Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story

by Ant McPartlin

  The last of the big new features we brought to series two involved two little fellas from Newcastle – no, not us two, Little Ant and Dec. Ant and I very rarely go to film premieres, showbiz parties or nightclubs, mainly because, if you go to a premiere, you can’t just go and watch the film; part of being invited is to talk to journalists and pose for pictures and, to be honest, I’d rather pay £8 and go to my local Odeon. And as for showbiz parties, well, frankly, I prefer a drink in Chiswick with my mates.

  So, the idea was that we’d send miniature versions of ourselves along instead. If only we could’ve got them to do everything in life we couldn’t be bothered with – they could’ve done our shopping, cleaned our flats and cooked my dinner; but apparently some stupid thing called ‘child labour laws’ meant we couldn’t. That aside, the thought of these two little lads, dressed in identical suits, getting out of limos and meeting celebrities made us laugh – so the next thing to do was find the kids.

  Georgie Hurford-Jones, our new assistant producer, was in charge of the whole thing, and she went up to Newcastle, held auditions and eventually came back with a tape of the two kids she thought would be perfect – James Pallister and Dylan McKenna-Redshaw. We all sat down in the production office and watched the tape of these two kids – who were mates – and we agreed they were just what we were looking for – funny, charismatic and nowhere near as tall as me and Dec. There was only one thing we didn’t agree on – which one was which. Georgie and everyone in the office thought James should be Dec and Dylan should be me, whereas Ant and I thought it should be the other way round, so we had a good long chat about it, heard what everyone had to say, and then we got our own way.

  Little Ant and Dec’s first assignment was an ‘At home with…’ feature with Neil and Christine Hamilton. Right from the off, the idea just worked: the boys could ask anything they liked – questions that would have seemed rude coming from us were very funny coming from them. So, when they said to Christine, ‘How old are you, one hundred?’, it was hilarious because, at the time, everyone knew she was only ninety-two.

  The lads took a lot of coaching, and Georgie did a fantastic job. They weren’t stage-school kids, they weren’t experienced at learning scripts, and sometimes they could be nervous, trip over words and get things wrong.

  Like we said, they were exactly like us.

  Before long, the Littles had moved on to even bigger stars than Neil and Christine Hamilton. By the end of the series, they’d interviewed Kylie and asked her some pretty searching questions about her new underwear range (that was one we did want to go on), they’d chatted to Jennifer Lopez and, much to the jealousy of the girls in the office, George Clooney. The great thing about the two of them was that you could send them along to interview big stars at ‘junkets’. A junket is where the film star sits in a hotel room all day, with a picture of the film they’re promoting behind them, and does interviews. They can last anything up to eight hours. So, imagine you’re George Clooney…

  I do – often.

  … you’ve sat in the same seat for hours on end, answering the same questions over and over again and given your best fake smile to interviewers from every TV show imaginable. Then, in walk two little kids from Newcastle in matching suits holding a plastic bag full of toy props. Chances are, it’s going to liven up your day, and you’re going to play along with them. Chuck in the fact that they ask some funny questions and then end the interview by tying you to a chair, as they did with Kevin Costner, or dressing you up as a clown, as they did with Ricky Gervais, and they might just be the one reason you end up staying sane.

  In many ways, we were doing those film stars a favour, but don’t worry, Clooney, you don’t need to thank us.

  We felt very protective towards Little Ant and Dec, and tried to act like responsible adults – which wasn’t easy for us two. They would do their interviews and then, on Saturday night, they’d come on the set and tell us all about it. We didn’t want them to be phased and, as I say, they weren’t stage-school kids, so, during rehearsal, we’d walk them round the studio and say, ‘Look at all those empty seats – in a few hours, they’ll be full and people will be loud, and you won’t be able to hear yourself think.’

  To be honest, I was pretty freaked out myself by the end of it.

  They didn’t have the kind of Matthew Robinson figure we’d had on Byker Grove, and we wanted to make sure they didn’t get too carried away and knew that telly wasn’t the be all and end all of everything. We felt it was important they stayed normal, down-to-earth schoolkids, which they did, and didn’t turn into attention-seeking fame-hungry egomaniacs.

  After all, that’s our job. At the end of the second series, like we always do, we had a party. It usually follows the same pattern – the show finishes, we get drunk with the crew, and the DJ tries (and fails) to get us to perform ‘Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble’ but, being children, Little Ant and Dec couldn’t come to these parties, so on the Friday afternoon before the last show of the series, we held our own little party for them. The four of us sat around eating cakes and drinking tea (or, in their case, fizzy pop) and having a lovely time. We felt it was important the show looked after them.

  And everyone knows that the best way to look after kids is to fill them full of E numbers and sugar before you send them back to their parents, right?

  Chapter 31

  Once we’d finished eleven weeks of dancing with gorillas, auditioning for Simon Cowell and hanging about with our mini mes, we were ready to do something mature, dignified and civilized: we went to feed bugs to famous people for the second series of I’m a Celebrity… There were a few changes that year. For a start, the whole operation had moved from one part of Australia, Mission Beach, to another, just north of Murwillumbah, in New South Wales. The cast was bigger and, this time, our victims – I mean contestants – were Sian Lloyd, Daniella Westbrook, Chris Bisson, Catalina Guirado, Toyah Wilcox, Antony Worrall Thompson, Wayne Sleep, Linda Barker, John Fashanu and Phil Tufnell.

  Each and every one of them brought something different to the party. Personally, I was fascinated by Antony Worrall Thompson and his tall stories, like the time he’d run away with a tramp when he was four years old. It just sounded so implausible – what self-respecting tramp would want to run away with Antony Worrall Thompson?

  But by far the biggest and best laugh was John ‘Fash’ Fashanu – not only was he great value but, without realizing it, he helped us to start doing our links the way we do them today. As we said, series one had been quite a slog and often we weren’t sure if we were the right people for the job, but when you’ve got someone like Fash, it’s hard not to have a laugh – and by ‘have a laugh’, I mean mercilessly ridicule him every night for weeks. We started to relish the opportunity to have fun with the script and our links, and Fash was a gift. He was scared of heights, terrified of the bridges, and of pretty much everything else he encountered. He would endlessly repeat the word ‘focus’ – and then there was his exercise regime. I’ve never understood why any of them do any exercise when they’re in there – they’re exhausted and starving, and exercise just makes it worse. I hardly do any exercise when I’m out there – and I’m in a lovely hotel with food coming out of my ears.

  When we weren’t at work, we were staying in Coolangatta which, compared to Mission Beach, was like New York. It had shops, hotels and restaurants, and it felt like we were back in civilization. It also had something else we weren’t expecting. We were in the restaurant of our hotel, Twin Towns, having dinner one night, and I looked over to a nearby table and thought, ‘That bloke looks very like Ian from the Krankies,’ then, after a double take, realized it was Ian from the Krankies. We went over to say hello, and it turned out they had a holiday home in Coolangatta. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, he was then joined by his wife Jeanette, who of course is ‘Wee Jimmy Krankie’. Seeing the person you’d known on telly as a small Scottish schoolboy dressed as an adult woman was disconcerting, to say the least. We had
a quick chat, then went to bed, got up in the middle of the night, went to work and fed witchety grubs to former England cricketer Phil ‘Tuffers’ Tufnell. It’s always nice to have a bit of variety, isn’t it?

  ‘Tuffers’ went on to win and, by the end of that series, we’d decided that I’m a Celebrity… was a show we loved doing. We were no longer worried about how to play it, or what our role was, because it was simple – we just took the Mickey out of the pampered prima donnas who were miles away from home.

  When we got back, it was time for another tour of the UK’s conference rooms and hotels for the second series of Pop Idol. After the first series had turned into such a phenomenon, we couldn’t wait to get back, but things had changed. We were no longer the only talent show on telly and, thanks to other singing shows like Fame Academy, the pool of talent had got smaller, which meant the singers, arguably, weren’t as good. Sections of the music industry saw the show as pure evil, plus the contestants had got a lot more savvy about how these shows worked.

  We all worked longer hours, and not just because Simon Cowell kept everyone waiting longer. When Will Young auditioned in series one, we hadn’t interviewed him before he went in front of the judges. He’d gone through the auditions almost unnoticed, and we’d missed him, which meant one thing: this time we had to interview everyone. And I mean everyone. At one point, the producers even tried to get us to do a piece with the cleaners, just to be on the safe side.

  Despite the differences on the show, though, one thing stayed the same – there was no shortage of dreadful singers. Incidentally, this is another thing we get asked by people on the street: ‘Why do people think they can sing when they can’t?’ There’s a very simple answer to that question: ‘How the hell do I know?’ I’ve got no idea what makes someone spend an hour and a half travelling on two trains and a bus, wait to be seen for ten hours, give an awful performance and be publicly humiliated by some know-it-alls. There’s no secret to it, these people are just dreadful singers who are completely and utterly convinced they’re not dreadful singers.

  The winner of series two was Michelle McManus, and the debate in the media throughout the entire series was about Michelle’s weight. It was a big story, and it would be true to say everyone was very conscious of not bringing up that kind of thing in front of Michelle, and we did our best to be sensitive to it as well.

  It came to the live studio section of the show, and the audience started voting. Michelle was going great guns and was quickly becoming the favourite to win. Every Saturday afternoon, we and the contestants would rehearse. We’d walk through positions and run through our interview questions and then send them off the set, as we would on the live show. We did this with Michelle, and Ant proved that, not only can he be physically clumsy, he can do it verbally as well.

  Just to put this into context, at the time I happened to be listening to a lot of hip-hop and, in particular, a track called ‘Baby Got Back’ by Sir Mix-A-Lot. You know what it’s like when you listen to a particular song a lot – you find yourself singing it all the time. Well, we did our quick chat with Michelle in rehearsals and, as she walked off, I absent-mindedly started singing a line from the Sir Mix-A-Lot track. Unfortunately, the line in question was this:

  ‘I like big butts and I cannot lie.’

  If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, I was wearing a microphone, and the whole sentence boomed out over the PA system across the whole studio.

  ‘It was a stupid thing to do, but Ant didn’t do it on purpose,’ I thought, as I frantically pointed to him to make sure everyone knew it wasn’t me. Michelle stopped in her tracks, slowly turned to look in our direction and, thankfully for Ant, gave us a cheeky wink.

  Michelle deservedly went on to become the winner of Pop Idol 2003. A great wrap party followed, but it was the day after that was actually more eventful. As part of the set, there were several giant plasma screens on the studio floor and, the day after the final, two men turned up to collect them. They asked where the plasmas were and were directed towards the studio. They unplugged them all, took them out and put them in their van.

  A couple of hours later, two more blokes turned up at reception saying they’d come to collect the plasmas. The receptionist told them someone had already done it. The first two blokes had walked in there, bold as brass, and stolen the plasma screens.

  And people say crime doesn’t pay.

  You can’t say that – we’re supposed to set an example.

  Sorry, you’re right. Crime doesn’t pay.

  That’s better.

  Chapter 32

  The last few months of 2003 were a difficult time for me personally, because Clare and I split up. We’d been together since 1992, and it was very hard for both of us. The whole thing was amicable enough, but for the last couple of years, we hadn’t seen each other all that much. She’d be away touring with plays, and I’d be in Australia, or at Pop Idol auditions. We were very honest with each other and, after eleven years, decided it wasn’t working any more.

  We’d had a few trial separations before, as a lot of couples do, but we always got back together. This time, though, we decided this was it. It happened around September 2003, but I think it was around November when it hit the press, and that was one of the hardest things to deal with. Breaking up with someone after eleven years is a painful enough experience without having to cope with newspapers and magazines raking over the whole thing.

  Plus, a lot of what was reported was wrong – some said that the reason we’d broken up was because I’d had a fling, but that wasn’t the case. During one of our separations, I went to a lapdancing club and ended up having a one-night stand with one of the girls there, but Clare knew about that and we’d got back together afterwards. We were together at least another year after that.

  The press was printing all sorts of speculative stories – saying I had a secret flat in Essex, or that me and Clare hadn’t slept together for a year, or that we were more like brother and sister. All these things were completely untrue and very hurtful to both of us. I understood that we were in the public eye and, to a degree, ‘fair game’, but I didn’t expect the media to completely fabricate stories. Throughout all of this, me and Clare would speak almost daily, and it was very hard to have to constantly ring her up about any number of ridiculous stories. My management and press officer advised me not to issue denials on all the stories, because it would just fan the flames and make things worse, but it was incredibly difficult advice to follow. Clare also had to deal with journalists knocking on her door, and putting notes through her letterbox. She was offered large sums of money to do stories about us, which of course she turned down. The most important thing throughout it all was that Clare was okay and that we could stay friends, and I’m proud to say we’re still good friends today.

  The other big consequence was that I was now a single man for the first time since I was seventeen, which felt weird at first – I’d been in a relationship all throughout my twenties and, now, everything had changed. To begin with, it felt like part of me was missing, and it took me a good while to recover and adapt to that. One of the hardest things about being single and in the public eye is that, whenever you do meet a girl, chances are she knows lots about you and has probably already formed an opinion of you, but you don’t know anything about her, which tends to put you at a disadvantage.

  Things were very tough for Dec, and I did what any best friend would do and made sure I was always there for him. I told him in no uncertain terms that he could borrow my tin opener for as long as he liked.

  I’ll never forget that – you’re the best friend a man could have.

  Fortunately, we were so busy that Dec had the chance to throw himself into his work – and there was a big surprise coming our way. We were doing rehearsals for the second series of Takeaway one afternoon, when Nigel Hall, the very camp and quintessentially ITV Light Entertainment Producer, came into the studio singing, ‘I like to be in America! OK by me in America!’ from Wes
t Side Story. It wasn’t unusual for Nigel to belt out show tunes in the middle of the studio, but this time he was doing it for a reason. Fox, one of the big TV networks in America and home of The Simpsons, The X-Files and 24 had secured the US rights for Saturday Night Takeaway and wanted to make a pilot. Nigel told us that, if the pilot went well, they’d do a series and that we’d all move to Hollywood and live happily ever after. On hearing those outlandish claims, we did the only thing we could – we started singing ‘I like to be in America! OK by me in America!’

  Once the singing had stopped, and we’d finished all the other stuff we call work, we got on with the American pilot. Fox sent over an executive – let’s call her Kimberly-Jane – to oversee the running of the show and be the network’s eyes and ears in London. We and the senior members of the production team held a meeting with her and attempted to pick her brains about the direction, the feel and the content for the show. For instance, we knew American one-hour shows are significantly shorter than in the UK because they have more advert breaks, so we wanted to make sure the structure of our show fitted their template and timings. She said we shouldn’t worry too much about all that and we should make it as long as we want and put whatever we want in it. At this point, it may be beneficial to know that K-J spent most of the rest of her time in Harvey Nichols, Harrods and Selfridges.