Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story

by Ant McPartlin

  It was quick, simple and to the point. I can still remember exactly what we said, which was this:

  ‘I’m not enjoying this any more.’

  ‘Neither am I.’

  ‘Shall we knock it on the head?’

  ‘Aye.’

  And that was it. With those seventeen words – don’t bother going back to count them, I’ve done it for you – we decided to stop being pop stars. It was time to bring the curtain down on the greatest Newcastle-based, ex-children’s drama actors turned pop-star double act this damn country’s ever seen.

  The taxi stopped at the flat. We climbed out, paid the driver and gave him a tip: ‘If your third album doesn’t sell, it’s time to retire from pop,’ I said. I think he would have preferred money but, you never know, one day that advice may prove to be priceless.

  When we got back to the flat, we got a KFC and a couple of beers, and it felt like the biggest weight in the world had been lifted off our shoulders. Believe me when I tell you those beers were the coolest, sweetest-tasting lager I’ve ever drunk – and, trust me, I’ve done years of research. And the KFC? Well, it couldn’t have tasted better if it’d been cooked by Gordon Ramsay and served on plates made of gold.

  The next day we rang Dave, told him we were giving up music and that we wanted to concentrate on TV, which, considering we had no TV show, no TV deal and no TV prospects, was a bit of a risk. In fact, the only connection we had to TV at that point was that we had one in the front room of the flat. The main thing was, though, that we were out of music and, to celebrate, we went on holiday to Majorca with Clare and Lisa.

  That holiday was the very definition of blow-out: we drank gallons of San Miguel, ate what we liked and generally let our hair down, free from the shackles of boy-band life. Ant, in particular, celebrated by eating. And eating. And eating. He’d polish off everyone else’s food, always to cries of ‘Calm down, Guzzle Guts’ from the girls – and, to his credit, he never once complained. Mainly because his mouth was full of food.

  I put on about two stone. It was brilliant. Clare and Lisa had known for a while that we weren’t happy with our music careers so, when we finally quit, they could see how liberated, relieved and in my case, fat, we’d become. It was the first time the four of us had been away together, the girls got on like a house on fire and Dec and I relaxed. It was the perfect holiday.

  We came back totally refreshed: we weren’t pop stars any more and we were free to try and create the career we’d always wanted – there were no commitments, no record company and no one to tell us what to do next.

  We were absolutely terrified.

  Chapter 18

  We may have been, in the immortal words of Chaper 17, ‘absolutely terrified’, but 1997 did end with a tiny glimmer of hope – a one-off show for Channel 4 called Ant and Dec’s Geordie Christmas. All I can really tell you about that show is that it was definitely on around Christmas time, and that Ant and Dec were in it. Other than that, as with Ant and Dec Unzipped, my memory is hazy – I was probably too busy concentrating on my newfound hobby of eating.

  After our Geordie Christmas, the next decent bit of work came at Easter. While the rest of the country was busy opening Easter eggs and watching old films, we stood in as guest hosts of Channel 4’s The Bigger Breakfast, which was a longer, and frankly bigger, version of The Big Breakfast that went out during the school holidays. Normally, The Big Breakfast would be broadcast between seven and nine in the morning but, in the holidays, The Bigger Breakfast would normally be from seven to twelve thirty – five and a half hours of live TV. That’s enough to exhaust even the most professional TV presenters around – so, as you can imagine, it left us two completely knackered.

  The show was always live from a house in East London and it gave us first-hand experience of the kind of raucous, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants telly that we came to know and love over the next few years. Because the whole thing was on so early – it’s called breakfast TV for a reason – everyone who worked there was always in a kind of heightened state. The whole place was loud, enthusiastic and chaotic, thanks to a combination of sleep deprivation and sheer excitement.

  Our co-host was Melanie Sykes, and she wasn’t interested in appearing in any of the sketches or games in the show, so we did them all. The Ant and Dec Show and Unzipped had both featured sketches and games, but The Bigger Breakfast had one key difference from those shows – it was live, so whatever happened, no matter what went wrong, we would have to carry on regardless – and that’s an incredible learning curve for a presenter. We started to try and surprise each other on air, or try and make each other laugh. I’m not sure we would have had the confidence to do that if Melanie had been involved, because we’d never worked with her before, so if you’re reading, Melanie Sykes, thank you for not wanting to dress up and do sketches, it gave Ant and me the chance to start messing about on live telly together – something we’re still getting away with ten years later.

  A while afterwards, we were invited to a meeting at Channel 4 to discuss that familiar topic known as ‘our future’. On the way there, I remember both of us were really excited – Unzipped hadn’t worked out, but Channel 4 was the coolest, edgiest TV channel around and where we wanted to be, so we couldn’t wait to hear what they had to say. We didn’t have a regular job, and this looked like it could be a golden opportunity. We got into the meeting, which was with Graham Smith and Stuart Cosgrove, and after a bit of chit chat, they started telling us how much they’d enjoyed what we’d done on The Bigger Breakfast, and that they wanted to talk to us about taking on the job full time, because they’d made a decision – there would be no more Unzipped.

  Hosting The Big Breakfast was an incredible opportunity – not only was it one of the most innovative shows on TV, this offer also provided us with everything that was currently missing from our careers – the chance to get extensive experience in presenting live TV and, even more importantly, a full-time job. It was perfect. With all these things going for it, we made our decision. We turned it down. We thought it was too early for us.

  Too right it was – it was on at seven o’clock in the morning.

  However good the offer seemed, our instincts were telling us it was the wrong move. After that, there was nothing on the horizon. Before long, the invitations to parties and premieres stopped coming – suddenly our names weren’t down and we weren’t coming in. If I’m a Celebrity… had been on the telly back then, I reckon we would’ve been asked to do it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, at the time, the papers were running stories saying we had no record deal and no future – and printing that sort of stuff was scurrilous, damaging to our reputations and, worst of all, it was true.

  Dave Holly showed us our financial statements, and they weren’t exactly what you’d call a good read. We never really made a lot of money from our music career and, when we looked at the statements, there seemed to be a lot of activity in the column marked ‘Out’ and not too much going on in the column marked ‘In’. At that point, there was a very real possibility that we’d have to move back to Newcastle and get, dare I say it, proper jobs. We needed to find a way to make a living – and fast. We knew we wanted to stay in TV, so we set about trying to do something we knew no one else in the TV industry would be doing – coming up with ideas for shows that could be hosted by Ant and Dec. We went into the offices of Ant and Dec Productions, just off Baker Street in Central London, and started brainstorming.

  One of the ideas we came up with was a music show for ITV, a kind of rival to Top of the Pops, live on Sunday night to coincide with the new Top 40 being announced. We thought there was a gap in the market at that time of the week – after all, the only other things on were The Antiques Road-show and Songs Of Praise – and neither of them seemed too interested in the singles chart. We ended up pitching – (desperately trying to flog) – the show to Nigel Pickard, who was ITV’s head of children’s programmes. Nigel told us he was looking for a replacement for The Chart Show on Saturda
y mornings, and he thought our show could be it. The problem, as we saw it, was that he wanted us to host a two-hour, live, Saturday-morning kids’ show before the music programme so, showing our as ever razor-sharp career instincts, we said no. We thought we were too old to be introducing cartoons on a Saturday morning, oblivious to the fact that, if the work situation didn’t improve soon, we’d be stacking shelves on a Saturday morning before too long.

  Thankfully, Nigel gave us a second chance, and when we told him we’d changed our minds, he commissioned the show. It might seem strange that we went from the showbiz dole queue straight to having our own Saturday-morning show, but that’s honestly how the fickle finger of television fate worked for us two. And you know what they say, never look the fickle finger of fate in the mouth – at least, I think that’s right; I’ve never been great with proverbs.

  Once we knew we were doing the show, we needed so many things: ideas, a title, people who had a clue how to make Saturday-morning telly… We called the show sm:tv, because it was Saturday-morning television – clever, eh? The music show afterwards was a ‘CountDown’ of the UK singles chart, so that became cd:uk. Don’t be confused by the word ‘count-down’ in it, though, we weren’t going after Carol Vorderman’s audience.

  Although we’d worked hard on The Ant & Dec Show and Unzipped, sm:tv and cd:uk were the beginnings of how we still work today – being closely involved in getting the show on air – from initial ideas right through to what you see on your telly. Part of making that happen meant putting together a production team, Conor McAnally became the executive producer for both shows, and we also needed another two producers. When we’d appeared on Top of the Pops as PJ and Duncan, we’d encountered a producer called Ric Blaxhill, who could be blunt and overbearing, and could make pop stars feel two feet tall. He was perfect, and we hired him to run cd:uk. Further down the line, we made two other key appointments: David Staite, who’d worked on The Big Breakfast, to run sm:tv; and Phil Mount, who’d been on TFI Friday, to work on music. David and Phil also went on to become great friends of ours, which is obviously why we’ve described them as ‘key appointments’ rather than ‘a couple of blokes’.

  It’s also a law of telly that, on Saturday mornings, you need a female co-host, so we set about meeting lots of glamorous young female TV presenters.

  Boy, that was a tough gig.

  One of the first stunners – I mean, candidates – we met was called Cat Deeley. Her initials were CD, so she already had her name in the title of the show, which was half the battle. We didn’t know it at the time but, before her audition, Cat had done her homework on us. A few months earlier, me, Dec and Si Hargreaves had spent the day in the pub watching Newcastle play football. They weren’t playing football in the pub – the match was on telly. As any Geordie will tell you, when you’re watching Newcastle United, it’s often helpful to drink heavily so, by the time we got to the end of the evening and arrived at Mr Wings, the Chinese restaurant, we were what’s known in Newcastle as ‘mortal drunk’.

  To give you a rough idea of just how inebriated we were, while we were in the restaurant, I fell off my chair – and, remember, Ant’s supposed to be the clumsy one. At the next table, there was a nice young couple having a romantic dinner (the bloke was French) and they understandably asked to be moved away from us. I’m not proud of it, but I’m afraid I was very rude to them – I certainly didn’t pardon my French. When the food came, I took one look at it, and my stomach churned. I stood up and said, ‘I’ve got to go home,’ which wasn’t easy – I love a chicken with black bean sauce more than life itself.

  Me and Si finished our meal, then we went back to the flat to find Dec’s keys still in the door and Dec poleaxed, fast asleep on the sofa. I think it would be fair to say that, other than these basic facts, neither of us have the most crystal-clear memory of what happened that evening.

  To be honest, I could have killed a man that night and I wouldn’t have remembered it. Don’t worry, I didn’t, but I could have. I wasn’t very proud of my actions though, and tried to put the whole incident behind me.

  In that interview with Cat, after a few pleasantries, she said, ‘I think we’ve met before. I was in a Chinese restaurant a few months ago in Fulham with my boyfriend – he’s French – and you two were sat next to us. You were quite rude actually.’

  I went bright red. I apologized at least ten times, and I was mortified – here was a girl we might be working with, and I’d been rude, offensive and obnoxious to her. I usually waited at least a month before I let work colleagues see my real personality. Cat finally put me out of my misery. It hadn’t been her at all; when she knew she was coming to meet us, she’d found out that Si Hargreaves was our press officer and called him up to get some dirt on us.

  After being tricked, embarrassed and humiliated by this girl in the space of five minutes, there was only one option – we gave her the job. We had other girls to see, but we didn’t bother. Cat was perfect, and we knew straight away we had a lot in common – a love of mischief, a good sense of humour and, of course, a first name with three letters in it.

  For us, one of the great things about working with Cat was that the three of us clicked really early on – and, by ‘clicked’, I mean, went out drinking a lot. She knew me and Ant had been together for years – not like that, you know what I mean – but that was never threatening to her. Even though she’s very pretty – and, goodness knows, with us two on screen, we needed some glamour on the show – she was always prepared to muck in and make a fool of herself. She was never precious about how she looked, or how she behaved, she was up for a laugh right from the off, and that was vital when you were doing a Saturday-morning kids’ show.

  At first, it was only me and Dec who did sketches, but after a while we started to involve Cat in them. So, for instance, she became Jam Woman, a superhero who provided jam at the drop of a hat. She’d never done ‘comedy’ before, but we told her to just really throw herself into everything, and she went for it. Soon, she was putting in goofy teeth, wearing a dodgy wig and calling herself Cat the Dog.

  There’s no one in the world I would rather have worked with week in, week out on sm:tv. Well, maybe Alan Shearer, but he would never have fitted into those little dresses. Since Byker Grove, Cat’s still pretty much the only person we’ve ever worked with regularly and, once the show found its feet, every week felt like the three of us were having a laugh for a living.

  So, with a new team behind the camera, a fantastic co-host and a set designed by Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz fame, we were ready to launch the show. We had a cast-iron commitment from ITV to run the show for a full year, and on 29 August 1998, sm:tv and cd:uk hit the airwaves. It was make-or-break time, and we knew it. With presenters who were new to the time slot, a brand-new show and a channel that hadn’t traditionally done well on Saturday mornings, the whole thing could easily have been a complete disaster.

  And it was.

  In the run-up to the first show, Ant and me were feeling very apprehensive, and Cat also seemed quite overwhelmed by the whole thing. She came in to the studio for the first time the week before and couldn’t believe how big it was – before that, she’d been working in a much smaller studio at MTV. She said, ‘Will everyone in the country be able to see this show?’ Of course they will, we told her – it’s on ITV, it’s going to be live to the whole of Great Britain. Cat nodded. ‘So my nan’ll be able to watch it in Birmingham, then?’ she asked.

  None of us got much sleep the night before that first show, and our breakfast had gone untouched: there was no room in our stomachs for food, they were all too full of butterflies. We’d done a runthrough the week before, so we knew the script but, about halfway through it, I had a moment of clarity. I thought, ‘There’s nothing in this show.’ It had no real content, and that’s never a good sign with a telly programme. You don’t often hear people saying, ‘Did you see that new show last night? There was nothing in it – it was brilliant.’

  In thos
e early episodes, we’d present the show on top of a little platform called Mission Control. It had buttons and handles, and it was supposed to be the epicentre of that morning’s entertainment – we’d play all the cartoons from there, cue the pop videos and fade in and out of breaks; it was kind of a mixture between a TV studio and a radio station. The idea was that we were fully in control. The reality was that we weren’t. None of the buttons or handles were connected to anything and we just pretended.

  I actually think it was quite a good idea, Mission Control. It was SkyPlus ahead of its time, but it was just too complicated for 9.25 on a Saturday morning, when kids just want to watch cartoons and be left alone. If you see any of the early shows, you’ll notice that even we didn’t believe in it. Eventually, and it took us a while, we worked out that there’s a reason Saturday-morning kids’ shows have certain conventions – like a sofa. And no Mission Control. Those things work, but we just hadn’t realized it yet.

  After the first show came off air, I just had this overwhelming feeling of, ‘Well, we got through it,’ but nothing more than that. There was no feeling of achievement or success, just relief and a slight whiff of ‘Mission Control’s a bit rubbish, isn’t it?’ I spoke to Sarha on the phone afterwards, and she’s always been very honest with me about the stuff I do. She would have been about twenty then – a bit older than our target audience, but still young enough to appreciate what we were doing. I asked her what she thought of the show, and she said, ‘I didn’t really get it.’ I reckon that’s just about the worst thing you can say about a TV show, other than, ‘And, later, PJ and Duncan are performing live.’