Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story Read online

  While we were in Fulham, I bought my second car. You won’t be surprised to hear that the MG Metro Turbo never made it down to the big smoke. My second car was a Suzuki Vitara jeep. It had the flared arches, wide wheels, lowered suspension and beefy twin exhaust – but there was just one problem: I was too scared to drive it in London, which meant I hardly ever took it out.

  It was the most useless purchase Dec has ever made. One evening, I’d planned a romantic evening with Lisa. She had just got back from touring with Deuce and we hadn’t seen each other in ages. I’d booked dinner at one of our regular haunts, Mr Wings Chinese restaurant. It was going to be a special night for the two of us. She came round to the flat, we had a nice glass of champagne and, when we were both ready, I rang a taxi. Dec overheard me and insisted I cancel it; he’d take us in the jeep.

  It was less than a mile away – I might have been scared of driving in London, but I was sure that even I could manage such a short trip.

  So I phoned the taxi firm to cancel. The controller said the car was just round the corner. I told him I didn’t need it because I was getting a lift from a friend instead, and the bloke at the taxi firm flipped. ‘You can’t do that, he shouted. ‘You can’t just order a taxi and then cancel it ’cos you’ve sorted out a lift. It’s already on the way.’ I didn’t much like his tone, and I didn’t appreciate him telling me what I could and couldn’t do. I said I could cancel it and I was cancelling it, and we parted on bad terms.

  Dec had already gone downstairs to pull the jeep round to the front door. Lisa and I got our things together and headed down for our lift. We got to the ground floor, and there was Dec, keys in his hand and no sign of the jeep. ‘Bad news,’ he muttered. The battery was flat. The car hadn’t been used or even started for so long the battery had drained and it was useless. There was no other option: I had to ring a taxi. I called the taxi firm back and tried to order another one, but the bloke on the phone was still so furious that he refused. Me and Lisa had to walk a mile to our special dinner.

  It was probably for the best. I was secretly still really scared of driving in London.

  I did however manage to get my own back. A few weeks later, me and Dec went out for a curry on the King’s Road after a night down the pub, and the food was amazing. As usual, by the end of the night we were a little bit the worse for wear. We paid the bill and, before we left, Dec nipped to the toilet, and while he was away, I filled his coat pockets with cutlery – just enough so that it would fall out when he put his jacket on as we left the restaurant. I then sat back, feeling that kind of smugness you only get when you play a trick on one of your mates and you can barely stop yourself from sniggering

  I came back from the toilet, and we were just about to leave when the owner came over. We thanked him for a lovely meal, and he brought us over another drink. The three of us chatted for a while and then eventually we got up and left.

  The cutlery didn’t fall out of his jacket. I was gutted.

  I didn’t even notice the extra weight in my coat. We were in a taxi on the way back and, as I searched my pocket for my wallet, I found the cutlery. It took me a couple of seconds to click what he had done, and we burst out laughing. I turned to Ant and said, ‘Very funny.’

  It was very funny – very, very funny – and I didn’t know it then, but this was a gag that was going to keep on giving.

  We got home, and I unloaded the cutlery out of my coat pockets. We were actually both quite chuffed that we had clean knives and forks in the flat for the first time since we’d moved in.

  The following weekend, Clare came round to stay and said she fancied a curry. I remembered the amazing food and hospitality we’d been shown on our night at the Indian restaurant and said to her, ‘I’ve got the perfect place, me and Ant went last week, you’ll love it.’ We headed down to the King’s Road in Chelsea. When we arrived at the restaurant, it was crammed full of people but, immediately, the owner recognized me.

  ‘It’s you!’

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ I replied. ‘I’m back!’

  ‘Get out or I’m calling the police.’

  He glared at me angrily. He was dead serious.

  ‘Get out or I am calling the police.’

  He reached for the phone next to the till. The whole restaurant went silent and turned to look at us. Clare looked at me, as the excited smile I was wearing on the way in slowly disappeared from my now puzzled, not to mention embarrassed, face. Then the penny dropped…

  ‘Oh! The cutlery! Don’t worry, I’ll bring it back.’

  ‘Get out! Get out! Or I’m calling the police.’

  We turned and left sharpish as he started to dial 999. Naturally, Clare asked what the hell all that was about. I tried to explain what had happened, but Ant’s mock cutlery-theft didn’t sound so funny after the shame of being chucked out, not to mention nearly arrested, in front of the whole restaurant. We cancelled our curry plan and headed back to the flat. Ant and Lisa were in front of the telly watching Stars in Their Eyes.

  ‘That was quick – nice curry?’ I said to Clare. She gave me the dirtiest of dirty looks and said ‘Don’t you dare talk to me about curry.’

  We might not have had much of a fan base at the Indian restaurant but, as pop stars, we were capable of attracting the occasional – how shall I put it? – obsessive stalker. I was once sent a notebook by a female fan who, I hasten to add, was older than most of the people who normally bought our records and, let me tell you, this was no ordinary book. The outside was covered in pictures from the Kama Sutra and, inside, was a story she’d written. The plot seemed to involve kidnapping me and using me as her sex slave. At least I think that’s what was going on – I certainly wasn’t going to read the whole thing.

  I read most of that book, and it was hilarious. When it came to sex slavery, this girl had a very vivid imagination.

  From what I could gather, her plan was to feed me just enough food so that I’d be capable of performing sexually but not so much that I’d have enough energy to escape.

  I’m no dietician, but getting that nutritional balance right would be a very fine line – surely escaping requires fewer calories than being a sex slave?

  I suppose that depends what your sex-slave duties involved. You’re right, though, wouldn’t it be much easier to jump out of a window than have a bit of how’s your father? We should have finished the book; I’m sure she had it all worked out.

  The second half of 1995 saw our new album perform less well than Psyche, even though it still shifted over 100,000 copies and reached number eleven. We started 1996 by turning our attention back to what we did best, or what we did least badly anyway: television. We had our BAFTA from the first series of The Ant and Dec Show, which had secured good ratings, so, displaying the same showbiz nous we always did, we decided not to do a second series because of our reservations about the quality of the first one. Then someone pointed out that if we didn’t do another one, the show would look like a failure, so we agreed to do a follow-up series.

  This time, though, like the mini multimedia moguls we were, we also made a few demands. We wanted a new time slot – 5.10 instead of 4.35, because we thought the extra thirty-five minutes would make us more grown-up. We wanted a new producer, and new writers. Remarkably, the BBC agreed, and without even once suggesting we find new presenters. Once they’d given the go-ahead for that lot, we demanded a jacuzzi full of champagne and a Rolls-Royce to the studio every day, but they told us to quit while we were ahead.

  Finding a new producer was tough. We needed someone experienced and funny. Eventually, the job went to a man called Conor McAnally, a tall, well-built Irishman who always wore a cap and had made a lot of kids’ shows in Ireland. Conor was a bit of a maverick and, once we got to know him, we realized he liked to take risks, although we should have known that from the start: wearing a cap in my company was always a big risk after what I’d done to Ant in Torremolinos. Working with him was a breath of fresh air. In our first meeting, he tol
d us he thought the first series had been a bit of a mess and suggested that, for series two, we pretend that Ant and I share a flat – although he stopped short of letting us bring The X-Files box set and a crate of Stella Artois to the studio, which was disappointing.

  Anne Gilchrist, the director we’d enjoyed working with so much on the first series, also brought two new writers on board. The first one was a fellow North-easterner called Dean Wilkinson. Dean was from Stockton-on-Tees, and he was very different to the writers we’d had on the first series: he was funny, for a start, and his style was a little more surreal, which we loved. This was the start of a working relationship with Dean that would last for the next seven years. I don’t know if he smashed a mirror sometime in 1995 to get that kind of bad luck, but he was stuck with us for a long time.

  Dean was the first person who wrote what could be called proper double-act material for us. We’d had reservations about it in the first series, but there was no point in denying it any longer: we were performing on TV, and there were two of us so, whichever way you sliced it, we were a double act. Writing for kids, it’s important to get inside their heads, and that means laughing at the same things they do, which, in short, consist of farts, burps and hitting people over the head with frying pans. Dean found all that stuff funny because he had the mind of a big kid, and that was really important for the material. The other great thing about Dean was that we could have a laugh and a drink or ten with him, which always formed a vital part of any professional relationship we created.

  The other writer was, to be blunt, downright odd. He was a cross-dressing frustrated performer who would always be very disruptive in meetings. He’d spend most of his time drawing ‘suggestive’ pictures of Conor and showing off to whoever was in the room. As I’ve already told you, performers are all neurotic, insecure and self-obsessed, and he was no different. The important thing was we found him hilarious. His name was David Walliams. You might have heard of him; he’s done a few little bits and pieces on telly since The Ant and Dec Show in 1995.

  David was, and if he’s reading, still is, a great writer, but there was one drawback – he always tried to write himself into the sketches. There was a sketch we started doing in the second series called Retro Cops, which was basically a Starsky and Hutch spoof, with us two dressed up in afro wigs, flares and platform shoes. Despite a reluctance when it came to dressing up in the first series, we’d jumped at doing this particular sketch simply because we found it funny.

  In one edition of Retro Cops, David had written in the part of a vicar, and we agreed to let him do it. In the sketch, we had to stop the vicar, who was driving down the street, and take his car. It was like Heartbeat meets Life On Mars. A bit. On the day, David turned up with his own glasses and comedy teeth. We had to steal his car, while he was trying to do the same with the limelight.

  We went to our starting positions, and the director called out ‘Action!’ David, dressed as the vicar, drove the car into shot as planned. We stopped him, and pulled him out of the car. What we didn’t know was that while we’d been getting ready to film, David had got into the car and taken his trousers off. So when we pulled him out of the car, the top half of him was a vicar, and the bottom half was just pants and socks. We started laughing our heads off, and the poor director was shouting ‘Cut! David, put your trousers back on’ – not the last time someone in the TV industry would say that to Mr Walliams. When he said he wanted to impress everyone with his part, we hadn’t realized that was what he had in mind. But there’s a time and a place for vicars in their underpants, and it’s not on Children’s BBC at 5.10 on a Thursday afternoon. Just like Dean, David had to constantly be reined in, and that was exactly what we wanted. We were finally getting the kind of risqué show we’d hoped to make first time around and, if the price we paid for that was seeing David Walliams in false teeth and underpants, well, we were prepared to pay it.

  If I remember rightly, David came to the wrap party of that series and sprung two surprises on us. Number one, he was wearing a pink tutu, which gave us an early glimpse of what a convincing laydee he made; and number two, he brought his girlfriend, which was a shock, because we’d always assumed he was gay. He was great fun to have around and, whenever we see him today, we have a laugh reminiscing about the old times, as we remind him how he owes his whole career to us, while he maintains he was the only decent thing on The Ant and Dec Show.

  We started having guests on the second series too. When it came to booking them, the only real criterion was that we wanted them to be people we were keen to meet. Unfortunately, Bill Clinton, the Sultan of Brunei and Peter Beardsley were busy – so we went with the kind of old-school showbiz legends we’d always enjoyed watching as kids. That meant we were lucky enough to perform with the likes of Frank Carson and Lionel Blair. Guests like that were always professional, dedicated and, above all, available. In the case of Lionel Blair, we finished the show with a song called ‘Get inside a Bin’, which we performed, as you might have guessed, from inside bins. Even Lionel got inside one, from which he delivered the line, ‘Hi, I’m Lionel Blair, and I hope you are too.’

  That’s still one of my favourite lines of that series. We’d done some research, and by ‘we’, I mean some people from the BBC we’d never met, and discovered that the audience for the first series was made up predominantly of girls, so we were told to try and make the new series a bit more male-friendly. That was music to our ears.

  When it came to pushing things, our first target was our old nemesis, Blue Peter. Yes, this was some of the sharpest satire on TV. Katy Hill was one of the presenters and, at the time, was considered the pin-up of Children’s TV. We did a song on the show one week called ‘I Love Katy Hill, she’s a Blue Peter presenter’, and in the song, I had a line that said she was ‘gagging for it’.

  We knew it was completely inappropriate for Children’s TV, and that was exactly why we did it. ‘Gagging for it’ wasn’t even a double entendre – it was a very single entendre, and we got into proper trouble for saying it pre-watershed.

  I think the Tom Jones-esque pelvic thrust you delivered with the line might have made things worse.

  Hmmm, do you think so? Let’s be honest, it was about 95 per cent of the reason we got into trouble. But this paled into insignificance after we introduced a feature called Beat the Barber. Before we’d started making the new series, we knew we had to do something to get it talked about, and this was it. It’s been said that there’s no such thing as bad publicity and, with this item, we tested that theory to the limit. The premise was very simple: we asked kids from the audience hair-related questions, while the ‘barber’, who, miraculously wasn’t played by David Walliams, hovered over them. If they got the questions wrong, he shaved their heads. We’d had to fight hard to persuade the BBC to let us do it, but eventually they said yes. The kids and their parents all gave permission before they played the game, and the first three contestants were boys. Then, we had a girl who entered. That was when we knew things would really kick off.

  I don’t know why the fact that the girl, whose name was Laurie Slater, had ginger hair made it better, it just did. On the day, she failed to Beat the Barber, which meant it was out with the clippers and off with her long, flowing red locks. When the show was transmitted, there was an uproar. We received a record number of complaints for a kids show, and Conor had to go on the Channel 4 TV show, Right To Reply and the BBC’s own Points Of View to defend Beat the Barber, and the Katy Hill incident. For Conor, as the producer, it was tough to go on these shows and defend our ideas but, for us, sat at home with a beer watching them, it was strangely exciting.

  The thing was, the item could be justified: these kids and their parents knew what they were getting into when they played the game. To us, it was all part of not talking down to kids, which has always been really important to us. Laurie even went on Right To Reply with Conor, although I can’t remember how much of her hair had grown back by then. It has to be said, when the B
BC, the papers and the whole TV industry went mad about it, it probably wasn’t our wisest move to issue a statement simply saying, ‘Keep your hair on.’

  By the end of that series, we felt like we’d found our feet as TV presenters and knew it was something we really enjoyed doing. In fact, we enjoyed it so much, we seemed to be taking our work home with us, because we were always playing pranks in the flat, and the girls were often the victims.

  Lisa was staying one night and needed to get to bed early so, like the considerate and respectful souls we are, Dec and me made ourselves scarce and went down the pub. Several hours later, we got back and decided that it would be the funniest thing in the world if Dec impersonated me and got into bed with Lisa. He asked me what I’d normally say when I got into bed. I told him that I would usually call out softly, ‘Hello, babes,’ and that I would then slide an arm around Lisa. I nipped to the toilet while Dec prepared for his role. I could hear him practising his ‘Hello, babes,’ in what he felt sounded like my voice.