Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story Read online

  We did the only thing we could do and kept going with the fictional karaoke challenge. It got to the point where we were standing in the kitchen with Leon Wilde, who was directing the Undercover but posing as the director of Celebrities Under Pressure, saying to each other, ‘What do we do now?’ Fash had fallen for the lot – the family being rude to him, the endless hours of karaoke, sharing a bedroom with one of the kids… and he still hadn’t sussed us out, so we did something we only ever do in extreme circumstances.

  We sang ‘Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble’. In the garage of the ‘family’ home.

  Before that, we’d sung ‘If You Don’t Know Me by Now’, and he still hadn’t got it, but we thought once we went into ‘Rhumble’, he’d rumble us straight away. We were wrong. At the end of the song, when Fash had been giving it his all, and wrecking mics left, right and centre, we asked him if he knew who’d sung the original. He didn’t. We told him it was Ant and Dec. Still nothing. In the end, we were forced to remove our false teeth and fake faces and say, ‘I’m Dec and he’s Ant.’

  Even though by the time we told him who we were, my forehead was starting to melt and Dec’s nose was looking very torn, he still would’ve fallen for anything. It was the best moment of the entire series, and if we hadn’t just given up and told him who we were, there’s a good chance we’d still be there now, singing karaoke and living with John Fashanu.

  And no one wants that, do they?

  Chapter 34

  The third series of I’m a Celebrity… had been so successful that, by the time we came to do the fourth one, interest in the whole show had increased dramatically. As well as the celebs, that interest, bizarrely, extended to us two. There were more paparazzi skulking around the town we stayed in, and our biggest worry was that, after a day’s sunbathing, people would take pictures of us lying around with sliced tomato on our backs.

  To deal with the increased press presence, the show hired a security guard (who also doubled as our driver) to stop us being bothered. His name was Junior, and he was a huge exrugby player from New Zealand. To give you an idea of his size, I’d say that one of his legs is bigger, stronger and more powerful than me and Ant put together. He was incredibly professional and couldn’t have been more vigilant if he’d been looking after Barack Obama – although Barack is unlikely to host I’m a Celebrity… any time soon. Not unless him and us two did some sort of job swap - and I’m not sure that would work. We’d be fine running America, but I’m not sure how he’d cope with the Bushtucker Trials.

  After a few days of being under Junior’s surveillance, we noticed that, every time we came out of our hotel rooms, he would magically appear from his room, which was at the other end of the corridor. We couldn’t work out how he did it. At first we thought he just had good hearing, so the next time we left our rooms, we agreed to be super quiet, but the moment we opened the doors, he was there.

  Finally, detectives Donnelly and McPartlin got to the bottom of it. We came back from dinner one night, a little bit tipsy, and spotted something: the corridor where our rooms were had always been completely bare except for a massive plant pot outside Dec’s room and on this particular night, we noticed that plant pot had a flashing red light in it. Junior had hidden a small camera there, and he had a monitor in his room. Straight away, I thought, ‘How dare he?’

  Yeah, he was looking after us, keeping an eye on us, doing his job – it was nothing short of a disgrace…

  We decided to have a bit of fun so, one night when we got in from dinner, we tiptoed towards the plant, carefully picked it up and, laughing our heads off, bolted into Dec’s room with it. We pointed the camera at the telly so it was filming a boxing match on the sports channel, and thought we were so clever we must have laughed for ten minutes solid – when us two do something we think is funny, boy, do we think it’s funny. When our laughter had finally died down, there was a knock at the door, and it was Junior. ‘Gimme the plant,’ he growled – and we did as we were told. He put it back where it had come from, and we said no more about it.

  We should say that we see Junior every year now and he’s really opened up – he’s a lovely bloke and we can really have a laugh with him these days.

  Yeah, we should say that – he’s absolutely massive.

  When it came to the show itself, topping Peter, Jordan and the rest of them was always going to be tough, but series four delivered one of the finest Bushtucker Trials of all time. The eventual winner was Joe Pasquale. We’d seen him at a wedding the previous summer, got talking and he said, ‘They’ve asked me to do I’m a Celebrity…’ We told him he’d be great, but he revealed, ‘I’ve told them they can stick it up their arse.’ It was obvious from talking to Joe that he was a man of principal – he wasn’t going to do the show and that was the end of it.

  Cut to the following November; and me, Dec and Joe Pasquale at the Bushtucker clearing. In the three weeks leading up to the show, Joe had only eaten two meals a day – he knew that hunger would be the hardest thing and decided to train himself. It worked a treat, because he went on to be crowned king of the jungle, partly thanks to keeping himself to himself, saying some very funny stuff in the Bush Telegraph, and walking around camp with a couple of emus that had been sent in. I should point out they were real live emus, not the kind Rod Hull used to attack people with, and Joe spent hours on end with those birds. They were small, annoying and went everywhere together. Joe christened them Ant and Dec – I never did find out why.

  That was also the series where we almost had to change the name of Bushtucker Trials to ‘The Part of the Show Where Natalie Appleton Cries’. Former All Saint Natalie was chosen to do a record five trials in a row, breaking the previous record set by Fash. The great British public really had it in for her, although I don’t think Natalie did herself any favours when, on the trek into camp, she touched a tree with her hand and uttered the immortal words, ‘Ah! I touched a tree!’ If I didn’t know better, I’d say the more squeamish the celeb, the more likely they were to be voted for to do the trial.

  The worst thing for us was that the more hesitant, or scared, someone is, the longer it takes to record the trial and, let me tell you, with Natalie, those trials took for ever. She would spend ages trying to decide whether or not to give them a go, in between regular bouts of freaking out. It was also very difficult for the team who create the Bushtucker Trials – they spend a lot of time and effort making sure everything is well designed, properly thought through and, of course, absolutely terrifying, and when one of the celebrities refuses to give them a go, their hard work is wasted.

  Occasionally, though, someone other than Natalie would have a chance, and one of those people was Paul Burrell. Paul faced a trial called Hell Holes and, straight off the bat, just so there isn’t any doubt, I’m going to admit it, I laughed my head off pretty much from start to finish. He had to put his hand into holes in a piece of rock and retrieve the stars he needed to win food for camp, but, as always, the stars had company. And Paul gave the performance of his life, squealing, screaming, sweating, crying, saying, ‘Come to Daddy,’ and ‘Move over, darling,’ to the snakes, rats, spiders and whatever else was in there. Initially, me and Ant tried to bite our lips and not laugh, in the interests of trying to be vaguely professional. Then we looked round at the cameramen and the sound department, and they had tears rolling down their faces. The camera was literally shaking because the cameraman was laughing so much. After I saw that, the floodgates opened and I fell apart.

  History has taught us that Dec is much worse than me at keeping a straight face in these situations. I suppose being grumpy does have its advantages.

  I’m a terrible giggler at the best of times and, once I started, I couldn’t stop. Paul’s trial became one of the TV moments of the year, and he gave us all sore faces from laughing so much. We never thought we’d get anything funnier than Fash, but this was Fash to the power of ten.

  We eventually got the chance to catch up with Paul at the wrap party.
He and the rest of the celebs arrived and, the moment he clapped eyes on me, he came straight over and said, ‘I want a word with you.’

  ‘Hi, Paul, how are you?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you. You were laughing at me during those trials. You and Dec were laughing at me.’

  ‘Yes, Paul, we were.’ I couldn’t disagree, so I thought my best bet was to come clean. ‘What you’ve got to realize, though, is that the way you did those trials won you a lot of fans. My girlfriend, for instance, had been voting for Joe to win, but when she saw you in those trials, she started voting for you.’

  I looked at him, confident I’d stated my case well, and that this would calm him down. He stared at me, took in what I’d said and then, after a few seconds’ consideration, said, ‘You’ve got a girlfriend? I always thought you were gay.’

  You can’t blame him – you can be quite camp sometimes.

  How very dare you.

  Chapter 35

  The business of show can teach you some pretty harsh lessons and, on the next series of Takeaway, thanks to Little Ant and Dec, we learnt a new one: Bruce Willis isn’t exactly a bundle of laughs. In the dozens of interviews the boys did, from David Beckham to Diana Ross to Robert De Niro, there was only one person who ever refused to ‘play ball’ with the Littles – and that was Mr Willis. And Die Hard’s one of my favourite films.

  Bruce was over in the UK to promote his new film, Hostage, and he was booked in for the usual Little Ant and Dec treatment – some very silly questions and possibly a bit of dressing up at the end. It never got that far. Despite being a well-known Hollywood hardman who can put up with hijacked planes and exploding buildings, Bruce Willis wasn’t too keen on spending ten minutes with a couple of kids from Newcastle.

  The boys’ interview included questions like:

  ‘My mum said you made a film about a ghost – were you frightened?’ and ‘My dad has a T-shirt that says “Baldies Do It Better”. You’re a baldie, what does that mean?’

  Bruce spent the interview giving very brief answers and looking distinctly unamused. At the end of what was a short and very excruciating chat, Georgie Hurford-Jones, who was directing, and the boys left the room in a hurry, while Mr Willis left the room with a frown, keen to have a word or two with his publicist. His name may be Bruce but, when it came to Little Ant and Dec, he didn’t think it was nice to see them to see them nice.

  One person who did play their cards right when it came to Little Ant and Dec was a man by the name of Tony Blair. Yes, that Tony Blair. In the same series, the call came through that the Prime Minister wanted to do an interview with the boys at Downing Street.

  The whole thing happened in the run-up to the 2005 general election, and it actually became a genuine political story. Broadsheet newspapers were up in arms that, while the PM was avoiding interviews with the likes of Jeremy Paxman, he was happy to talk to a couple of kids for a Saturday-night TV show. Regardless of all the criticism and flak that was flying around, it was a really proud moment for us, and for everyone involved in the show. It was a particularly momentous occasion for Dylan and James, who had not only succeeded in scooping the TV interview of the year, but had also got special permission to miss PE and double maths.

  The prime minister was fantastic with them but, after half an hour of being asked silly questions, he turned to Georgie, gave her a look that said, ‘How the hell did I get into this?’, then asked, ‘Is this over yet?’, to which she replied, ‘No, Prime Minister, it isn’t.’ After they’d finished talking to Mr Blair, the boys ran around Downing Street pressing buttons and picking up phones they shouldn’t have been touching. I think at one point they may have accidentally declared war on a country in South America, but it made for a great piece of television, and that’s the most important thing, isn’t it?

  After that interview, we brought the curtain down on Little Ant and Dec. Not only were they actually getting taller than us, we just felt that we couldn’t take the concept any further. Once the boys had interviewed Tony Blair, it couldn’t really get any bigger. Plus, we always try and retire strands on Takeaway while people are still enjoying them; that way there’s no chance of them getting stale and tired. That’s the beauty of that kind of programme: you can keep changing the component parts of it, but it’s still the same show.

  At the same time, we decided we’d replace Undercover. It felt like that had reached the end of its time too. We’d dressed up as pretty much every character imaginable, and it was getting to the stage where the celebs we were pranking were getting wise to it. Probably the best example had come in the previous series, when we’d posed as a pair of American rappers. One of our ‘victims’ was Jill Halfpenny, my ex-girlfriend from the Byker Grove days and, looking back, she probably wasn’t the smartest choice. Anyway, Dec was alone in a room with her, in full make-up, pretending to be a twenty-stone black American rapper, when she uttered the immortal words, ‘Are you Dec?’

  Call it a hunch, but that was one of the moments when we thought it was probably time for something new. And, besides, we wouldn’t have to lose any more sleep over how an Undercover mission would go and how much the whole thing cost. Oh, and we could stop spending seven hours in make-up every week. The new feature we substituted for it would be, we thought, less intense and less time-consuming.

  It turned out to be much more intense and extremely time-consuming.

  The item was called Ant versus Dec and, in case the title doesn’t give it away, it involved me and Ant competing in a different challenge every week. The first thing we should say about it is that we get very, very competitive. And I mean very competitive. Fortunately, I’ve managed to win all of them – I just wanted to remind Ant and you lovely readers of that before we go any further.

  Now, now, let’s not get competitive in the book, shall we? Every week, we get given a challenge, then we have one day – usually Tuesday – for training. After that, we spend the rest of the week practising our skills (or the lack of them) before we compete in the challenge, which usually happens live, in the studio, with the lovely Kirsty Gallacher in charge. The first challenge we ever did was Gladiators – in the spandex-wearing-TV-stars sense of the word, not the Roman amphitheatre blokes. When we came out into the studio in our brightly coloured Lycra suits, we got a huge reaction from the audience. They laughed their heads off. When it came to the second one, we were both walking a bit of a tightrope – that’s not a metaphor by the way, that was actually the challenge: we had to walk a tightrope. So far, so good. Then we got to week three, and the challenge was puppy-training. It was a particularly horrendous challenge.

  Horrendous doesn’t do it justice. As always, we had the challenge revealed to us on the Saturday night, live on the show, and we didn’t give it another thought, and after the credits rolled, we strolled down to the green room as we did after every show to spend several hours relaxing – the kind of relaxing that means you wake up with a very sore head every Sunday. As it happens, that particular weekend, we were both looking forward to the Sunday, because Newcastle United were playing Chelsea in the cup. We hadn’t been able to get home for the game, and it was going to be on the telly, so we decided to watch it in style – down our local pub. If there’s football and beer involved, dedication is our middle name.

  On the Sunday, I was woken up at the crack of noon by the doorbell. A mum, a dad and their two girls – or a family, as they’re otherwise known – arrived with two brown Labrador puppies called Ronni and Pudding. Ronni belonged to the family and was going to spend the week with me, and Dec was going to have Pudding – the dog that is, not the food. The family stayed for a cup of tea and filled me in on how to look after Ronni, as well as leaving toys, food and instructions on when to walk her.

  I didn’t get any instructions. Pudding didn’t belong to the family, so they just left her at Ant’s without so much as a doggy chew. After I collected her and took her back to mine, I clearly remember me and the dog just looking at eac
h other. I’m not sure who was more worried – me or Pudding. Actually, that’s not true, it was definitely me.

  Imagine the scene: in two different houses at exactly the same time, me and Ant are looking at these cute, energetic and adorable little puppies, thinking exactly the same thing: ‘What time does the football kick off?’

  Fortunately, help arrived in the form of my better half. Lisa loves chocolate-brown Labradors and, bless her, she said she’d look after them while we went to the pub. That kind of behaviour is one of the thousands of reasons I love her so much. We’d been assured by the producers that both puppies were house-trained, so we had nothing to worry about on that front. Me and Dec got to the pub in time and had a great time watching the football.

  Towards the end of the match, Lisa arrived, with the dogs. She wasn’t happy and greeted us with the words, ‘These are your dogs – you need to take them.’ I could tell by the look on her face that it was a good idea to do what I was told (I know that look well). Apparently, they’d been a nightmare. The dogs had spent all their time fighting, and, when they weren’t fighting, they were going to the toilet all over the house – the only place they didn’t go to the toilet was the toilet. Then, when they’d finished with the house, they went out into the garden together, did the same out there, then rolled around in what polite people call their ‘business’, came back into the kitchen and skidded around in it.