Pete & Bas: Down The Rabbit Hole

Pete, Bas and their friends have taken the internet by storm - but who is behind the project?

Although it is easy to dismiss them as a comedy act, Pete, Bas and their friends have taken the internet by storm with hits such as Mr. Worldwide, Pint and a Fag, and Quick Little Freestyle and have since gone on to release over a dozen singles and a full-length album, but who are Pete & Bas? Where did they come from? Is it really them writing and performing? There is an air of mystery around the past of Pete & Bas, were they actually gangsters? Unfortunately, the truth isn't this exciting.

Pete & Bas

Bas (real name Basil Preuveneers, not Basil Bellgrave which he has claimed in a BBC interview) is a semi-retired Notary Public and formerly a solicitor for the south eastern gas board, something that has been confirmed by the law firm he founded. He has also directed and starred in his own short films, as well as releasing albums of piano music under his own name and various TV appearances as an extra - notably with Tom Cruise on The Late Show.

Pete (supposed real name Peter Bowditch) has claimed to be both a retired postman and trading standards inspector for the council, in the same BBC interview. Unlike Bas, there isn't any immediate proof that this is a lie - so that's all on Pete.

The duo have said in multiple interviews that they met in a corner shop when Pete was there for work (as a trading standards inspector, noted above) and Bas was teaching piano in the back of the shop. The shop in question is the shop featured in Sindhuworld, an Instagram comedy page (more on this later), where the owner Uncle Bal said Bas taught him to play piano.

The Northern Boys

Following on from the success of Pete & Bas came the creation of The Northern Boys. Consisting of Patrick Karneigh Junior, Norman Pain and Kevin this time it’s a trio of older gentlemen playing more into the comedic side of things rather than presenting as London gangsters.

Starting off with Patrick Karneigh Junior, known to fans as PKJ through his solo music released pre-Northern Boys and his feature alongside Pete & Bas, in the single Keys & Bags back in 2019. Some keen research shows that his real name is Patrick Carney Junior - and not dissimilar from Bas he has a history of directing and acting in independent films and even some major television adverts, as evidenced by his IMDB page. This isn’t the end of PKJ’s online presence though as you can find his Vimeo account full of show reels and audition tapes, his personal webpage advertising his music shows for your events and even his award-winning feature film ‘Hello Darlin’ available for free on YouTube.

Norman Pain, like PKJ, had a solo career pre-Northern Boys on his SoundCloud and an album released to Bandcamp named Growing Pains. Norman, similarly to Pete, has a very basic online presence so despite the likelihood based on what will be discussed shortly, there is no way to prove he is just an actor.

Kevin, the mute third of the Northern Boys, affectionately called their hype man and backup dancer is actually Kevin Hynes, who pre-Northern Boys fame was a personal assistant working on the above mentioned film ‘Hello Darlin’, which PKJ posted on his own Instagram back in 2019.

Sindhuworld, The Snooker Team & Actors

Sitting just outside of the Pete & Bas sphere of influence is The Snooker Team, the name given to the friends of Pete & Bas who have appeared in multiple music videos and some album tracks. The full lineup of The Snooker Team is as follows (and no, none of these have been made up): Uncle Bal, Tony Moses, Albert Allen, Smith, McMillan, Barry, Airmax90, Chris and Billy 'The Fag Butt' Dawkins.

None of these names have any appearance outside of The Snooker Team, besides Uncle Bal who has a history going back before Pete & Bas as he was the main face for the Instagram page Sindhuworld, which is the most interesting and confusing part of the Pete & Bas puzzle, what does a corner shop Instagram page have to do with these now global artists? The origins of Sindhuworld itself have already been covered in depth by Vice in 2017 so we will leave that out, what we are interested in is their link to Pete & Bas.

The main point to take note of is that Sindhuworld is the management and production behind Pete & Bas, which can be noted in the credits of their videos and singles. Although the connection to Pete & Bas actually goes back to before any music was released, as Pete can be seen in this Instagram post from Sindhuworld in 2017 and Bas can be seen even earlier in 2017 in this post.

Sindhuworld also plays a part in the American Pete & Bas counterparts Frank & Maury, which is all but proven on the acting job listing website FilmLocal, there is this now deleted post by the account 'Sindhu World' posted in 2019. The beginning of the posting reads as follows:

We’re looking for an actor to be the face of our latest project. In short, we write, record and produce music and then get actors such as yourself to play the role of the characters performing the music. As the music is contemporary rap music, we use older actors to play the role of the performing artist (the rapper) creating a juxtaposition that has captivated and fascinated millions of people worldwide.

We began the project in London in late 2017 and have since had great success and are looking to expand internationally. Currently we have 1.1 million+ regular viewers and have reached over 30 million views worldwide with our content and have worked with: Vice, BBC, Playstation, Barclays Bank, Channel 4, ITV, GRM Daily, ARD, Spotify and many more major international media outlets.

Posted by SindhuWorld on FilmLocal

Now it doesn't take a genius to see that this is an advertisement from SindhuWorld looking for actors for the roles of Frank & Maury (who are the American Pete & Bas counterparts), using Pete & Bas as proof that the plan works. Further proof of Sindhuworld’s involvement with the project can be seen in the credits for their singles and music videos similarly to Pete & Bas.

Nine & Dex

Avid Pete & Bas fans will now be aware of Nine & Dex, but for those that are not familiar they are the credited producers of all of the above mentioned music under the mononyms 91Shots and HandsomeDexter. Recently they have also released their own music in the same style as Pete & Bas and the relation can not only be heard in the lyrical content and delivery but also seen in the video editing style. The duo claim to be grandchildren of Pete & Bas, but this is hard to believe as in an interview with German television station ProSieben they claim that only one of them is related, being a nephew.

So if they aren’t grandchildren who are they? Well Barnaby Addison (HandsomeDexter) and Jonathan Gibson (91shots) are the owners of Sindhuworld Limited, which you can see publicly on Companies House. The duo also write and star in the mockumentary series ‘Community Patrol’ together, of which all 7 episodes can be seen for free on YouTube.

Since the release of the Nine & Dex solo music many people have noticed, likely including yourself if you cared to give it a listen, that 91shots sounds almost identical to Bas, which is more noticeable if you look further back at Bas’ performances in early tracks which had a lower production quality.

What Does This All Mean?

This all raises the question, which has been argued to no end on Reddit, YouTube and in the minds of their listeners - are these old guys really writing the music?

The unfortunate answer, with there being no proof otherwise, is no. Through the ASCAP Repertory (the most comprehensive database of song credits), putting either Jonathan or Barnaby’s names into this database you will see they are the only two named writers on every Pete & Bas, Northern Boys and Frank & Maury track. If you want to see this yourself you can click here or here for their search results respectively.

This doesn't take away from Pete, Bas & Co. though, at their core they are entertainers and it shouldn't matter if they are writing their own lyrics or not.

It would be much more disappointing to learn it isn't actually them performing, which may be concluded from the job listing shown earlier which stated Sinduworld will write and perform the music. There is no definitive proof this isn’t the case but watching back a performance of a Pete & Bas live show with an eagle eye you can see both Nine & Dex behind the DJ decks conveniently rapping along to Pete & Bas verses into their own microphone.

Regardless of if it is them or not they have certainly succeeded in being entertainers. Maybe the the most impressive aspect of the whole act is their marketing team able to keep the image of these 'former gangster' old men turned rappers from being conclusively disproven, in a Milli Vanilli-style scandal - but only time will tell.