The Soccer AM Tubes star and his brother Ange have taken YouTube by storm with their hilarious Golf Life channel. During Mental Health Awareness Week, the popular pair talk about how gambling has changed their lives.
If you spent your Saturday mornings watching AM soccer on Sky Sports in the early to mid-2000s, you’ll remember Tubes (real name Peter Dale) for their hilarious and goofy interviews every week. His “one question and one question only” segment ran for seven years and gave him cult status on the long-running show, which he has been a part of for nearly two decades.
But unless you’re part of the TikTok generation, you might not know his brother, Ange (real name Andrew Dale), and their hugely popular Tubes & Angel Golf Life YouTube series, which brought its unique sense of humor and comedy to the golf course.
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Since its launch in 2019, the channel has featured guests such as England international footballers John Terry and Peter Crouch, as well as world champion boxer Tony Bellew and actor Stephen Graham. Content has proven itself
so popular that it has garnered over 18.5 million views on YouTube alone. Even England Golf directs people to the channel.
“It’s funny because it all started with Pete doing what he does best: interviewing footballers on a golf course,” Ange explains. “We then started experimenting with a few silly games like a bucket challenge and quickly realized that people wanted to see longer form, nine-hole and four-hole matches.
“Now it turned into Pete and me doing vlogs and then a big star joined us for a challenge. We’re actually amazed at how much he’s grown. I guess that goes to show how much nicer it is to listen to an interview on the golf course.
They just wrapped filming the first of two weekly episodes, which gives the brothers a good excuse to show up late for our Zoom call. Naturally, they blame each other and so begins the kind of good-natured ribbing (or “joking” as they like to call it), which underlies many of their videos. They also can’t help but recount a few of their favorite anecdotes – like the time Robbie Williams gave them a ridiculous challenge in a car park during lockdown, or when Tubes needed 233 tries to make a hole in one in his mother’s. back garden.
“It was awesome, so much fun,” says Tubes, who still works for AM soccer full time. “We had Joe Calzaghe, Jason Fox from SAS: who dares wins, Aaron Ramsdale, awesome Joe Cole, Jimmy Bullard, Paul Merson, Neil Ruddock, Jack Wilshere, Glenn Hoddle, and even fucking Mike Dean! The list is lengthened increasingly. We hope to get Mason Mount and Declan Rice on board soon.
“But we also try to reach different athletes, not just footballers,” continues Ange. “Beef (Andrew Johnston) played, as did Matt Fitzpatrick and James Morrison. Shane Lowry and Olivia Cowan arrive,
Poults flirted with the idea. I hope England Golf can also help us.
With such an extensive contact book, it’s hard to imagine Tubes ever being starstruck. He still seems remarkably comfortable in front of the camera, but there’s a vulnerability that only becomes apparent when the conversation turns to golf.
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“I only got into golf when I realized I had a huge drinking problem,” he suddenly admits. “About five and a half years ago I made the decision to stop drinking and bothering everyone around me. I then realized that I had so many more hours in the day that I thought, ‘What can I do that doesn’t involve going to the pub?’ Ange has always been into golf, so it seemed like a good thing to bond.
“Before, I was bored of golf, but now I can play all day, every day. I love it. So basically, I traded alcohol for golf clubs…”
The new addiction
Tubes now wears its sobriety like a badge of honor. He admits it’s almost become a running joke on AM soccer that he would go out drinking every weekend.
People were sending pictures of themselves with a cardboard cutout of Tubes at a party and there was even a campaign calling on landlords across the country to ban it from their establishments for its own good.
“I planned my life around alcohol,” he says ruefully. “It got to the point where I was buying for the next morning.”
When asked by a fan about the impact of his addiction on his mental health, Tubes once revealed that he often contemplated suicide and drank bottles of vodka like he was “drinking water”.
On one occasion, he even tried to run in front of a moving car. The tremor in his voice suggests he’s still haunted by his past, though he admits he probably wouldn’t be here today if he hadn’t traded in his evenings for a morning at the gym or an after. -noon on the golf course.
On January 28, 2018, Tubes underwent emergency open-heart surgery to repair a hole in his heart after suffering an “unexpected and massive heart attack”. It was only because he had quit smoking and drinking two years before that he had a chance of survival.
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“I still remember everything about it,” he admits. “I came home after playing football – really badly, by the way – in the morning. I felt like I had a huge hangover. I was almost trying to have a heart attack in the kitchen. It was as if I had indigestion. I started to feel worse and worse and as I walked down the stairs, that’s when my whole left side went numb.
As he lay on the floor in his front room, Tubes was thankfully able to text his mother who alerted Ange and called paramedics.
“It’s not something you can really prepare for,” admits Ange. “When we got there he looked as white as a sheet. His eyes were open but it was like there was nothing. He was looking right through us. It was horrible and something I never want to experience again.
“It’s a good job that we got Lewis Hamilton driving the ambulance,” Tubes jokes. “She was amazing, so fast. The other paramedic kept telling these really shitty jokes. He was like a very bad Jasper Carrot. He then told my mother that he was trying to annoy me to keep me awake.
“He did his job and I was taken straight to the operating room. The next thing I knew I was having a cup of coffee on the ward with a stent in my chest, thinking, “I almost died.” I was so lucky because they told me I had a few minutes left to live.
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A second chance
Since the ordeal, the two brothers have raised money for charities promoting heart health awareness – and even joined the Today’s golfer Drive For Defibs campaign to help get as many lifesaving devices as possible to golf clubs across the UK. Tubes is now urging others to get checked out to help reduce dozens of preventable heart deaths every day.
“You can’t predict, but you can prevent it. Even though my father and his father both suffered from heart attacks, I never thought I would have one at the age of 36. I was probably the fittest I’ve ever been. I played golf, went to the gym every day and had lost a lot of weight. The doctors actually said that if I still drank like I did back then, I would have died on the spot.
Oddly, there’s one thing he can’t do now, which is scuba diving – “I wouldn’t want to anyway,” he laughs – but he managed to get his all first handicap after joining iGolf.
Most of his and Ange’s tours are now documented as “grudge matches” on their YouTube channel, which has over 135,000 subscribers. Late last year they caught the eye of England Golf, who approached them to produce seven fun episodes to help youngsters get started in golf.
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“It sounds a bit lame, but what we do is have fun, enjoy life on the golf course and inspire people to get out there,” says Ange. “I have a kid now, so golf is really my only outlet. It helps me mentally and there’s no better feeling than playing golf with people you love and love, right? That’s what we’re trying to represent.
“We like a good laugh, but we also cover some really important things, like mental health,” Tubes adds.
“One minute, Lee Hendrie was talking about his own mental health issues; five minutes later, he was doing an impression of one of his ex-managers. It’s real life. If we hit a crap shot, we don’t pull it back. If we pull off a good shot, we celebrate it.
“We want it to be accessible, so people feel like they’re with us on the golf course. We are not precious about what is happening. We’ll try anything and that’s probably why it works. You never know what we’ll do or come up with next!
READ NEXT: Join our Drive for Defibs campaign
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Catling is the editor of Today’s Golfer.
He has been a journalist for over 10 years and was shortlisted for Bauer Media Journalist of the Year in 2019.
Michael joined Bauer Media in 2016 and has interviewed dozens of major champions exclusively, including Jordan Spieth, Tom Watson, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus.
A former member of Ufford Park and Burghley Park, Michael has been golfing since the age of 11 and currently plays with a 10 handicap.
Michael uses a Ping G wood, a Ping G 3 wood, a Ping G Crossover 3 iron, Ping G Series irons (4-PW), Ping Glide wedges (52º, 56º, 60º), a TaylorMade MySpider Tour putter and a Srixon AD333 Golf Ball.
You can contact Michael here.
