Ooh! What a Lovely Pair Our Story (26 page)

We’ll never know if that question was followed by four possible answers ‘Was it (a) Des Lynam (b) Sir Trevor McDonald (c) David Jason or (d) Ant and Dec?’ We quickly said, ‘We’re on,’ and ran towards the stage. As we were leaving the room, we could hear Chris asking if that was our final answer, but we didn’t bother looking back.

We did a lot of those kind of events for ITV but, at the time, didn’t really appear on other TV shows. We figured that we were on air every Saturday for three hours and thought we may be in danger of over-exposure, so we turned down most invitations. One that we did accept, though, was an appearance on
TFI Friday
on Channel 4.
TFI
was edgy and cool, and Chris Evans was someone whose work we really admired. Despite our admiration, though, we also had some issues with Chris – when we were making the highly forgettable
Ant and Dec Unzipped
for Channel 4, he had been critical of the show – so the invitation to appear on
TFI Friday
left us unsure. We thought maybe he was going to stitch us up.

We couldn’t have been more wrong. As soon as we arrived at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, he thanked us for coming and told us to come into his dressing room; he said all the others were crap, and we should share his. And the show itself couldn’t have gone better – the crowd gave us a great reception, and Chris was really complimentary about us and
sm:tv
.

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.