Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story Read online

  That first week was a real struggle. The ratings were nothing to write home about and we were finding it hard to define our role. Aside from giving out phone numbers and going into camp to announce the results, it felt like we were just there to say, ‘This is what’s just happened, here’s what happened next.’ We didn’t know whether to play it for laughs or be straight. It seems a funny thing to say now, because the show is ridiculous (in a brilliant way, obviously), but it was all new back then and we didn’t know if trying to be funny was the right thing to do.’

  In the second week, things started happening. Darren Day and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson had got stuck into their crazy fight/relationship/hatred thing, and Rhona Cameron had gone off on a rant about every single person in there. Suddenly, there was a buzz about the show. The papers started to talk about it, GM:TV started covering it, word of mouth took over and ratings went up. It became a real-life Australian soap opera – and people loved it. It also started to do something it does every year – it gave the celebrities the chance to shatter the public’s perception of them.

  The person who did that best was Tara, who showed, for the first time, that she was a real person. Everyone thought of her as this ‘It girl’ – a rich, spoilt socialite, but she proved she was funny, vulnerable, likable and, of course, slightly nuts. The public chose Tara to face the first ever Bushtucker Trial, and she had to stand under a tree while bugs and critters were dropped on her. Back in series one, not all of the trials were the kind of gruesome, vomit-inducing brand of light entertainment we’ve come to know and love. Christine Hamilton had to catch a pig. Nell McAndrew had to ride a bucking bronco. In a bikini. Nigel Benn had to sit under a tree in the dark for a few hours. Boy, those trials have progressed since then.

  The scariest trial involved shutting Rhona Cameron in an underground coffin for ten minutes. We were all thinking, ‘This is too much… is this too much?’ There was a lot of debate with the producers about whether it was inhumane whereas, these days, we suspend the coffin hundreds of feet in the air and fill it with rats. It’s nice when you can see how a concept has progressed like that. I think we should all be very proud.

  Halfway through the series, Clare and Lisa came to stay. They’d been given the full ‘scare the Pommies’ routine from the driver on the way from the airport and were prepared to spend the next week locked in our rooms. We managed to calm their fears and turn their attention to what really mattered – sitting around the pool with a tipple or two and having a lovely time. Of course, we would have to get up at 1 a.m., so we’d leave them down at the bar every evening when we went to sleep.

  On the plus side, it meant I got some quality time with Michael Gekko.

  One night, we got up for work and Clare and Lisa were still in the bar – we went round to tell them off, shocked that people could spend all night drinking like that. The moment we set eyes on them, we could tell it’d been a pretty heavy session. They were trying to hide from us by pretending to be lamps. It didn’t work.

  The celebrities also had loved ones staying in the hotel and, to be honest, it could get a bit awkward. Over breakfast one morning, before the series had actually started we were treated to the sight of Christine Hamilton’s husband and former Conservative MP for Tatton Neil Hamilton doing press-ups round the pool in very – and I do mean very – skimpy swimming trunks. Suddenly my sausages didn’t seem so appetizing. On another night, while they were enjoying a cigarette and a glass of wine or three, Lisa and Clare were approached by Uri Geller’s wife, who told them off for drinking and smoking. Like a lot of Uri’s best patter, it didn’t really have an effect.

  Back in camp, the inevitable was happening – the celebs were starting to go feral, which is a polite way of saying that, amongst other things, they started to develop a certain aroma. Just be glad it’s not smell-o-vision, that’s all I’m saying. On the show, every day, we go into camp to reveal the result of the viewer vote. On about the fifth day, Tara came running over to sniff us, shouting, ‘You guys smell amazing.’ We were only wearing deodorant – and clothes, of course – but being in camp and away from the smells and sounds of everyday life had heightened Tara’s senses, and the smell of anything that wasn’t a campfire or a smelly celeb drove her wild.

  In series one, after we’d announced the results of the phone votes for the Bushtucker Trial, we used to stay in camp until the end of the episode, rather than leave, like we do these days. After one show, Dec had Tara sniffing at him like some sort of Lynx-addicted maniac, asking, ‘Is anyone watching at home? Do they like me?’, while I had Uri Geller asking me about the football scores. At the time, Uri was a director of Exeter City, they were playing a big game and he was absolutely desperate to know how they were doing. All of which led to the following conversation:

  ‘Come on, you’re a football fan, you understand. Tell me how Exeter got on in the FA Cup.’

  ‘I can’t, Uri. You know I’m not allowed to tell you anything about the outside world.’

  ‘Okay, you don’t have to tell me. Just look into my eyes. Look deep into my eyes. I will read your mind and discover the football score.’

  He put his hands on my shoulders, pulled me in close and stared into my eyes.

  I half expected his belt buckle to bend and his trousers to fall down.

  Finally, he pulled away, his face filled with glee, and exclaimed, Yes! They won! They won! Thank you! Thank you!’

  Exeter lost, didn’t they?

  Yep – 2–1.

  The biggest difference between that first series and the subsequent ones, apart from not seeing Gary and Barry again, was that, while they were in there, the celebrities had no idea if anyone back home was even watching, cared about them, or had any interest in the whole programme. Tony Blackburn went on to win but, arguably, Tara was the star. When she finally left camp, she couldn’t believe that her and Darren had been the talk of the tabloids. Everyone who goes in now – apart, maybe, from some Americans – has seen the show and knows how much coverage it’s going to get.

  The series finished and, after two weeks of solid night shifts, we were knackered. Although the show had developed into a hit, it had been a hard slog. We still felt we hadn’t really got into our stride and, when we left Australia, we weren’t convinced we’d be doing the second series.

  We got home and got a sense of how much everybody had enjoyed that ‘Z-list jungle show’. The public had watched in their millions, the press had changed their tune and so had we. We also realized one other thing – doing more series would mean a month in Australia in the middle of the British winter every year.

  We couldn’t sign that contract fast enough.

  Chapter 30

  When you look back at sm:tv, Pop Idol and Takeaway, it seems we’ve always had a Saturday job. And we were about to do the longest shift of our career. The second series of Saturday Night Takeaway started in January 2003 and had been commissioned for a mammoth run of eleven episodes. We had a new producer, James Sunderland. Obviously, being Newcastle United fans, we weren’t too keen on his surname but, when we got to know him, we found out he shared our love of big entertainment shows like Beadle’s About, Noel’s House Party and Game for a Laugh and that he didn’t mind working Saturdays which, as producer of Saturday Night Takeaway, was essential. One of the other new faces was an assistant producer called Georgie Hurford-Jones. Georgie had worked on So Graham Norton for Channel 4, and she became Little Ant and Dec’s TV mum.

  With eleven episodes to fill, we needed a bucketload of new ideas – if you can imagine ideas coming in buckets. One of them was a feature called What’s Next?, where we’d both take out our earpieces, turn off the autocue and basically put ourselves in the hands of the producers for about eight minutes and potentially let them embarrass us on a weekly basis. By now, we’d done so much live telly that something like that wasn’t too scary; instead, it felt new, exciting and different. The other good thing was that we couldn’t do any rehearsals for that section on show day, a
nd we loved that, because it meant a longer lunch break.

  The idea was bold and ambitious but, when all’s said and done, a lot of it was about the producers making us two look like idiots. For some reason, they always said it was their favourite part of the show. And we did some great stuff: we learned how to be Bavarian bottom-slappers, played Count-down with Carol Vorderman and Richard Whiteley – but the one that sticks in my mind was when they put us in a cage with a pair of gorillas.

  The challenge would always be revealed to us just before the ad break so, while you were at home putting the kettle on or paying for your curry, we’d get fully briefed on what was about to happen. During this particular ad break, we were told we’d be sharing a cage with two gorillas and were introduced to the gorilla expert from London Zoo. He told us that, if the gorillas attacked, he would be there to step in. That was when I started shaking. He told us not to look in their eyes in case it made them angry and, by the time he’d finished with us, I was scared witless. Two dumb animals were about to be locked in a cage… with two gorillas. We both kept saying, ‘You will look after us, won’t you?’ He gave a few unconvincing mumbles, but it seemed like he was more concerned with the gorillas than us two. As we were talking to him, we could hear Andy Collins, our warm-up man, telling the audience to be very quiet because we’d be having live animals in the studio. The whole studio was filled with the authentic smell of primates from the hay that was in the gorillas’ cage. We were so scared, we contributed with a few smells of our own.

  Our task was to interact with the gorillas, feed them and mimic their behaviour. We stepped into the cage hesitantly. One of them was sat in the corner with a banana, and the gorilla expert, who was now on stage and talking us through the ordeal, told us to communicate with her by making a kind of ‘Ooh, aah’ monkey noise, which we obediently did. Just as we were growing in confidence and thought we had the gorilla on side, a second one, who was a large silverback male, appeared out of an adjoining pen and into our cage. He seemed to take exception to me tickling his girlfriend’s belly and took his frustration out on Ant.

  Wasn’t the first time…

  He basically jumped on my back and started thrusting back and forwards. I was disgusted – he hadn’t even had the decency to take me for dinner first. The expert continued to advise us on the best way to handle the beasts and told us we should slowly make our way to the exit of the cage, where we could return to safety. We both got out of the cage, to a massive round of applause from the audience, and wiped the sweat from our brows.

  Suddenly the music kicked in. ‘King of the Swingers’ started playing, and the gorillas broke into a choreographed dance routine.

  It was at this point we realized they weren’t real gorillas. They were gifted gorilla mimics. Or, to put it another way, a couple of blokes in monkey suits.

  You might have realized. I just thought, ‘Wow, those gorillas are great dancers.’

  It turned out the bloke from London Zoo wasn’t really from London Zoo – I’m not even sure he was from London. The producers had set us up an absolute treat.

  As well as What’s Next?, we introduced another new feature in this series called Undercover. Me and Ant would disguise ourselves with prosthetic make-up – noses, wigs, you name it – and go undercover to try and fool celebrities, while the whole thing was captured on hidden cameras. To make it a success, we needed commitment, dedication and the ability to sit in a make-up chair for four hours at a time. To make it work, we had voice coaches, we did extensive research on the people we were picking on and, most importantly, we had to hide Ant’s all too recognizable forehead – hence the hours and hours in make-up. On shows that did hidden-camera stunts in the past – like Noel’s House Party or Beadle’s About – the presenter would just come in at the end and reveal the whole thing was a wind-up, but this was the first time the hosts were central to the hit.

  Prosthetic make-up is incredibly time-consuming. Ask any actor or comedian who’s done it – Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Harry Enfield, Paul Whitehouse or Catherine Tate – and they’ll tell you they hate it. And it’s not just the time it takes. When you’re wearing prosthetics, it’s not uncommon for bits of your face to start melting. You could be in the middle of talking to Westlife, disguised as their biggest fan, thinking, ‘My cheeks are melting,’ or ‘My nose is going to fall off.’

  I never slept a wink the night before those Undercover shoots They were absolutely terrifying. I was always worried we’d be found out.

  Over the course of a few series, we did dozens of Undercovers, but by far the most nerve-wracking, most complicated and most expensive one featured that cheerful little ray of sunshine by the name of Simon Cowell. The plan was that we’d audition for American Idol as Jimmy and Scottie Osterman, two brothers from Denver, Colorado.

  The whole shoot took weeks of planning but, when we finally got the go-ahead, everything happened very quickly. The night before we flew out to America, we got a call from Nigel Hall, our executive producer. I thought he was calling to say ‘Good luck with the shoot,’ but what we got was ‘The whole thing’s cost about £20,000, so whatever you do, don’t cock it up.’

  Leon Wilde, who was producing and directing, explained that we would have to do it all for real – we’d have to go and enrol like normal contestants: there was no way to short-cut all of that and get straight to the judges. That meant we had to go and queue up with the rest of the hopefuls. We were scheduled to go in fairly early and we were both incredibly nervous – what if our goatees became unstuck and Simon Cowell recognized us? Then word filtered through to the contestants’ holding room that the judges had decided to take an early lunch. If there was one thing we knew from the British Pop Idol, it was that Simon Cowell wouldn’t be hurrying back to his seat: he’d keep people waiting in America, just like he did in Britain – he’s nothing if not consistent. We were left waiting in the queue alongside all the other contestants. They didn’t – and couldn’t – know that we were Brits posing as Americans, so we just ‘hung out’ with them, chatted and generally felt very awkward and embarrassed.

  Then things got even weirder. American Idol was – and is – a phenomenal success in America, and this was the second series, which meant everyone wanted a piece of it. There were crews from every news network there, including one from a show called Access Hollywood, which takes you behind the scenes of TV shows and gives you, well, access to Hollywood. They were filming at the American Idol auditions and, next thing I knew, I was being interviewed, as Jimmy Osterman. And then Paula Abdul, one of the other judges alongside Simon Cowell, joins the interview, so I’m standing there, on American TV, with Paula Abdul, and all the time, I’m just thinking, ‘Is my nose falling off? Are my cheeks melting?’

  I was laughing so much that my nose nearly did fall off. Finally, after the waiting and the interviews, it was showtime. The plan was that Dec would go in first, then say he was too nervous to audition and ask if he could bring his brother in with him. That meant we wouldn’t walk into the room as a double act, which hopefully reduced the chances of Simon spotting us.

  It was terrifying – there were twenty thousand reasons to be nervous and I was convinced that Simon was so sharp, switched on and intelligent that he would recognize me straight away. I overestimated him. I arrived in the audition room and glanced up to see the formidable figure of Simon Cowell looking bored. I’d heavily rehearsed answers to every conceivable question they could ask – my name, my age and how I was feeling. Randy Jackson, the third judge, looked at me. I was expecting a ‘How you doing?’ or a ‘What’s your name?’ but what I got was something I couldn’t have predicted:

  ‘Yo dog, what’s the deal?’

  I was completely stumped. I wasn’t a dog, and no one had ever asked me what the deal was – I didn’t know if I should tell him the deal was good, or what. In the end I just mumbled, ‘How you doing?’ or something, while nervously staring at the floor. What it did mean was that I was very convincing at actin
g nervous. Then, as planned, after a false start to my song, I went out and got my ‘brother’, Ant. Next thing we knew, it was happening – we were auditioning for American Idol in front of Simon Cowell.

  One of our main tactics was to stand the other way round. As the more discerning amongst you will have noticed, normally, when we’re on telly, I always stand on the left and Dec’s always on the right but, on this occasion, we cunningly switched it around. We launched into ‘Opposites Attract’, which had been a hit for Paula Abdul in the eighties. It began well, in the sense that it went as badly as we’d hoped. When you’re in the middle of a hidden-camera prank like that, all you need is to get to a point where enough’s happened that you know you’ve got a decent story and, after that, everything else is a bonus.

  After a full verse of ‘Opposites Attract’, we knew we had enough material, and the judges hadn’t stopped us yet, so we decided to have a bit of fun.

  Plus, we hadn’t learnt the second verse, so we had to do something.

  Ant started beatboxing, I started breakdancing and, eventually, there was a flicker of recognition in Simon’s eyes. He’d realized we were the hosts of Pop Idol, but it was too late – we’d got Simon Cowell hook, line and sinker. And we hadn’t wasted that £20,000.