Despite how horrible it all was, however, there were some positives to come out of it. PRTS – which stands for Premium Rate Telephone Service – is still a relatively new thing in television. As we said a few chapters ago, Pop Idol was the first talent show to let viewers choose the winner by phone voting, which means that this kind of viewer interactivity and accessibility is really less than ten years old. That makes it very hard to police. People were still learning about how the whole thing worked and, although that in no way excuses what happened, it means that nothing like that should ever happen again. Now, there’s no danger of viewers spending any money without a fair and honest chance of winning a competition.
At the same time as the fine, in May 2008, a report was also published into a mistake that had been made at the 2005 British Comedy Awards.
Through a ‘voting error’, we were given the People’s Choice Award, which was actually won by, and should have gone to, Catherine Tate. We were just guests at the ceremony, so obviously had no idea what was happening with the votes, but that didn’t stop the press lumping it in with the phone-line problems on our shows. ‘No smoke without fire,’ they lazily regurgitated. We issued a statement saying we were appalled and immediately returned the award to ITV, who sent it to Catherine.
A few weeks after the Comedy Awards incident, I was in my local branch of Marks & Spencer’s buying some apples and I heard this voice behind me say, ‘Put them down, they’re my apples.’ I looked round and it was Catherine Tate. Even though we hadn’t personally done anything wrong, I couldn’t help blushing and I heard myself apologizing in the middle of Marks’s fruit aisle. Catherine told me not to be silly and that she was fine with it, which was good of her, we chatted a little and she accepted my apology. We went our separate ways and I went back to shopping for my five-a-day.
The investigation is still going on, and hopefully once it’s closed we might find out what happened. The whole thing – the reports, the fine, the mix-up – was a terrible time, and it reminded us how incredibly lucky we are to have the career we have – we would never, ever take anything for granted and we’re very fortunate to enjoy the support of the public, so sorry if this sounds cheesy, but thank you.
Chapter 43
The Pride of Britain Awards reward British people who’ve committed remarkable acts of bravery. It’s produced in association with the Mirror and televised on ITV. We’ve been involved on a regular basis and have done various things for them down the years and, in 2008, we told them we wanted to do something a bit different. ‘Fine,’ came the reply. ‘How would you like to go to Afghanistan?’ They wanted us to present an award out there to a unit called MERT (Medical Emergency Response Team). The MERT unit is basically a flying A&E department that goes to the front line of battle in a helicopter with a doctor, a nurse, paramedics and a surgeon, picks up casualties and takes them back to the hospitals at the base. Even though it wasn’t quite the answer we were expecting, after talking it through (a lot), we eventually agreed.
We flew out with Ali from RAF Brize Norton on an old Tristar jet, which is exactly like a normal plane, except that it has three beds at the front for casualties. Before we left, we were all fitted for body armour and given a helmet – you think to yourself, ‘I’ll never need this,’ but once you get there, you’re told to keep them with you at all times. Twenty minutes before we landed, we were told to put on our body armour and helmet, and they turned off all the lights so as to land in the cover of darkness. It was one of the most surreal and scary things I’ve ever experienced. Nobody talks, so we all silently zipped up our body armour and put our helmets on and waited to hear the plane’s wheels touch down. We got off the plane at Kandahar Airport, and boarded a Hercules jet, which took us to Camp Bastion, a big UK army base that MERT operates from. Looking out into the Afghan desert night, we could see small, glowing lights everywhere, which the pilots told us were Taliban campfires. When we arrived at Camp Bastion, we grabbed a few hours’ sleep on a campbed in a tent and, the next day, started filming.
The following morning, we were being briefed on the work the MERT does, when the unit got a call through – there were casualties on the front line and they had to go and collect them. Our filming schedule went out of the window, and instead we just captured what was happening as the situation unfolded. They took two helicopters and, when they returned, the walking wounded came off the helicopter, followed by the more seriously injured. There was a young soldier who had been shot in the leg and an Afghan National Army soldier who had been shot in the head.
We asked if we could talk to the walking wounded once they’d been cleaned up – the corporal in charge went in to ask them and was away for ages – when he came out he explained that it had taken a while to convince them it wasn’t a wind-up. I suppose that’s understandable. You’ve just been wounded in action, flown back to the base and, while you’re getting treated, someone comes in and says, ‘Ant and Dec are here and they’d like to have a chat with you’ – you could be forgiven for thinking your medication had kicked in early.
After a day’s filming at the base with the wounded and recovering, we stayed the night there. The following day we did some more filming and handed over the award to the members of the MERT team on the airstrip where their helicopters land. Being there was very moving, we had young soldiers coming up to us and saying, ‘Thanks for coming’ – they told us it meant a lot to them. Those guys are away from their homes and families for months on end risking their lives. They know some people are opposed to the war so they felt encouraged to have some support, even if it was from a couple of daft blokes off the telly.
After we presented the award we went back to Kandahar Airport to check in for our flight home. We were waiting for our turn and had started to watch a giant plasma screen that was on in the corner of the check-in area, which was basically a big marquee tent. They have what they call BFBS, which is British Forces Broadcasting Services, and This Morning was on – it was strange watching Phil and Fern in Afghanistan. Just as they were finishing an item with Dr Chris, a piercingly loud siren started going off – it was like a fire alarm, or an old air-raid siren. I turned from the TV and noticed that the whole room had cleared except for me, Dec and Ali. A soldier came in wearing full body armour, helmet and gun and shouted at us, ‘Hit the deck. Incoming, incoming.’ I looked down and saw the room hadn’t cleared at all – they were all on the floor with their hands over their heads. We followed suit and got down too. After a minute or two, the siren ceased. Everyone lay incredibly still, and explosions went off which didn’t sound too far away. The only sound in the room was Philip Schofield and Fern Britton on This Morning in the middle of one of their legendary giggling fits. I looked up at the screen and saw them laughing away, and all I could think was ‘How can you two laugh at a time like this? We’re being bombed!’ It was bizarre – lying there, we’d worked out by now that the base was under attack and our lives were in danger, but I was strangely calm. There was no fear or panic, just a weird realization of what the situation was. I looked around to see what everyone else was doing, and they were all still face down, some with eyes closed, some with eyes open staring at the floor. Then I saw Ali was looking around, too, but she was in fits of laughter – the whole situation was so strange it had brought on the giggles, and she couldn’t stop.
Another officer came into the room and ordered us all outside, so we went and lay face down in the dirt under a table, still with no idea what was going on. I was getting rather uncomfortable lying there so at one point I decided to sit up and stretch out a little. Immediately the soldier next to me said, ‘Every time I’ve seen anyone sit up during one of these attacks they’ve never sat up again – if you know what I mean?’ I knew exactly what he meant and immediately wriggled back down into the dirt.
Eventually, after around forty minutes under the table, it was deemed safe to go back inside. Word got to us of exactly what had just happened. We’d been under mortar attack from the Taliban,
and the explosions were just 200 metres away. We’d been told to leave the tent because that was probably the first target they’d try and hit.
When we finally checked in and boarded, some of the casualties we’d seen at Camp Bastion the previous day were on the plane home with us, and it was fascinating to see first hand how efficiently the whole process worked. It was incredibly quick – they were wounded and arrived back at camp on Tuesday, flown to Kandahar on Wednesday and got home to the UK the same day. The whole experience was inspirational – you watch the news and read the papers, but the only way to truly understand what life is like out there is to see the place. The day after we got back, we were in the gym and the fire alarm went off – I nearly jumped out of my skin.
The next time we left the country, it was for a much more trivial and shallow reason. By the time it came round to I’m a Celebrity… in November, we hadn’t been in your front rooms for about six months, so we couldn’t wait to get back on the telly. The cast was as brilliant as ever, and it included a man we’d spent some time with in LA the previous year. No, not the maître d’, although he would have been good. It was George Takei, aka Mr Sulu from Star Trek. George had been one of the celebrity panellists on our American show, Wanna Bet?, and as well as being one of the few people we’d actually heard of, he was a real charmer, with the most amazingly theatrical voice. When we got back from the States, we told the producers all about him. Despite being seventy-two years old, George passed the medical and, incredibly, agreed to go on the show. You could say he was ready ‘to oldly go where no man has gone before’.
You could, but I wish you hadn’t.
Once we got to Australia, the producers went to meet all of the cast individually. They do that every year, as they feel it’s important the contestants are prepared for how to deal with the whole jungle experience and, trust me, if they’re not scared witless when the producers arrive, they certainly are by the time they’ve left. The three executive producers, Richard Cowles, Beth Hart and Chris Brogden, came to fill us in after they’d seen the celebs and they were all struck by how nice George was. One of the things they’d asked him was exactly how to pronounce his surname – Takeye or Tak-ay. To make sure they got it right, George told them a little story, which went like this:
‘On Star Trek, William Shatner always used to call me George Tak-eye. He would constantly refer to me as George Tak-eye, no matter how many times I told him it was George Tak-ay. Then one day I said to him, “It’s Tak-ay – Tak-ay. It rhymes with toupee, you should know!” He never got it wrong after that!’
We knew there and then George would be great fun – and also that we’d never get his name wrong.
The series was won by Joe Swash, who was a worthy King of the Jungle – he was true to himself from day one and stood up for people he thought were being unfairly treated, plus he struck up an unlikely but close friendship with George, who he christened ‘Gorgeous George’. The big stars of the series, though, were a hilarious double act.
We were good, weren’t we?
I meant David Van Day and Timmy Mallet. They were annoying, funny, confrontational and divisive – in other words, perfect I’m a Celebrity… contestants. When it came to David Van Day – well, how can you fail to love a man who walks around camp in red hot-pants, holding a fly swat and talking to himself?
This was our eighth year of I’m a Celebrity… with, by and large, the same people every year, which has made for a great atmosphere on the show. There are, among others, our regular make-up and wardrobe team of Claude and Toni; Andy and Mark the scriptwriters; Chris the director; and Richard and Natalka, the executive producers. The whole thing feels like one big family – if you think of a family as a group of people who spend three weeks filming, editing and Bushtucker-trialling a load of famous people, anyway.
And, of course, another upside is the air miles. Me and Lisa used up a few thousand of them on a trip to New York to see in the New Year. Lisa is always complaining that, when we’re in America, she never spots anyone famous – the best she’s managed in LA is the back of Mike Tyson’s head, and Fabio, a male model from the nineties. You know, Fabio? No, me neither. Dec and me always seem to spot our fair share of celebs out there, including Matthew Perry in a restaurant and Harrison Ford at the baseball (thanks for asking), but poor Lisa never seems to do too well. Whilst waiting for our flight we treated ourselves to a glass of champagne in the Concorde lounge at a jam-packed Heathrow. Lisa complemented the bubbles with a packet of Frazzles, a copy of Closer and a bit of music on her iPod, and I was reeling from the football I’d just watched – Newcastle United 1–Liverpool 5. I’d already had a few ‘comments’ about my team from football fans and check-in staff at the airport when I saw a huge black guy smiling and heading towards me in a Liverpool cap. ‘Oh no, here we go again,’ I thought – yet another Scouser who’s going to rub my nose in it. I slid deeper into my chair and got ready to take some stick over the result and then, hopefully, get rid of him.
I took a deep breath and steeled myself for another bout of ridicule, but the ridicule didn’t come. He didn’t even mention the football; he just delivered an enthusiastic ‘Happy Holiday!’ in an American accent. ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ I thought. I stood up, reluctantly about to shake his hand, when I noticed who the hell he was: Samuel L. Jackson! Yes, that Samuel
L. Jackson. And he’d come over to say hello to me. Yes, that me. Before I knew what was happening, I heard myself saying ‘Happy Holiday’ back to him. I was standing at Heathrow, gleefully shaking hands with one of the most iconic men in film: it was brilliant – and he still hadn’t even mentioned the football.
As we stood there in the middle of a very busy lounge chit-chatting about golf, how we spent our Christmas holidays, golf and more golf, one thought was rushing through my head: ‘How the hell does he know who I am?’ He started asking how me and my ‘buddy’ were doing and I said, ‘Fine, thanks,’ as if this was the most natural thing in the world. I knew he’d been interviewed by Little Ant and Dec but I was sure we’d never met – but who cares? I was chewing the fat with Samuel L. Jackson.
After a few more rounds of fat-chewing, our chat finally moved round to the one subject I was dreading – football. Samuel had spent some time in Liverpool making a film a few years ago, and as a result had adopted them as his team. He teased me about the game, but even then I didn’t seem to mind – he could have slapped me round the face with a wet fish and I would have thanked him for it.
I looked round at Lisa, who was in her own little world, thanks to the distractions of her iPod and Closer, so I tapped her on the shoulder to reveal my new best friend. She looked up and nearly dropped her Frazzles. She whipped out her earphones and shook hands with him – although she later told me she was worried she’d smeared crisp dust on his palms – and the three of us had a little chat before he went off to do whatever it is film stars do in airports. To celebrate her best ever celeb spot, I bought Lisa another bag of Frazzles.
There aren’t many gentlemen left in the world but, Ant McPartlin, you are one of them.
Chapter 44
Apart from taking Lisa to New York, there’s one other way I like to celebrate the start of a new year, and that’s with a round of Britain’s Got Talent auditions. This year, for the third series, we were due to start in Manchester, and we couldn’t wait to get going. The previous year’s series had been huge, and we were looking forward to getting back to what we laughingly call ‘work’.
We arrived at our hotel and went down to the bar for a meeting with Nigel Hall and Andrew Llinares, two of the executive producers, Ben Thursby, the series producer and Clair Breen, the producer. We sat down and they told us they had some news – Simon Cowell had decided there was going to be a fourth judge and it was Kelly Brook. It came completely out of the blue to both of us, and for twenty seconds we sat there in complete silence.
We had two questions: ‘Why is there a fourth judge?’ and ‘Why is it Kelly Brook?’ None of th
em could answer us. Obviously, as hosts of the show, we have to justify that kind of thing to the audience, and no one could give us a good reason why Kelly was on board. The simple answer was that Simon, without talking to anyone, had decided it was a good idea. We didn’t agree. Three judges on the show works, it means someone always has the casting vote, and our reaction was ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ We were also annoyed we hadn’t been consulted – we’ve always had a good relationship with Simon and there’s a mutual respect between the three of us, so this was disappointing. Plus it had all happened so fast and it had a negative effect on the morale of the crew – everyone seemed a bit confused by the whole thing, and most people didn’t find out about it till the next day, when the auditions started. We might not have been happy, but we were stuck with it, so we went to the theatre to start the auditions, not knowing what to expect.
When we arrived, we got a call asking us if we wanted to go up to the judges’ room and meet Kelly, which we thought was a good idea. We went in there, said hello to Piers, Simon and Amanda, and then welcomed Kelly. She looked nervous, so I told her it was going to be great fun and to just relax and enjoy it. She nodded, then looked at me and said, ‘And what do you do on the show?’ I looked at Simon, who was sat next to me, he turned to Kelly and said, ‘Kelly, you have seen the show, haven’t you?’ To which she replied, ‘Yeah… well, bits.’ I don’t want to sound like an egomaniac, but the last person who said, ‘And what do you do?’ was the Queen when I met her at the party for ITV’s fiftieth anniversary, and that was excusable for two reasons – she’s the Queen and I’m still chasing that MBE.
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