As you’d expect with Chris’s reputation, we went for a few drinks afterwards, although only a few, as we had a show to do the next morning. When we left him in the pub, we invited him to come down to the sm:tv studios the next day and, although he said yes, we never thought he’d turn up – I mean, what kind of sicko wants to get up early on a Saturday morning when they don’t have to?
The next morning, as good as his word, he turned up. He watched the show from the studio floor and even made a brief cameo appearance in Chums. We couldn’t believe he’d done that just for us – his new best mates. And, of course, he hadn’t. Nobody knew it at the time, but Chris was going out with Geri Halliwell, who was on sm:tv that morning, and he’d come down to see her.
After the show had finished, he jumped on his moped and went to host his football show on Virgin Radio, ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Football’. We were up in the bar at the London Studios and had already had a couple of pints when he rang and invited us to come over and be on the show. Thanks to a combination of Chris being so persuasive and the pints, we did it. When we arrived, it was obvious Chris had had a drink too – there was an open bottle of champagne in the studio and he was wearing a pair of jeans, no top and a belt round his neck. Oh, and he was sporting one other rather fetching little accessory – Cat Deeley, who was sitting on his lap. Cat had gone ahead and, the next thing we knew, we were drinking champagne and reading out the football results – Dec did the Scottish Premier League and I did the third division, in case you were wondering.
After that, we went to the pub and ended up back at Chris’s house. By the time we got there, we’d been going all day – there was me, Lisa, Dec, Cat and a few other waifs and strays we’d picked up along the way. It was starting to become a very surreal evening, typified by the moment I returned from the toilet to see TV presenter Andrea Boardman doing the splits in the middle of the living-room floor. We were all in the front room, watching Queen: Live At Wembley on what is still the biggest TV I’ve ever seen in my life, when Geri turned up. She’d been performing on the National Lottery and shortly after her arrival, she and Chris disappeared together. That was the moment we worked out that there just might be something going on between Chris and Geri.
I remember suddenly having one of those drunken moments of clarity when I just thought, ‘I’m hammered, I’ve got to get out of here. I’d also just been sick in Chris’s downstairs toilet. In my defence, I blame Chris’s bathroom. He had this wallpaper that looked like bookshelves, and it messed with my mind – I was trying to take books off the shelves for a good ten minutes before I realized.
Once we’d decided to leave, I took it upon myself to go and tell Chris – it would’ve been rude to leave without saying goodbye. I was walking around his massive house, very drunk, shouting, ‘Chris, Chris, Chris,’ trying to find him, when eventually I did – and immediately I wished I hadn’t. Let’s just say I found him and Geri at the same time and leave it there.
Saturday nights were often messy, but we really tried hard to keep our Friday evenings uneventful. We couldn’t have done sm:tv with a hangover, it was so frantic and there was so much to remember that it would have been impossible. We would have ended up looking sloppy, disorganized and as if we were making it all up as we went along. What do you mean, ‘No one would have noticed the difference’?
Although there was one notable exception – the millennium was fast approaching, the first of January was a Saturday, and ITV were keen for us to do a show on New Year’s Day. They said they wanted us to be the first live show of the twenty-first century although, looking back, I assume that, very wisely, all of their big stars were refusing to work on New Year’s Day, so they came to us. In many ways, it was a huge honour and one we greeted with the words, ‘What, us? New Year’s Day? No chance,’ but ITV were – and still are – our bosses, so we were told we thought it was a great idea and that we’d love to do it.
There was just one problem: by the time we agreed, we’d both made plans to spend New Year’s Eve in Newcastle and party like it was 1999. So, like the stubborn gits we are, we decided to stick to those plans. We’d have New Year’s Eve at home, then get driven through the night to London and do the show that morning. We saw in the new millennium, had a drink or six, then got in the car to be taken to work. It might have been a long journey, but we weren’t stupid – we made sure the car was filled with all the essentials for a long winter’s night: two blankets and eight cans of lager.
We arrived at the studio, had a shower, started to feel a bit more sober and got ready – we were at work now and it was time to settle down, pull ourselves together and be professional. However, all of that went out the window when we got into make-up and saw two things – Cat Deeley and a bottle of champagne. Cat gave us a wink and, next thing we knew, we both had glasses in our hands. We weren’t completely irresponsible, though – we mixed the champagne with orange juice and made a Bucks Fizz. We did ITV’s first live show of the new millennium from a bed on our set, sipping Bucks Fizz during an episode of Pokémon. It got less fun as our hangovers started to take hold, and let’s just say we played a lot of cartoons that morning.
sm:tv had established itself as the Saturday-morning show of choice. We were having the time of our lives, but had one eye on our next move, a move that would develop our careers, change our lives and move us forward by a whole seven hours.
It was time for a crack at Saturday-night telly.
Chapter 21
With sm:tv flying high, there’d been interest in us from our old friends the British Broadcasting Corporation. We’d had a few meetings about doing prime-time shows, and we were hoping that, if things worked out, we might get a chance to achieve what had become one of our biggest and most important ambitions – a lie-in on Saturday morning. In the summer of 1999, during our four-week summer break from sm:tv, we’d made a pilot of a Saturday-night gameshow for BBC1 called Friends Like These.
The show was devised and produced by the then head of light entertainment, a very talented man called David Young, which meant we’d gone from making a show on Saturday mornings for young people to a show on Saturday nights made by a Young person. The basic idea was that two groups of five mates played against each other to win the ‘holiday of a lifetime’. Of course, every holiday described on TV is the ‘holiday of a lifetime’, but it was worth saying anyway. At the time, there was a lot of talk about friends being the new family, and as best mates, we were seen as the perfect people to host the show. Plus, the Chuckle Brothers were busy.
The show was very different to what we were doing on Saturday mornings. Friends Like These had a studio audience, it was pre-recorded and it was very heavily formatted – there was no room for comedy, or dressing up, and there were no witches in their teens, or donkeys that were wonkey. It was all about tension, jeopardy and other words you only ever hear on gameshows. Basically, everything about it was very rigid, which frankly meant any two idiots could’ve hosted it. And any two idiots did host it.
Returning to the BBC was a proud moment. It’s a phenomenal institution, BBC TV Centre, and after The Ant and Dec Show, we’d left under a bit of a cloud, so it felt good to be going back. We saw the BBC as our spiritual home. At that point, we honestly thought we’d do a series and, if it went well, we could be at the BBC for twenty years. Don’t get me wrong, we’d go back to our houses in Chiswick in between shows, I just meant we hoped we’d have a long career there. At the time, Noel Edmonds was coming towards the end of his stint on House Party, and we hoped we might be able to fill that slot and do a big Saturday-night show of our own. We were even prepared to grow goatee beards and get blond highlights if that’s what it took.
Working on Friends Like These was also, appropriately enough, where we met one of our best friends. Alan Conley was the floor manager on the show. In case you’re wondering, a floor manager is the one who wears the headphones, shouts out what’s happening and is in charge of everything that happens on the studio floor, whether it’s
props coming on, getting the audience to applaud or getting presenters to pay attention (he had a lot of practice on the last one with us two). It’s a job that needs someone who’s organized, on the ball and very reliable. When he’s at work, Alan has all those qualities in abundance. What’s so funny is that, when he’s at home, he’s a complete shambles. His poor wife, Jo, has to put up with all sorts of calamities – he constantly leaves his key in the door, and regularly goes away for the weekend and leaves the hob on. Anyway, we bonded immediately and have been mates ever since. And if you’re reading this, Alan, just check your keys are in your pocket, will you?
Each episode of Friends Like These took about four hours to record. We were used to live stuff that was over and done with quickly, but this was the complete opposite. It meant we learnt patience, understanding and the importance of outside catering. Friends Like These did pretty well in the ratings, and we went back to our Saturday-morning programmes after the summer expecting to do more with the BBC, but before we could think about doing any other shows with them, we had the small matter of fifty-two weeks of sm:tv and cd:uk to deal with. I don’t mind telling you, it was hard work keeping up a relationship with two channels at the same time.
Going back to Saturday mornings also meant going back to something else very familiar – getting into trouble with the TV watchdogs. Ever since Beat the Barber, we’d enjoyed pushing our luck, and on sm:tv we pushed that luck as far as we could. We’d litter the show with double entendres. For instance, Ant played a camp superhero called Captain Justice, who always ‘disappeared with a puff ’ and, on the wedding episode of Chums, Dec went to some themed bars for painters, rugby players and people from Lapland, where he met some ‘strippers, hookers and lapdancers’.
The thing that got us into trouble was actually a practical joke. In 2000, April Fool’s Day fell on a Saturday but, somehow, neither of us two, Cat, or anyone in the team realized until the day before, so there was a mad scramble to try and think of something we could do the next day.
Then I had an idea: what if I fainted on air? I could pretend to pass out in the middle of the show. Like most of my ideas, I thought it was brilliant.
And like most of Dec’s ideas, it wasn’t.
We decided we’d call the nurse in, cut to a black screen, then go into some cartoons, so everyone thought it was a real emergency. After the cartoon, we’d come back to me and say, ‘Ha, ha April Fool!’ Understandably, there was a bit of resistance from the producers, but we managed to talk them round with that cunning and sophisticated argument, ‘Come on, what’s the matter with you? It’s only a joke.’
On the day, we came to the part of the show where we read out viewers’ letters, and to signal the arrival of the postbag, me, Ant and Cat do a dance to ‘Wait a Minute, Mr Postman’. We’d decided that I would faint during this, so just before the music got going, I started to try and look a bit under the weather and, as the three of us got up to do the dance, I keeled over.
That’s not quite the whole story – he milked it much, much more than anyone expected. If you watch it back, he’s puffing out his cheeks and saying how queasy he feels, hamming it up like, well, like only Declan can.
Thank you.
That wasn’t a compliment.
As the camera panned round the studio, Cat said, ‘Oh my god, get the nurse,’ and the TV picture went to the test card. And that’s when the trouble started. During the cartoon, the phone lines went crazy. Kids and their parents were phoning in saying, ‘Is Dec dead, is Dec dead?’ My initial reaction was ‘Brilliant – this is going to be hilarious,’ but as everyone around me began to panic, I realized that the whole thing had gone badly wrong. One of the big bosses at ITV rang up to find out what the hell was going on, and ITV told us the whole thing was in bad taste. Just like the producers had done when we first came up with the idea. Oops.
The thing is, we’re not egomaniacs who spend half our life sitting around thinking about how much the audience love us.
Aren’t we? I mean, yeah, you’re right, we’re not.
So when we did something like the April Fool, we didn’t really think it would upset kids who were watching at home. We certainly didn’t anticipate the backlash, and the whole thing got quite a lot of press coverage.
I was flying to Newcastle the next day to see my family, and when I got to the airport I saw the local paper. On the Sunday Sun’s front page, there was a picture from the show and a headline that said: ‘We thought Dec was dead.’
Your mother must have been so proud.
Even if Dec thought he was a great actor – which he wasn’t – there were people we worked with on Saturday mornings who showed us up from time to time. One of the finest, most professional and downright beautiful people we ever had on sm:tv was Ms Kylie Minogue. As well as coming on to perform on cd:uk, and of course appearing in Chums, she also stood in as a guest host. Cat had a few weeks off and Kylie was kind enough to step in. She must have been well paid. I remember the first time it happened very clearly. We’d always rehearse the whole show in Brixton on a Wednesday morning and, although we’d be in the office earlier in the week, that would be the first time we’d see the whole script. Unbeknown to us, in her role as our stand-in co-host, Kylie had asked if she could see a copy of the script the night before. I should tell you at this point that the script for sm:tv and cd:uk was an absolute monster – the show lasted for three hours, so the script was about seventy pages long. Anyway, we turn up for rehearsal on Wednesday morning with a bacon sandwich in our hands and a tabloid paper under our arms, ready to try and get our heads round that week’s script.
We said hello to Kylie – which isn’t a bad way for anyone to start their working day – and after a quick chat, started rehearsing. It quickly became apparent that Kylie had learnt the whole script off by heart. Every single word. She was word perfect before we’d even seen our scripts. You might think that, after being shown up like that, when it came to the following Wednesday, we’d have followed her lead and learnt the whole script before rehearsals.
She should be so lucky.
We had much better things to do with our time than to spend it learning scripts. We had important stuff to deal with – like arguing over a board game. Yes, that’s right, a board game. This was the time when we had the second and, so far, only other fight of our twenty years together. It was over the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? board game.
It was ridiculous.
I’m glad you admit that now.
No, what you did was ridiculous.
We’ll let the readers be the judge of that, shall we? We were round at my house playing the game, and it was Dec’s turn. The question was:
‘The novels of which author are the most-borrowed books from British public libraries?
A: Catherine Cookson
B: Agatha Christie
C: Barbara Cartland
D: Ruth Rendell’
I knew it definitely wasn’t Catherine Cookson or Barbara Cart-land, so it had to be either Ruth Rendell or Agatha Christie.
I asked him if he had an answer yet.
‘I think it’s between Ruth Rendell and Agatha Christie… but I’m not certain,’ I said. ‘I think I’m going to have to take a 50–50.’
So, naturally I took away Catherine Cookson and Barbara Cartland, leaving him with Ruth Rendell and Agatha Christie.
It was a sneaky thing to do – and we quickly got into a heated debate:
‘You arsehole.’
‘What? It’s a 50–50 – that’s what they do on the telly.’
‘You just sat there and heard me say Ruth Rendell or Agatha Christie.’
‘Exactly – that’s what they do on the telly.’
‘You arsehole. That’s not fair.’
‘It is fair – I’m in control of the board and I decide what the 50–50 is. Christ, Tarrant doesn’t have to put up with this shit…’
‘And I don’t have to put up with your shit. It’s my board, and I’m going home.�
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And with that, I packed up the board and went home. I was furious. I thought – and I still do think for that matter – that Ant was an arsehole and he wasn’t playing fair.
The worst thing about it was that I was his phone a friend, but he couldn’t call me ’cos he’d just stormed out of my house with a board game under his arm. We made up the next day but Dec has never managed to forgive and forget.
No I have not. I think we’d better change the subject before this turns ugly.
You’re right. Let’s move on to two very special and memorable moments for sm:tv and cd:uk. The first was that we actually made it to our one hundredth show.
After the programme’s rocky beginnings and low ratings, to have made it to one hundred shows was probably the proudest moment of our career so far. The show was a blockbuster. There was a star-studded episode of Chums that was all about the fact that Ant couldn’t blink. Don’t worry; it was funnier than it sounds. In the episode, I organized a charity single for ‘Ant Aid’, where we all sang a song called ‘Blink For Ant’. There was Victoria Beckham, Martine McCutcheon, Mel C, 5ive, Atomic Kitten and Billie Piper, all trying to help Ant blink. It was one of the biggest things we ever did. Plus, I managed not to faint, which was a bonus.
Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story Page 20