Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story Read online

  I’d said my favourite sweets were chocolate buttons, and Ant had gone for Smarties, and for a while after that interview, at every gig we’d get our favourite sweets thrown at us by the fans. It was a step on from eggs and potatoes, but we still seemed to spend a disproportionate amount of our early career having food thrown at us.

  On the up side, we were never short of sweets, but on the downside, a flying tube of Smarties can be quite painful, especially if it hits you in the face. It’s no fun trying to get through some pretty intricate dance moves when you’re having the entire confectionery section of Woolworths hurled at you. Don’t get me wrong, I was grateful they’d gone to the trouble of buying the sweets; I just wish I’d said I liked marshmallows or flumps or something else less likely to cause bruising. They never went to waste, though, we’d come off stage filled with the euphoria of another successful gig and say to the security guards, ‘Quick, go back and get the sweets, we’ll eat them in the car.’ After all, driving around in The Prev all week, we had to make sure we had a balanced diet. Back then, Ginsters pasties and a tube of Smarties counted as two of our five a day.

  Along with our favourite sweets, our fans would also buy us teddies and red roses and as a result, The Prev looked like it had ramraided Clinton Cards on Valentine’s Day. The boot was full of flowers and teddies, which we would eventually get round to dropping off at the local hospitals.

  When we arrived at the hospitals, we always had two questions: ‘Do you want this lot?, and ‘What’s the best thing for excessive Smarties bruising?’

  We’d also get underwear thrown at us on stage, and Ant regularly had bra-related accidents – but part of the reason is because he is particularly clumsy. He once slipped on a banana skin. Really. I thought that only ever happened in cartoons, but he genuinely did it.

  I think my favourite fan ever was the girl who changed her name, by deed poll, to Declan Donnelly.

  You’ve just brought that up because I mentioned the banana skin, haven’t you?

  It was absolutely hilarious: you’ve got to admit, that’s dedication. He used to get Valentine’s cards: ‘To Declan Donnelly from Declan Donnelly’. I’d wind him up and ask him why he was sending valentines to himself, and he’d snap at me.

  Getting cards from obsessive fans was all part of being in a boy band – or boy duo, as we were – and, around this time, we also learnt one of the first laws of the boy-band jungle: Thou shalt not have a girlfriend.

  That particular boy-band commandment was going to be a bit of a problem for me. I’d been with Clare for a couple of years, and the record company and Kim said, ‘You mustn’t talk about her. Whenever you’re asked, say you haven’t got a girlfriend.’ I was used to being told what to do, so I accepted it. I thought, ‘Okay, that seems straightforward enough. I’ll just run that past Clare. I’m sure it’ll be fine.’

  Not as easy as I thought. She wasn’t happy and, looking back, I can understand why. Ant and me were now bona fide pop stars, but it began to cause a bit of friction between me and Clare. She did reluctantly agree to go along with the ‘no girlfriend’ story, but it was probably pretty selfish of me to ask her.

  Once we’d had our first top-ten hit with ‘Rhumble’, went on Top of the Pops and were on the front of magazines, it all went mad. The fans that knew about Clare could be really vicious. She’d come to our gigs when she could, and she’d usually sneak in through the stage door, although fans would still catch sight of her and shout horrible names. Most of the time she’d try and shrug it off but, inevitably, it got to her now and again. There’d be times we’d be leaving gigs in The Prev and Clare would be lying on the floor, hiding under a pile of coats, so as not to be seen. Quite why she didn’t tell me to sling my hook there and then I’ll never know. I think it helped that she was a performer herself – she’d left Grange Hill and was now in the sitcom 2.4 Children – so she knew all about the strange world of fame and understood we were just doing a job.

  Magazine interviews could be a struggle. Young pop bands can be very naïve. We were no exception, and journalists exploited that. After you’d denied having a girlfriend, they’d leave a pause, and you’d hear yourself saying, ‘Well, I’ve kissed a few girls recently,’ even though it wasn’t true, just because you wanted to give them an answer. Before you knew it, they’d have enough information for a page in Smash Hits about ‘My girlfriend hell’ by chocolate button-loving pop sensation Duncan.

  With all the interviews, photo shoots and teddies, a lot of the time the music itself could feel like a very small part of what we were doing. I sometimes thought we could have put out any old rubbish and people would still have bought it.

  What do you mean ‘could have’…?

  After months of promotion, we couldn’t wait to get into the studio and actually record the album. We knew it would be weird being in one place and not spending days on end in The Prev so, before we went to the studio, we insisted the staff wrote, ‘PJ and Duncan 4 Eva’ in lipstick all over the outside of the building.

  Now we felt at home, and ready to record our debut album.

  Chapter 11

  In the late summer of 1994, with the music industry holding its breath, we went into a studio in London to record PJ and Duncan’s debut album. For the duration of the sessions, the record company moved us into a hotel in Chelsea called La Reserve. After ‘The Travelodge ’94 Tour’, life actually settled into a bit of a routine there, plus we had our own rooms, so there was no more fighting over who got the double bed. This was big time.

  We didn’t know London at all, so we’d just get dropped at the studio in the morning, and then back at the hotel at night. Once we were there, we’d be really careful to rest our vocal chords and drink plenty of warm honey and lemon. Sorry, did I say ‘honey and lemon’? I meant Stella Artois.

  The album had twelve tracks, including our first three singles, and was called Psyche. It was pure pop, with a smile on its face. There were no moody black-and-white shots of us with our tops off, it was more baseball caps and wacky poses, and that was just the way we liked it. If you’d seen us with our tops off, then that would have been just the way you liked it too.

  A lot of the album was written by Nicky Graham, who had produced the top-65 smash, ‘Tonight I’m Free’, and his songwriting team of Deni Lew and Mike Olton. We were never really what you’d call singer-songwriters.

  To be fair, it was a push to call us singers.

  We did have a go at writing though and, one night, back at the hotel, I was convinced I’d written a hit. I was in the toilet, where I get most of my good ideas, and suddenly a melody popped into my head. It was a really catchy tune, and I began to hum it out loud. I got louder and louder as the melody seemed to take on a life of its own and progressed from a little ditty to a full verse, bridge and chorus. ‘This is it,’ I thought to myself, ‘this is a hit.’ I washed my hands and began to write some lyrics down. Legend has is that when Paul McCartney wrote ‘Yesterday’, he just sang ‘scrambled eggs’ over and over to the tune until he thought of the words. Well, I had gone one better: the lyrics were flowing like a cheap wine and pouring themselves all over the page. I’d heard people say that when the genius takes over, a great song can come together in three minutes, and this is exactly what was happening. I felt a rush of adrenalin as I harnessed the genius and let it flow. This was my Lennon and McCartney moment! I rang Dec, and said, ‘Come to my room, I’ve just written us a number-one single.’

  After I’d finished laughing, I put down the phone and went to his room.

  I was so excited, I started singing my song to Dec, and all I could think was ‘Hit, hit, hit.’

  I was thinking of a word that sounded very similar, but had an extra letter at the beginning. Ant was convinced the song was going to be a massive hit, and he was right, it was a hit, a huge hit – for Boyz II Men, the American R&B group, whose ‘I’ll Make Love to You’ was in the charts that week. Their lyrics went like this: ‘I’ll make love to you/Like you w
ant me to/ And I’ll hold you tight/Baby, all through the night’, and Ant was standing there in his hotel room singing ‘We will go right through/That’s what I will do/You are such a sight/Girl, I’ll see you right’ to the exact same tune.

  I couldn’t believe it, I’d nicked their melody – without realizing it, obviously. I just wanted to say that in case any of the Boyz or the Men’s lawyers are reading this. I ‘borrowed’ their melody, and I’d written completely new lyrics to it. I was gutted; I thought I’d had my first moment of genuine musical inspiration.

  Unfortunately, we’re both still waiting for that one.

  We weren’t musicians by any stretch of the imagination, but we did enjoy being in the recording studio. Later on, we did get to do a lot more songwriting, and it had a huge impact on our career and would completely change everything: we would stop selling records.

  If we thought an album meant an end to dodgy gigs, we were wrong. It was around this time we played one of the worst gigs of our career – and, believe me, there’s some very stiff competition for that title. It was a roadshow, as always, and it was promoting Ribena Spring, which is basically fizzy Ribena. The roadshow was being held in Peterborough, at an event called Truck Fest. I know, I know, Ribena Spring, Truck Fest, PJ and Duncan, none of it makes sense, but neither did most of our career up till then. At the time, if you had a roadshow to book, no matter where it was, however inappropriate the audience or whatever the quality of the venue, you could always rely on PJ and Duncan. We were like the A-Team of pop: ‘If you’ve got a problem and no one else can help, maybe you can book PJ and Duncan.’ Whenever we voiced even the slightest concern, we were always met with the same phrase: ‘The record company thinks it’s a good idea.’ Whenever we heard that sentence, we knew one thing – it was a terrible idea.

  We arrived in Peterborough to discover a venue that was, and there’s no other way of saying this, a field. And not a field in a Glastonbury way, more a field in a field way. Straight away, it seemed like we may not be the ideal performers for Truck Fest. It was full of truckers, looking at trucks, talking about trucks and touching each other’s trucks; in fact, it was the most heavily truck-themed event I’ve ever seen. This motley crew were about to be exposed to PJ and Duncan – Live, and I was just praying they weren’t going to throw Yorkie bars at us. That would make a tube of Smarties look like small potatoes, which, of course, we’d also had thrown at us when filming Byker Grove.

  When we got there, we both thought, ‘This is going to be a disaster’ and, judging by the looks on the truckers’ faces, they were thinking the same. Well, that, and, ‘Look at that other trucker’s truck. I love trucks and trucking.’

  As always, we were professional and, as always, we were stupid, so we did the gig. Or we tried to. It was meant to be the classic PJ and Duncan set: three songs, full mime, and back in The Prev before you could say, ‘It’s my turn in the front seat,’ but it didn’t work out like that. We were coming towards the end of our second track when we noticed the stage manager waving manically and mouthing to us. He was saying we had to come off at the end of the song. We weren’t quite sure what the problem was but, as usual, we did what we were told. What was it that had interrupted our set? A health and safety issue? Had one of the truckers fainted? He took us to the side and told us he was terribly sorry, but the PA system was being turned off. This was clearly something serious. He looked at Dec and me and explained the shocking and tragic reason for the interruption.

  ‘I’ve got to turn the PA system off, because I promised the farmer there wouldn’t be any noise when he brings his cows past.’

  It’s hard to describe just how belittling it feels to find out you’re second on the bill to a herd of cows. And the truckers weren’t happy either. All we could hear was them booing.

  It was either that, or the cows mooing. Eventually, we were introduced back on, and the boos got louder. I think I heard one of the truckers trying to persuade the cows to come back. Plus, by a cruel twist of fate, our third and final track was the premiere of our forthcoming single, ‘Eternal Love’, a heartfelt ballad. Picture the scene: a band of furious truckers staring at us, booing, while I belted out lyrics like these:

  Suntan lotion that familiar smell,

  I made you a necklace from a chain of shells…

  I’ll give you my love, an Eternal Love,

  From me to you, if you return

  A token of love, an Eternal Love.

  You get the drift. One trucker, who was sat on the grass near the front, physically turned his back on us. He couldn’t even bring himself to look in our direction. Silly trucker. To say it was a low point would be an understatement.

  At least there were two of us – we only had half the humiliation, half the embarrassment and half of Truck Fest growling at us – and we were best mates so, whatever happened, we would eventually try and have a laugh about it. The fact that we’ve both been through all this bizarre stuff together still makes everything easier today.

  Whether it was to do with music or TV shows, we’ve never had to make decisions on our own, because we’ve always been each other’s second opinion. When it came to music, we never took the whole thing, or ourselves, too seriously. We never actually believed we were pop stars, and we always did everything with a wink. Well, not everything – you couldn’t spend your life winking all the time, people would think you were a right winker. There was just such a big gap between PJ and Duncan, the clean-cut, lovable boys next door, and Ant and Dec, who went back to the hotel every night and drank pints. Ant even smoked tabs. We were leading a double life: squeaky-clean pop stars by day and normal nineteen-year-old lads by night. It wasn’t exactly Clark Kent and Super-man, but it did feel like we were still playing characters, rather than truly being ourselves.

  Throughout our time as PJ and Duncan, we always had an eye on the door. To survive in pop, you need a great songwriter in the band – and if there was one thing we didn’t have, it was a great songwriter in the band. And there were always elements we didn’t enjoy – the music itself wasn’t exactly to our taste and it could be a strain constantly pretending to be something you weren’t.

  Still, we were determined to have as much fun as we could while it lasted, and on 7 November we released Psyche. At least, that’s when I’m told we released it, we were so busy there was no time for a big showbiz launch party, or even a small showbiz launch party, we just kept promoting and performing. We also released two more singles, ‘If I Give You My Number’ and ‘Eternal Love’, and announced our first headline tour of theatre venues around Britain. The press releases were despatched, the TV and radio shows were informed and the teddy-bear and rose suppliers were put on red alert.

  Going on tour, our own tour, was a real thrill. We had a support band, which for them must have ranked as one of the lowest gigs on the musical ladder. I bet they’d rather have been headlining Truck Fest. They were an American boy band, and they’d go on half an hour before us to warm up the crowd, which wasn’t an easy job – most of the audience had come straight out without any tea and had to be up for school in the morning. On the first night, our new tour manager John McMahon came to find us so they could show us what these crazy American kids were doing on stage. There were five of them, and they employed a trick used by a lot of boy bands at the time: they’d pull a girl out of the crowd, bring her up on the stage and then sing to her. It was corny, it was slushy and it took cheesy to a whole new level. These jokers made us two look like Oasis.

  They had a table on stage with a checked tablecloth and a red rose in a vase on it, and the lucky girl would sit down while one of the band sat opposite her and the other four posed as waiters. The whole thing was very unrealistic. For a start, most restaurants only give you one waiter at a time, and there wasn’t even any food on the table. The service was terrible. They were all singing a cappella to her, and we were watching from the side of the stage, laughing our heads off. This was the most clichéd, hammy rubbish we’d ever s
een. Someone needed to tell these flash Yanks that this stuff was too cheesy for a UK audience. It was embarrassing and, if their little boy band didn’t buck its ideas up, it’d be going nowhere fast.

  That ‘little boy band’ was called The Backstreet Boys.

  They’ve sold over 100 million records.

  They are the biggest-selling boy band of all time.

  And you wonder why we ended up on telly?

  Chapter 12

  It was towards the end of 1994 that I met the love of my life, Lisa Armstrong. Meeting Lisa changed everything, and was the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me (I hope you’re reading this, pet). We met in the most romantic of circumstances – the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party Tour. Lisa was in a two boys, two girls band called Deuce, who were on the tour with me and Dec. We got talking, and I was attracted to her immediately. She was beautiful, she had a great sense of fun, and she was different from any girl I’d ever met (I hope you’re still reading, pet). I remember one late-night game of pool on the Isle of Wight being the moment I knew she was the girl for me. It was nothing to do with pool, that was just the moment I remember falling for her. Although, in case you’re wondering, yes, I did let her win (I hope you’re not still reading this, pet). We swapped numbers and, after the tour was finished, we’d spend hours on the phone talking about love, life and the best way to pot the black if you were snookered.