a very gentle thing and Virgo was just

the absolute master of it and he was also I remember once and obviously he did Big Break which was a huge show in the 90s right I mean Big Break was a snooker themed game show

on at like 7.30pm on a Saturday night. It was massive. It was like bullseye, but for Snoca, obviously. But I remember being,

so I worked for a company that sponsored the World Snooker Championships one year. And so I got to go and get all the VIP tickets and stuff, which is an absolute touch. And I was in the

VIP area sitting on the sofa, and they were showing the games that were happening in the arena. And there's a couple of people there, and Virgo was one of them. And someone who I

kind of knew through work was chatting to Virgo. So I wasn't really in the conversation, but I was just part of it. And he was chatting away for ages. It was honestly like a total gentleman, but he loved Snooker. He had, he had like an absolutely like

encyclopedic knowledge of all the players. And it's just a brilliant commentator. And for all accounts, a brilliant guy. So a real sad loss, actually, to sport generally. Just a, yeah. It'll be weird because the World Snooker Championships, which I love, is coming up in a couple of

month's time and obviously he won't be there so that'd be a real shame is that his last kind of was he sort of commentating him until the very end i think so it's not been released at how he passed away i mean he was 79 so could be anything i suppose shoot out could could could have been pub fight with snook balls in the sock could have been a jewel an old-fashioned jewel an old-fashioned jewel an old-fahed snooker skus but anyway i say god rest him yeah god speed absolutely um you're not a snook a snooker man though are you not snook a snook a man no Again, but you appreciate, you're right though, you appreciate the kind of Sunday afternoon. My nan used to have it on a lot.

Just that lovely kind of peace and choir, the lovely clank of the balls, and just a little bit of commentary peppered, almost whispered. But having the gravity of that gruff northern voice kind of just kind of gets you through a little bit. Definitely. You can still whisper and get your point across. I think it's the mark of a real confident. commentator to just be complimentary to the action just to be like chill completely agree. Rather than I try and way too hard.

Anyway, I think I say God rest the man. I'm sorry that you passed away. Let's have a break, Peter. When we come back, we've got some listener corresponders, including some emails and some batteries, so we probably work through those, I reckon. Lovely. Lovely.

We're back with a looking peter, sure. And when we have them, we will give you them. The batteries. We have a battery feature. Smoke them if you got them, as the fun loving criminals said. Exactly. Smoke them, smoke them, smoke them if you got them.

If you ain't got them, because I just, just bad. Bad song. Bad song. I liked it. It probably is bad. I liked it at the time. I think if you go back and listen to it,

same deal with the Louis Armstrong song cover. Just bad. And I was as big a fan as the fun and loving criminals could have at that point. But bad, bad. Bad stuff. I went to go and see Fun Love and Criminals. criminals at Portsmouth Guildhall back in the day.

Yeah. I had a lovely time. But, yeah, I'm not sure what they'd be like now. But our friend Tom is the right-hand man of Huey, isn't he? He is, yeah. I think the funneling criminals are Huey-less. I think is it fast and nobody else from the original lineup? Yeah, so Tom always says that there are more people in the fun, love of criminals

from Leicester now than there are. which is amazing from New York alright let's do some batteries if you would like to open up any electronic device remote control

whatever you've got just slide up on the little plastic tab and just tell us what's in there tell us what brand batteries in there we've got one from who's this from it's not clear who this oh Klaus

Klaus M Schneider from Germany which is very enjoyable Wow This came into us on the 3rd of February, so a few days ago. Hi there to the Luke and the Pets. Another attempt to land at least one new player, a 9-volt battery from my digital multimeter and smoke detector. May I present for your consideration?

Hang on, was that a digital multimedia and a smoke detector that was the same product? Can't be surely. Can't be surely. But you don't want to be taking the smoke detector out of the kitchen just to use it to check a, you know, a battery or something. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Yes, for your consideration, oh yeah, Mars, it's two, two batteries. Mars and Mustang Industrial Alkaline.

We should make it clear to producer Bruno that we don't let more than one entry at the same time, Bruno. Sharpen up. I forgot what the rules are. We gave up the future weeks ago. I'm particularly interested in the Mars ones because I don't remember seeing those before, so I'm going to look those up. But actually having said that, I mean, Mustang is a no-go. Mustang we see a lot of.

but Mars look listen to this they're not a new player Mars but we've only seen them once before back in April of 2018 our friend Helen sent those back in back in 2018 and so yeah they're not a new player but they're very rare so congratulations

yeah well I like the Mustang logo because it's got a little horsey in it and it's quite a nice little logo if a little bit formal but the Mars one I mean it looks like there's an explosion of sparks which you don't want to see it's not an ideal image for any battery

but yeah look unlucky Klaus Schneider from Germany where else would you be from one would suggest 100% to probably clarify that but you keep them coming in keep them coming in you've only got one oh no you've had a go before you didn't quite get there So hello, like pachotcom, is the way to do that.

Yeah. What about this email from Dom? Hello to you, Dom. And if you're someone who's of a nervous or kind of squeamish disposition, you might want to fast forward here. But this is following up a conversation we had last week, which is about, you know, do you remember we said that like the kind thing to do

is to like put animals out of their misery if they get hit with cars and stuff like that. Yeah. Which is something that I witnessed a parakeet get hit by a car and die in front of me in Barcelona about two days ago and it was very upsetting. That is sad. That is sad. They're just so colourful, Luke. I don't know why it matters more.

On one side of it is nice to hear that Parakeet are such a successful species that are also in Barcelona and that's good. Because we see them everywhere around here. I mean, my goodness me, you can hear them come in a mile off. And there's so many of them fly over my garden every single day. Bloody Joey Hendricks That's a myth, isn't it? Yes, that's why I did a little giggle. I thought I was going to get away with the clarification

or without the clarification, but it didn't. So there you go. Dom says the following anyway. Hi guys. Luke's mentioned about being the kind thing to do when ringing the neck of an injured bird reminded me of some childhood trauma. I would have been around 12 years old at a mate's house we were in the garden when his cat became very interested

in something under a shrub. We went to investigate and saw a tiny baby bird on the floor. this thing was very young no feathers etc like luke our assumption was that we needed to put it out of his misery we found a brick and then had a big long argument over who should do so he said i don't actually remember who struck the fatal blow but we've never spoken about it since in the following two decades and it was nicely repressed until recently thanks for all the pods dom that's the world's shittest version of i know what you did last summer ever yeah i completely agree yeah but you know i want my um one of my um my

colleagues at when I worked at Sky. He came back with a story about, he came back on a Monday, a story over the weekend or something where he was like, oh, yeah, this mad thing happened. I was out for a walk in the, I don't know where it was, Epping Forest or something, with my son. And we saw this chick,

like this, like quite small chick. And it was weird looking. And it looked really looked like a vulture. It was like the weirdest thing. And I would never see anything like it before. And it was properly, you know, strange. And so, I mean, it had lost its mother and we didn't know what to do. And we couldn't identify it as a species because it looked so weird.

So we basically put it in a shoebox that I had in the car and took it to the vet. And we were really excited like it was going to be a kind of really exotic find or whatever. Yeah. And turned out it was just a pigeon. And obviously, you never, no, no, that's what pigeons look like has chicks, but you never see them. Yeah. Because they never fly the nestle. Like Google, Google, Google lenses.

it? Can you just take a picture of him? This is about 2008. Oh, right. Sorry, I thought you meant to know. No, it was a long time. It was quite recent, right.

I said when I worked at Sky. I've worked with you for eight years. I don't know what you do during the day. I thought you can skip it away from Sion Lane. But if you Google image like baby pigeon, they do look really weird. Let's have a look. They don't look at all like pigeons.

They've got massive big beets. Oh, they look lovely. They look like little fellas. Yeah. You wouldn't know that was a pigeon, though, would you? No, you really wouldn't. The beak looks too long. The beak looks...

Oh my God, they're so... Go on and see a baby pigeon! Oh, my... I think we'd be more patient with pigeons if they shored off... If they hung out with their little babies, they're absolutely adorable. They've got massive eyes, tiny heads and big old beaks.

It's a proper like Michael McIntyre thing, observational thing, so you never see baby pigeons, do you? But you genuinely don't. No, no, you really don't. I wonder where they... They must not fled until... No. Older or something.

No. Exactly. What's your approach? Because the wife I have access to is quite strict on our son chasing pigeons. She says it's cruel. I don't. I think up to a point, you can get away with an excited like ah ha ha ha ha. But if they're chasing them down like alleyways and stuff, putting fist into hand like that.

I can go and get you pigeon. Yeah. do it, don't they? Yeah, I don't get, all kids do it, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm a little bit in the middle. I'll be in the middle of what sounds like you and your partner, I would say. Because my argument is just that they're obviously stupid, and they've got wings? Like, it's almost like.

They can get where, yeah. Look, if my daughter manages to get into, get involved with a pigeon, they've only got themselves to play in there, crying out loud. Yeah. There's a big debate among the cat owner community about how cats can be devastating for local bird life and stuff and it's like actually a lot of people say that's not true like a cat would never really better catch a bird unless it's fledged the nest too early or it's already injured because they're just not quick enough

and birds obviously can fly so like I don't know to me it feels I can't talk between I don't want him to be cruel to animals but at the same time is it that cruel? I don't know You're just, just excitement. You want to, they're not going to, you know, when they grab all of them, they're not going to just stamp on them, are they? It's just going to be... Also, he's going home for chicken nuggets in the minute.

If you want to talk about cruelty to animals. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Anyway, let's finish up with this email from Dave Fowler. Hello to you, Dave. Is that Dave, the Patonk guy? Is that Patonk Dave? Might be. Might be.

It could be, couldn't it? He says, now then, guys, I'm a signaler for network rail. And after listening to your latest show, I thought I'd help answer a couple of questions. You've raised. Obviously, Pete, you... those people don't remember, you claimed that they have to stop train drivers for certain amounts of cows. Right, nice, yeah, okay, yeah, fine. Dave says, according to our rules, we must caution trains for cows and more than six sheep.

More than six sheep. So five sheep, absolutely fine and dandy. That's your threshold. Six sheep, that's too many sheep. That's too many. According to our rules, a train will proceed at a reduced speed over the affected portion of the line. This also applies to swans. Any swan on the line and trains will be cautioned through to ensure they aren't hit.

What does a swan get in an elevated status? I know, it seems like, again, they've got wings. They've probably got more propulsion than all of the other animals. Take some ages to take offer, didn't it? Yeah, but yeah, but you'd think they could flap their wings and get out of the way. But yeah, I mean, are they protected, aren't they? It's like I haven't seen a panda on the old lines, isn't it? Did you know that...

I think that's unlikely in the UK? Well, that one could have escaped from, I don't know, a zoo or something. But is this not an approach because of the chances of a derailment rather than worries about the animals themselves? Yeah, but well, swans, no. No, cow, surely. Cow's going to derail. Cow's going to do some damage, yeah.

But swans, I think swans are just because they're protected species. And if you can avoid it, you should be able to. They break the train's arm. Exactly. Did you, to round off, here's a little cheeky fact. Did you know that Morse-like pandas died in captivity because the people who were looking after them didn't realize that they have to basically

punch the anus of the baby panda so it shits. Like, they can't poop on their own. You've made that. And you've basically got to punch them in their bomb to make the... You've got to slap them in their bum to make the poo come out.

What, every time? Every time. That's what the moms and dads do, apparently. But yeah, they wouldn't grow in captivity the longest time because they hadn't figured out, because we hadn't figured out, that you've got to slap the shit out of them literally. They've almost evolved and been selected for extinction, haven't they pandas? Yeah.

There's a lot of controversy around the conservation of pandas, I believe. Right. Because they don't eat the food they're supposed to eat. They have all these problems with themselves. And there's obviously been some deforestation and some habitat destruction as well. But like they are, because I think that in the animal conservation space, yeah they i think a lot of people think they get an out they basically get a lot more attention than a lot of other species that are genuinely important for biodiversity because because

pandas are really seen as really cute and they're this symbol of the wild life fun all the rest of it you know but they're the money they're the money um you know you got that that's they're the they're the um john seeners do you know what i mean like you they you have to they sell all the t-shirts they've they keep everyone afloat in in thinner times So you've got to maintain. It's your money maker. She's your money maker. Yeah.

And also, when you first have a baby, they talk to you about how really important the first poo the baby does it. Called maconium. Right. It has to come out. And if it comes out while they're in the mother still, it can be really dangerous. Yeah, you don't want that floating around the old amniotic fluid, do you? And the first one when they're born is a really important. It's like a real, like, tar-like substance.

I actually remember quite vividly my son's maconium. Right. Yeah. It's a very fancy name for some black shit, some tar-like shit. It's one of those things that like, of which there are many when you first become a parent. Like, you just, you'd no idea it even exists until you become a parent. And by the way, don't forget the maconium. And you're like, what?

What? What's the last thing? Because that's the thing that only happens once. I've not bought a steriliser for the mccorium for crying out loud. No, exactly. And it's like, it's all the mucous and bar and fluid and stuff, isn't it? It has to be passed. really safely.

Loved him on sex music. We'll probably take a... Stuart Reconium. We'll probably take a dive out at this point. Yeah, let's go. That's a good line to finish on, Peter. Yeah, there's no top in maconium. Hello at lookingpeachot.com is the way to get in touch with the show.

Or, as discussed, stick him in the YouTube comments. Let's start a community on the YouTube. Why not? A community that I can see. What's the worst that could happen? What's the worst that can happen? Hafen. Do you want to quick run down

of the worst things it can happen? People calling us paedophiles, conspiracy theorists about Jewish people all that kind of shit let's swerve that, let's stay away from that. Okay, one good, one bad then. And you have to know

I enjoy being called a paedophile so for that to be acceptable. Right, we'll be back on Monday. See you later. Lukey Matt, see you later. Bye. The Luke and Pete show is a stack. production and part of the ACAST creator network.