Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story

by Ant McPartlin

  The decision was also taken to shoot the pilot on the existing Takeaway set in London. It would be very expensive to build a whole new set in America, so the plan was to record it in our studio, and bring in an audience of Americans who lived in London.

  Bad idea. Very bad idea. Call me old-fashioned, but if you’re making a TV show for America, it’s a good idea to film it in America. Not doing that meant we lost that American feel that American TV needed. We filmed the pilot and sent it to Fox for their approval. The first thing they said was ‘This is far too long.’ It had ended up being one hour ten minutes, without ad breaks. In the US, an hour-long show is around forty-three minutes, so we had to lose half an hour of stuff and it left us with a show that didn’t make any sense. Unsurprisingly, it never got commissioned although, on the plus side, K-J did get some lovely dresses – and that’s the main thing, isn’t it?

  So we didn’t get the show, although we did get to have one of the most brilliant meetings we’ve ever had. Before we shot the pilot, we went to LA with Paul Jackson, a very experienced British executive, who was running Granada America at the time, to meet the Fox Network Head of Alternative Programming, Mike Darnell.

  Mike is probably five foot tall. Yes, that’s right, he’s the only person in telly (apart from Jeanette Krankie) who’s smaller than us two. He wears skinny black jeans, cowboy boots and a leather jacket. As well as being a former child-star, he was also a cocktail pianist before he worked in TV. We resisted making a joke about him being a tiny pianist – he was in charge of our show, so we decided that wasn’t a good idea. As you’ll have gathered by now, Mike is a maverick, but an incredibly successful maverick. For instance, he’s the man in charge of American Idol, which sort of makes him Simon Cowell’s boss.

  We arrived ten minutes early, and just being at Fox Studios was a thrill – there were huge Simpsons pictures everywhere, it was a baking-hot Californian day and we walked into the offices, took off our sunglasses and felt good: we were in LA and we were having a meeting about our own TV show.

  Behind reception there was a giant Bart Simpson picture, there were X-Files and American Idol posters on every wall, and glamorous people seemed to be gliding in and out of offices at ten-second intervals. Mike Darnell is notorious for keeping people waiting, and he kept the three of us in reception for forty minutes, which apparently isn’t too bad. Plus, we were served chilled water and a fruit platter while we flicked through copies of Hollywood’s trade paper Variety. This was most definitely LA, baby. Eventually, Mike was ready for us. The moment we walked into his office, he screamed, ‘Ant and Dec – I love you guys!’ We went to shake hands with him, while, in an effort to make small talk, Paul Jackson said, ‘I was just telling Ant and Dec about how you used to play piano in a wine bar before you got into TV.’

  Our hands were still stuck out waiting for a handshake, when Mike turned his back on all three of us and, while we exchanged bemused glances, made his way over to a piano in the corner of his office and started playing it. I didn’t have a clue how to react. We were standing there, jackets still on, open-mouthed, while Mike tickled the ivories as if his life depended on it. After a few familiar bars, he stopped suddenly and spun round in his chair.

  ‘Do you guys like Elton John?’ he enquired.

  ‘Er… yes… of course,’ we replied, hoping that was the right answer.

  ‘I LOVE Elton John!’ he cried, then spun back around, took a deep breath and launched into ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’ at the top of his voice. This was getting seriously weird. Should we laugh? Was it a joke? Should we clap out of respect? Or should we hit him with the dance moves from ‘Rhumble’? We were stunned and, at the same time, desperately trying not to laugh. We still hadn’t been invited to sit down, so we carried on standing there, dumbstruck.

  I started looking for the hidden cameras. I was convinced Simon Cowell was getting his own back – this had to be a wind-up.

  After what seemed like about four years, Mike finished the first verse, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. We were about to start applauding when Mike pulled out his trump card – the second verse. We waited what seemed like another four years until he’d finished and then burst into applause. Mike said thank you – and, I’m sure, took a bow, but that may just be my memory playing tricks on me. Surely we would grab a seat and start talking business now?

  Wrong. Mike had a test for us. He said, ‘Hey guys, what’s wrong with my desk?’ This was getting ridiculous – first we’d been treated to his live Elton John tribute, and now we were talking furniture.

  We looked at his desk, and all thought the same thing: ‘It’s had the legs chopped in half.’ Mike was so small that he’d had his desk customized. But none of us had the balls to say it, so we all started making guesses we knew were wrong:

  ‘Er, is it antique?’

  ‘Has it got lots of drawers?’

  ‘It’s not another piano, is it?’

  Eventually, after a few more guesses, Mike put us out of our misery. He looked at the three of us.

  ‘No man, the fg legs have been chopped off – I’m only five feet tall!’

  At exactly the same time, all three of us said, ‘Oh yes! So it has!’

  After that, I think we actually got down to the meeting.

  One good thing came out of it: the moment we got home, we both sawed down the legs of all our furniture. Try it – it makes you feel like a giant.

  On the subject of home improvements, just before Christmas 2003, I finally won a battle I’d been waging with my mam and dad for years: I bought them a house. When I first suggested it, they’d been very resistant, but I started leaving a few brochures featuring new properties around and, one day, my mam said she’d seen one she liked the look of, and we went to see it. This happened a few times until we found the right house, and I had an offer accepted.

  The whole Donnelly family spent every day that Christmas holiday stripping wallpaper, knocking down walls and getting the place ready. My brother Martin, who’s a builder, was brilliant, and it was great for me to throw myself into this project and feel like I was helping my family out. Plus, I don’t have to fork out for a hotel when I go home.

  You’re all heart, aren’t you?

  That’s me.

  Chapter 33

  Here’s a question for you – what connects one of the best-known ex-couples in Britain, a punk icon and a disgraced member of the aristocracy? Yes, you guessed it, I’m a Celebrity… Get Me out of Here! If we thought the first two series had been big, then the third instalment of the longest-titled show on TV was absolutely enormous. Of course, I’d like to say that it was all down to a quite brilliant and hilarious performance from us two, but the truth was that it was due to the most intriguing line-up so far.

  The cast of 2004 had something for everyone – there was Kerry (as she was then) McFadden, Lord Brocket, Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock, Jenni Bond, John ‘Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols’ Lydon, plus a man called Peter Andre and a lady called Jordan. And they didn’t disappoint.

  This series was also when we started working with a writer who’s been stuck with us ever since, Andy Milligan. Andy’s from Newcastle so, as well as working together, the three of us always spend plenty of time talking about football, but there are happy times too. In fact, Andy’s helping us with this very book – say hello to everyone Andy.

  Hi, everyone, I’d just like to say…

  Shush, you, that’s enough. Keep typing and button it.

  John Lydon was the most exciting booking for us. These days, you might know him as a wildlife presenter and a bloke who advertises butter but, back then, he was just a plain old living legend of punk, and watching him in the jungle was fascinating. Right up until the night before the celebs were due to go in, no one believed John would go through with it. We all thought it would be the ultimate punk gesture to pull out at the last minute – but he surprised us all. Once he got in there, he actually made a lot of friends. Most of them were animal
s and insects, but he was very popular with those animals and insects.

  At the end of every episode, as you know, we always head into camp to announce the results of the viewers’ votes. Those moments can be strange at the best of times. We walk across three huge rope bridges, just us two, the floor manager and the cameraman, and then you reach camp and have to go in and deal with a load of starving, angry, smelly celebrities. We always walk in there expecting the unexpected. And with John Lydon in there, you’ll understand why we were particularly apprehensive that series. For the whole first week, John was as good as gold – he didn’t do anything risqué, and the closest we got to an ‘incident’ was when former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read and Lord Brocket gave us charcoal moustaches.

  But then the atmosphere changed, as it always does. The mood in camp becomes much more about survival and much less about fear of trials.

  We stood there in camp, listening to the countdown in our earpieces, trying to avoid the flies and the smoke from the fire and attempting to concentrate on revealing who the British public would be sending home. As ever, we took turns reading the names and, when it came to me, I wafted some smoke out of my eye, looked at Johnny Rotten and said, ‘John, they’ve decided… it’s not you.’

  To which he replied, ‘Oh, fg cts!’

  Right there and then, on live TV, John Lydon used the C word. It’s shocking, it’s unsuitable and it’s not Christopher Biggins. And, to make matters worse, he’d only gone and chucked in an F word before the C word.

  I couldn’t believe it. I’d really enjoyed watching John in that series, and he’d just done the most predictable thing possible for an old punk. There was a deafening silence in our earpieces. I heard myself saying, ‘Hey, come on now. Come on, John,’ in a tone of voice that we all remember from our childhoods that says, ‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.’ Then the absurdity of the situation dawned on me: I was standing in the middle of the Australian rainforest at seven in the morning chastising the lead singer of the Sex Pistols for saying a naughty word. Our earpieces suddenly crackled into life, and a voice came through: ‘Apologize, APOLOGIZE!’ Dec apologized immediately to the viewers and, after we’d finished the rest of the voting announcement, we left the camp. A few days later, John decided to leave the camp too – he walked off the show and went back to the hotel, where he could use all the F, C, W and B words he liked.

  When we weren’t at work telling off old punks, we managed to get in a bit of sunbathing, and we both got the worst sunburn of our lives. Most Geordies will tell you they burn easily, and us two got a shocking dose of it on that trip. The back of my legs and my back were absolutely beetroot-red, while Ant scorched his back and his forehead.

  Yeah, I know: there’s plenty of it to burn.

  We were in agony, and Claude, our make-up artist, suggested a remedy. ‘She’s a make-up artist,’ we thought. ‘She knows about skincare.’ She looked at us with a completely straight face and suggested we put sliced tomato on the burnt areas. We burst out laughing, but she was serious – Claude said it worked a treat. We were in agony, so we were prepared to try anything and, five minutes later, we were both lying on our front with sliced tomatoes all over our backs. After that experience, I can offer some great advice to any readers who suffer sunburn in the future: don’t put tomato on it; it doesn’t do a thing.

  That’s not true, it does do one thing – it makes you look like a complete idiot.

  The series was won by Kerry McFadden who, after a very shaky first few days, really embraced life in the jungle. As we all know, going on ‘a journey’ is the name of the game on reality TV, and I’m not talking about a first-class flight from Manchester to Brisbane. In a way, though, the real winners were ex-couple Peter and Jordan, or Katie Price, as she’s known these days. The thing about I’m a Celebrity… is that it’s impossible to hide your true personality: no one can put on an act all day every day for nearly three weeks.

  Before Jordan went into the jungle, a lot of people had made up their mind about her. They thought she was just another glamour model, but she turned out to be feisty, opinionated and honest, and people warmed to that – especially feisty, opinionated and honest people. She was also falling in love with the bloke who sang ‘Mysterious Girl’ and would go on to wow us all with his latest composition, ‘Insania’. As you’ll remember, almost ten years earlier, we’d lived in the same building as Peter Andre and, while he’d hit the gym every day, we’d be eating Chinese Pete’s barbecue ribs. And now, here we were again, only this time, we got to go to the gym every day while he shared a cup of hot water round the campfire with former BBC Royal Correspondent Jenni Bond. Peter was such great value and, alongside his endless renditions of ‘Insania’ and flirting with Jordan, he would come out with a gem every day which, frankly, made our job a hell of a lot easier.

  I don’t think anyone would have put Peter and Jordan together before the series. She had a boyfriend when she went in, and no one had heard from him for years – to most people he was a cheesy nineties pop star (and that can be a very hard label to shake off. We should know). It was the first time two people began a relationship on the show, and it was fascinating to watch. We were so excited, me and Ant even talked about getting hats for their wedding, like Cilla used to on Blind Date.

  Series three was fantastic – there were so many intriguing characters and so much going on – and the ratings reflected that. The final was watched by an incredible 15.7 million people, which was the biggest audience we’d ever performed to – and yes, that does include Slap Bang. It meant so much because we’d worked so hard with the team to get the tone and the style of the show right. It hadn’t been easy but it was well worth all the hard work – the show had become a phenomenon and we were ecstatic.

  The wrap party for series three had something that no other I’m a Celebrity … wrap party has had – a VIP area, which meant we got to spend some time with Mike Read and Lord Brocket, who, for some reason, were dressed as women.

  I think I like it better when there isn’t a VIP area…

  The other thing I remember from that party is doing shots with Kerry, and Jordan chasing after Dec, who she had propositioned during her departure interview. He managed to avoid her all night, but her mum did corner him a couple of times and try to set him up with her. He wasn’t having any of it.

  At the party, I was really in the mood for a big night. When it finished at around two in the morning, everyone else – Dec, Ali, and Toni and Claude – went back to their rooms and went to sleep. I wanted to keep going and was in a boozy huff that no one wanted to join me. I went back to my room, got my CD player and portable speakers, a few CDs, a couple of beers and headed down to the beach, where I sat watching the sun coming up. I was desperate for some company but, apart from a bloke with a metal detector, who I did have a quick chat with, the beach was deserted, so I texted Ali and said, ‘Fancy a swim?’

  Ali said the moment she got the text, she panicked: she knew I was in a party mood and she was terrified I’d gone for a drunken swim in the hotel pool. She checked my room first. The door was open, but I wasn’t there, so then she tried the pool, then finally headed for the beach and found me, sitting cross-legged on the sand listening to music and with a face like thunder – all because no one wanted to party with me. I was in such a bad mood I thought nothing in the world could make me feel more irritated. Then Mother Nature intervened and proved me wrong. A huge wave appeared and washed my CD player and speakers into the sea.

  What were you listening to? Katrina and the Waves? A bit of Billy Ocean perhaps?

  Shut up – it still makes me angry to think about it.

  The Beach Boys?

  Just leave it.

  As well as providing great drama of its own, I’m a Celebrity… was also throwing up people we would soon be seeing again for Undercover, our hidden camera strand on Takeaway. For our latest series, we went back to the king of the sit-ups, John ‘Fash the Bash’ Fashanu.

  All our U
ndercovers had to be planned with military precision. In Fash’s case, we had a very clear plan to catch him out. ITV had a show called Celebrities Under Pressure, where celebrities went to live with a family and learnt a skill with them. The plan was that Fash would go and live with a ‘family’ from Newcastle and learn the skill of karaoke. However, this, as they say, was no ordinary family. The dad was Dec, the oldest son was me, and the rest of them were actors, but of course Fash didn’t have a clue about that.

  The idea was that at first the family would be excited at Fash’s arrival, then when they realized he was a terrible singer, they’d give up on their task and try to swap him for another celebrity. As always, that first moment when we come face to face with our victim was extremely nerve-wracking but, when he saw us, Fash didn’t bat an eyelid. Batting an eyelid, incidentally, was no mean feat for us two – wearing prosthetics meant that we could barely see two feet in front of us at times, which was a big worry: what if that made me even clumsier?

  Over the course of the shoot, we practised karaoke with Fash and then, as planned, got angry with him and tried to throw him out – it made a change for us to be laughing at someone else’s singing – and that was supposed to be the end of the hit. But he wouldn’t go. Fash’s response was ‘Come on, guys, we’re a team – we can do this!’ That put a major spanner in the works.