The Balls.ie Football Show welcomed Soccer AM's Tubes onto the podcast this week for a chat about his history at the Sky Sports show, and of course his persona as a rapper/interviewer with one question and one question only for some of the biggest stars on the planet.
While these days his interviews are typically just himself and a footballer sitting down for a chat, Tubes always gets good stuff from whoever he is with as they tend to be far more relaxed around him, perhaps knowing of his history of being able to laugh at himself.
But working at a show like Soccer AM is the type of thing many people would consider a 'dream job', so we asked him how it all started as he has been there longer than most.
I think I'm owed a testimonial to be fair. But basically, I just did work experience for two weeks when I was 15, and I never left.
I was good at making cups of tea, and [Tim] Lovejoy at the time said 'do you want to come back and work on the show every Saturday'. So I worked for free for four years, every Saturday just coming in and making things, then started working in the sports library, which is getting all the footage for the broadcast to go out, and then Tim Lovejoy said 'do you want a full-time job on Soccer AM?'
And I went... 'Yes, I do.' And I've been here ever since.
So it was Tim Lovejoy who saw his potential and invited him onto the show, but where did the character of Tubes come from?
As his real name is Peter, his first on-screen role was as 'Peter The Test Tube Baby' and he would bring footballs out for the show's guests to shoot in the carpark scenes, but soon a different shtick was needed, and again it was Lovejoy who gave him the chance.
Before the rapping I used to be 'Peter The Test Tube Baby', so basically after a year and half of doing that Jim Lovejoy went 'Listen, this is useless. It's not funny anymore it's just a grown man with a big hairy chest with tits bringing footballs out. So we're going to do something different.
He said, 'Right, I'm gonna give you three chances. You've got one question and one question only, and if it doesn't work that's it. That's the end of your TV career.' I was absolutely bricking it.
And I remember the first guest was Frank Worthington, and I thought I was well funny to go up there, I was trembling, with my big fat red face and my crap hair, and a real budget shirt on, trousers that were too big for me, I was shaking and everyone was just looking like 'Who is this wreck?'
I went to Frank Worthington, 'Alright mate?', he went '...Alright?' And I said 'Uh, did you score more on or off the pitch?' and everyone just went silent. I was like, oh no that's one chance gone, and he went '[nervous laughter]... on the pitch.'
Lovejoy said, 'That's definitely one chance gone, and it was so bad you've only got one more chance.
Tubes needed something else.
Having looked back on his childhood in Surrey, an area that he describes as being 'full of white kids who talk street', he thought he would put a twist on his questions, and by talking in that style he had stumbled across a big hit.
I just walked up and said 'Your comin' on sick ya'knaw?' and made some noises with my mouth, and everyone started laughing. So the rapping just came from that. I just thought, everyone is laughing at this, so I started making raps.
And everyone was like 'You're actually a good rapper' and I just thought, you're having a laugh, this is absolute toilet. And I'll be standing in front of Denzel Washington, 50 Cent, Sandra Bullock.. And I'm like, what am I doing here?!
My friends would ask me 'What are you doing' and I'd just be like, I don't know, spitting bars I suppose.
Those bars became legendary. Tubes' question became one of the most popular segments of the show, so naturally the opportunities for him to flex his lyrical wizardry became bigger and bigger, including trips to film junkets in posh hotels.
We then asked him who, of all the celebrities and footballers he rapped for, sticks out in his mind as the most notable. And the one he landed on was hollywood A-lister Denzel Washington.
The most surprising one, definitely Denzel Washington.
When you go to this film junkets, they're always in a posh hotel, there are journalists there from ITV and BBC, and they all sit there and go [puts on posh voice] 'Oh you know, me and Denzel had such a good time in Cannes' and I'm like... You don't know him. They'd all be in suits and crazy shoes with coloured laces, and I show up in Converse, a long-sleeve shirt from ASDA, and crap jeans, and they all say things like 'Oh no, he's going to absolutely hate you.'
So I go in there, and I say;
You're a top man, you are Den,
I've been rapping since I was 10,
Ooooooh, rapping for life, not just for Christmas.And there was dead silence. The proper journalists must have thought he's going to go mad. So anyway, he just went 'SHUT UP!' and shouted at me, and I thought 'oh no, here we go', but, he was playing along with it.
It's on YouTube, so he plays along with it, we get on really well and afterward he gets me in a headlock and walks me out of the hotel room along the corridor past all the journalists and he's going 'TUUUUUUBES, MAN! TUUUUUUUBES!'
So that was probably the weirdest one. But there's been lots of good ones, Colin Farrell was always brilliant.
He's right, it is on YouTube.
Incredible stuff.
Tubes was one of the more entertaining guest's we've had on the show this season, and he continued to tell us all about his relationship with Robbie Keane, who actually called him during our chat as the Tallaght man is a guest on this week's show.
You can hear our chat with Tubes in full below, be sure to subscribe to the Balls.ie Football Show to get it as soon as we upload it every week.
