Measurements of the streamwise component of the turbulent fluctuations in fully developed smooth and rough pipe flow are presented over an unprecedented Reynolds number range. For Reynolds numbers $R{e}_{\tau } \gt 20\hspace{0.167em} 000$ , the streamwise Reynolds stress closely follows the scaling of the mean velocity profile, independent of the roughness, and over the same spatial extent. This observation extends the findings of a logarithmic law in the turbulence fluctuations as reported by Hultmark, Vallikivi & Smits (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 108, 2012) to include rough flows. The onset of the logarithmic region is found at a location where the wall distance is equal to ∼100 times the Kolmogorov length scale, which then marks sufficient scale separation for inertial scaling. Furthermore, in the logarithmic region the square root of the fourth-order moment also displays logarithmic behaviour, in accordance with the observation that the underlying probability density function is close to Gaussian in this region.