Anyhow, when Dec could tear himself away from a sheet of headed note-paper and a bottle of Blue Stratos…
Actually, it was Jazz.
Whatever. When he could tear himself away, the whole cast would often go on trips together. They were supposed to help new cast members bond with the regulars and to maintain a sense of camaraderie between the actors, but the predominant theme was underage drinking. They were brilliant – Paris, Rome, New York… were just some of the places we wanted to visit, but we always ended up going to the log cabins at Clennell Hall, near Rothbury, which was like another world – it was a full 31 miles from Newcastle.
The trips would usually be organized by Dee Wood, the head chaperone. I don’t know if we went to log cabins because Dee’s surname was Wood but, looking back, I’m just glad the trips weren’t organized by the other chaperone, Dave Sewage Farm.
When you get the whole cast of a children’s soap together for one night, they all want to do the same thing – sing, dance, act or, if you’re very unlucky, all three. Those nights could’ve been called Byker’s Got Talent, but without much talent.
When it came to the log cabins, one night in particular sticks in my mind. Me, Ant and Rory Gibson, who played Lee, had decided to do something together, but we couldn’t think of an act; we just had no idea what to do in front of an audience.
To be honest, it’s a problem me and Dec still face on a weekly basis…
The girls would always be singing – if you could call it that – ‘I will always love you’, and that kind of thing, but we wanted to do something different. The big problem was that neither me, Dec or Rory were great singers.
I was really into The Doors at the time and, suddenly, inspiration struck. The Doors were four American hippies in their twenties with long hair and leather trousers.
We were three teenage lads from Newcastle with gelled spiky hair and tracksuit bottoms. The similarities were uncanny.
We looked and sounded nothing like them, but we weren’t going to let a little thing like that hold us back – yes, tonight, Matthew, we were going to be The Doors.
Then we realized that we did have something in common with The Doors, something that was going to evoke the spirit of the sixties and help our performance no end.
Dec was wearing a beaded necklace.
I loved a beaded necklace in those days and wore one all the time. If we were lucky, people might actually think we were The Doors. As long as they didn’t have any eyes, or ears…
We decided to mime to ‘Light My Fire’, which, let me tell you, in a log cabin, was a risky choice. If any of the audience had taken it too literally, the whole place could’ve gone up. I told Ant to check where the fire exits were before we took to the stage.
Due to being the biggest Doors fan and the proud owner of their Greatest Hits CD, I took the part of Jim Morrison, while Dec and Rory used a cunning combination of tennis rackets and that beaded necklace to represent the rest of the band.
Before we went on, we’d had a band meeting and decided we needed a big finish. We were determined to do something that, in the true spirit of Jim Morrison, would have the girls in the audience screaming and fainting so, at the end of the song, we all tore our tops off. As soon as we did it, every girl in the place started screaming her head off.
I can still hear them now:
‘Please, please, put your tops back on.’
Of course, we were only teenagers, our bodies hadn’t really developed then, it would take another few years before we’d be real men, with hairy chests and, of course, fully formed beer bellies.
Those trips away were fantastic. The boys would be in one cabin and the girls in another, and I would sneak out to the girls’ cabin at night to see Nicola for a quick snog. Those stolen kisses were exhilarating, they were forbidden and, best of all, they weren’t on telly.
That wasn’t the only time art – well, Byker Grove – imitated life. There’d be regular parties at the other cast members’ houses, and whoever’s house you went to, you could guarantee one thing: their parents were away.
The whole cast would turn up and, at times, it felt just like an episode of Byker Grove.
Although off screen, I never started a pirate radio station.
And I never joined a religious cult.
Which was a shame – that beaded necklace would’ve gone a treat with a nice pair of pyjamas.
Chapter 5
Around late 1991 and at the beginning of 1992, our agent, Dave Holly, started getting requests for personal appearances at various roadshows.
Not for him – I mean, he was a lovely bloke, but he’d never been in Byker Grove and no one at those roadshows would have known who he was. No, the requests were for me and Dec. PJ and Duncan were becoming more and more popular and, by this point, the fanmail was coming in by the sackload. Hardly any of it was for us, the sacks weren’t that big and they weren’t always full, but we got a few letters and photos from girls, and it was a real thrill.
The requests for these personal appearances would often be for roadshows based around teen magazines.
One of the first ones me and Ant did was the Fast Forward Fun Day. It was put on by the BBC kids’ magazine Fast Forward, and it was a day of fun. You probably could have gathered that from the title, but I just wanted to make sure. It featured some of the biggest stars from the world of children’s TV, and I think we must have done a few interviews with the magazine beforehand. You know what those magazine features were like in the early nineties: favourite colour, favourite pop star, favourite member of the Baywatch cast, that kind of thing.
And, since you ask, my favourite was the stunner with the big chest.
David Hasselhoff?
That’s the one.
We’d turn up at these roadshows, along with other members of the cast. Whoever was hosting would say, ‘It’s the cast of Byker Grove,’ we’d all shuffle onstage, give the crowd a wave, maybe get asked a question or two, and young girls would scream. We’d always think two things – ‘This is great’ and ‘I must bring some earplugs next time.’ It was a bit like when EastEnders or Coronation Street wins an award and the whole cast wanders on to the stage and just stands there, not quite sure what to do with themselves.
There’d be metal barriers to keep the fans from storming the stage or, more likely, escaping from the venue and, after much waving, we’d go over to the barriers, have pictures taken with fans of the show and sign autographs. Of course, by now I was very experienced when it came to this sort of thing – I’d spend hours every week practising my poses in the mirror, and I’d been perfecting my autograph since the age of six. Now all I had to do was sign a copy of Fast Forward, rather than my maths exercise book.
A lot of the time the girls would also ask me to get Ant’s autograph for them too. This was because – and there’s no easy way to say this – they thought he looked miserable and they were scared of asking him themselves.
I must admit, I’ve got one of those faces. I do look miserable if I’m not smiling, and I was always a bit apprehensive at those things. I understood the girls wanted us to sign stuff, but if they didn’t shout ‘Ant’ or ‘PJ’, then I wouldn’t go over.
Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen, eh?
More like, ‘Treat ’em mean, because I’m scared of this whole thing and feeling really nervous.’
That’s not as good, as a catchphrase, is it? It doesn’t even rhyme…
The point is, I’d always wait to be asked when it came to autographs, I didn’t know how it worked, and I didn’t want to look big-headed.
I know exactly what you’re thinking: I’ve always looked big-headed. Well, it’s not my fault, I was born with this forehead and I’m stuck with it.
One of the biggest events in the early nineties roadshow calendar was the Mizz magazine roadshow in Birmingham. Yes, you read that right, the Mizz magazine roadshow. I don’t think we need to tell you we were getting pretty big-time by then.
After a brie
f rehearsal to get our waving right before the doors opened for the audience, we got chatting to Tim Vincent. Tim had quite a similar background to the two of us, he was in the ITV kids’ drama Children’s Ward, and we had so many questions for him. Did they do a lot of work on location? What was the schedule like? And, most importantly, could me and Ant have his autograph?
I also asked Tim if Children’s Ward was on that week, and he said it wasn’t, because of the Budget. He obviously meant the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Budget – ITV were broadcasting it, so they’d cancelled children’s programmes for the day.
But I hadn’t quite got to grips with that, I thought he was talking about the budget for Children’s Ward. In my mind, that was the one that really mattered, not some stupid announcement that would only affect the entire British economy. So I said to Tim, ‘That’s weird, just missing out an episode in the middle of the series ’cos there isn’t enough money in the budget. You’d think they’d just do one less episode at the end – or plan their finances better.’
Tim looked at me like I was a complete idiot, which of course I was.
I immediately stepped in and explained the complex political repercussions of the Budget to Ant.
I think my exact words were ‘That posh bloke with the red suitcase means Children’s Ward isn’t on this week.’
My face turned crimson, and Tim just walked off. That was the first time I’d felt really embarrassed in front of someone else ‘off the telly’. But it wouldn’t be the last…
In spite of Ant’s Tim Vincent faux pas, the two of us had become best mates by now, and there was no doubt that helped with our performances on Byker Grove. We spent all our time at work together, we’d meet at the weekends and go to football matches, we were both experiencing the beginnings of fame and we had become really close. I suppose you could say we were method actors – in the same way Robert De Niro drove a taxi round New York to prepare for Taxi Driver, we became best mates in real life and then best mates on screen.
I was starting to think that the scriptwriters didn’t have much faith in my acting abilities. My girlfriend off screen was now my girlfriend on screen, my best mate off screen was now my best mate on screen. I was half expecting them to write a storyline where I had an embarrassing chat about the budget with someone from Children’s Ward.
They were definitely starting to give me and Dec more to do, though. We even had a story where PJ and Duncan tried to go underage drinking, which involved them going round various pubs in Newcastle and not getting served. For our characters, it was a rite of passage that typified the issues facing young lads but, for us, it was three days hanging round in pubs. We loved it. Even though it was a fairly small storyline, we’d been doing extensive research into that area for years.
By this point, we’d been acting for a couple of years and, the more experienced we got, the more inquisitive we became about how things worked. We were much more interested in what happened on the production side and what the producer and the director were doing every day.
We were starting to approach acting as a long-term career. We still had no idea where it was going to lead, but there was one thing we realized around that time: we both had a dream. We hoped that, one day, we could get that golden opportunity, that big break, the one thing the two of us wanted more than anything else: a part in Spender.
Spender was a BBC1 drama set in Newcastle that was created, written by, produced and starred (phew!) Jimmy Nail. Local actors like Jimmy, Tim Healy and Kevin Whately were a huge inspiration to us. Robson Green was another one and, back then, it was a real thrill for us when he got a big part in Casualty. Those actors had ‘made it’ and, as far as we were concerned, they couldn’t have done better if they’d been cast as the new Batman.
For the record, I would pay good money to see Jimmy Nail as Batman, but it’s probably too late for the big man now. To jump from where we were, to the level they were at, seemed almost impossible. We thought the best we could hope for was a good run in Byker Grove, and then, if we were really lucky, a role in Spender as third motorcycle thug from the left.
Without even realizing it, I suppose me and Dec were already mentally preparing for life away from Byker Grove and possibly for life as a double act. We were really starting to enjoy performing together, and this became obvious to us one night at the BBC Club, the staff bar at BBC Newcastle.
Due to phenomenal public demand, we’d retired our Doors tribute act after just one gig, so we had to come up with a new act, and we got up and did a rendition of an old soul song called ‘Me and Mrs Jones’.
The idea came from Dec, and this takes us on to something you should all know about the man sitting next to me: he has the musical taste of a ninety-year-old. His iPod is full of albums like Now That’s What I Call the 1940s and The Best Chamber Music Album in the World… Ever. When it comes to music, he’s got one very simple rule: if it was written after England won the World Cup, it’s too modern.
Old man Donnelly here played me this song and, to be fair, I really liked it. It’s all about a bloke who’s having an affair with Mrs Jones and how the two of them meet up in secret. Looking back, it seems a strange choice – not just because it was released before we were born, but because it wasn’t a duet, which meant the whole thing turned into a bit of a three-some – me, Dec and Mrs Jones.
When we got on stage and started singing, the audience seemed to find it very funny, so we began to ham it up further and play the whole thing for laughs. At least, that’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.
Dec’s right, though, we deliberately did the whole song very tongue in cheek, which wasn’t easy. You try singing with your tongue in cheek, it’s almost impossible.
Have a go. See? Chances are you’ve covered this page in spit and, if you’re on the bus, you’re probably getting some pretty strange looks right now.
But by the end of our performance, most of the audience was in fits of laughter at us trying to get through this song together.
I suppose that was the first time we really performed as a double act. It was also the first time we’d made an audience laugh and, standing on the stage, looking at the audience’s faces, I thought, ‘I didn’t realize I had that in me, I liked doing that.’
What’s more, we still had our tops on, which was good news for everyone.
We were having the time of our lives – showing off to girls, having a laugh and, at the same time, we were earning a living. We thought we’d cracked the holy trinity of job, money and girls, and it felt good. By now, school was a bit like MC Hammer’s career – a thing of the past – and Byker Grove was a full-time job, which meant, for the first time, we both had a few quid in our pockets.
I saved up all my wages to get my first car – I was so keen that I had my first driving lesson on my seventeenth birthday. I went to that lesson with the two things that were vital to my driving ambitions – my provisional licence and a cushion to sit on.
I eventually passed, at my third attempt, and spent £950 on an MG Metro Turbo. It was metallic blue with red go-faster stripes and red seatbelts. Yes, even as a teenager, I oozed class. The only thing that was missing was a pair of furry dice and stickers on the windscreen saying ‘ANT’ and ‘DEC’.
Obviously, we’ve both got them in our cars now – that’s one of the perks of being on the telly.
You know what it’s like when you first pass your test – you go everywhere by car. If I could’ve driven from the living room to the toilet in that car, I would have. When my mam needed a pint of milk from the shop at the end of the road, I’d have the keys in the ignition before she could say ‘semi-skimmed’.
I wasn’t quite so good as Dec with my wages. I didn’t have the foresight and business acumen to invest in an MG Metro Turbo – and even if I had, I didn’t have a driving licence, so it wouldn’t have been much use.
At first, when I started earning money, I was too young to have a cash card. My mam didn’t think it was a good idea to keep
my wages in a shoebox under my bed – she was clever like that – so she gave me her card for an account she never used. The good thing was I could get my hands on my money whenever I liked, so I’d just take out £30, £40 or £50 at a time and buy trainers, clothes, CDs, petrol for Dec’s car, that kind of thing. In those days, you could get a pair of trainers, a couple of albums and a McDonald’s for… well, about £100. It’s pretty much the same as now really.
I’m not that old, you know…
The trouble was I never really paid attention to how much money was in that account. I wasn’t ridiculously frivolous, but I wasn’t shy of spending it either.
The other trouble was that all the statements got sent to my mam and, eventually, my spending caught up with me. One morning, my mam burst into my room, with a statement in her hand, and it wasn’t long before there was a statement coming out of her mouth.
If my memory serves me correctly, it was ‘Where the bloody hell has all your money gone?’
I had exactly £50 left out of what had been a couple of thousand pounds I’d earned over the years. I was the Nick Leeson of Byker Grove.
Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story Page 5