Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story Read online

  Later that night, we were in a pub when a bunch of girls came over, had a bit of a chat and had their picture taken with me and Ant. We didn’t think anything much of it – well, apart from the fact that Ant was dressed as a gay biker, but that was par for the course that day. The next day, the Sunday People ran a story by a journalist called Alice Walker who was ‘the only journalist to be invited on Ant’s stag do’. She was one of the girls in the pub – she turned the chat she’d had with us into an interview and used the snap she’d taken on her camera phone to make it look like she’d been there the whole time. They’re crafty types, those journalists.

  If I thought that, after a day of parading around London dressed up in various outfits, things couldn’t get any more embarrassing, I was wrong because, at the end of the night, we managed to leave Lisa’s dad, Derek, behind. Not a wise move. We’d all gone back to Chiswick in the minibus, and I was staying at Dec’s, so when we pulled up and all fell out of the bus, Lisa came out of the front door. Straight away, I was full of drunken bravado: ‘You can’t say anything to me, no matter how drunk I am, I’m the stag and I’m staying at Dec’s tonight.’ She smiled sweetly and, after a short pause, replied, ‘Where’s my dad?’ I went white as a sheet: somehow we’d managed to leave him all alone in Central London. Fortunately for him and, more importantly, for me, one of the other lads on the stag had picked him up in a cab and brought him back to ours later, but it was a very close shave.

  The Latvian leg of the stag do was even more hardcore than the London one although, on the plus side, Ant did at least get to wear his own clothes. And I should point out that, while we were away, we didn’t just drink solidly for the whole three days. We enjoyed two other activities – go-karting and shooting guns although, fortunately, not at the same time. We went to a shooting range and, although we were assured it was all official and licensed, it did seem to be mainly based around a bloke’s shed and a table of guns and ammo in his garden.

  The guy running it could only speak three words of English, which were ‘Hello’, ‘Shoot’ and ‘Goodbye’. He had a couple of targets at the bottom of the garden which we all took shots at. The other thing that made me suspect it wasn’t 100 per cent safe was that we had to avoid his washing when we aimed at the target. Still, that and an hour’s go-karting kept us from spending seventy-two hours drinking – I think it was about sixty-eight hours in the end. The important thing is that Ant had a good time on both stag dos, and he survived the whole thing. Plus, if we ever fall out, I can always blackmail him with pictures of him dressed in that French maid’s outfit.

  I got married on the 22 July 2006 at St Nicholas Church in the beautiful Berkshire village of Taplow. Me and Lisa were offered lots of money to sell our wedding to various magazines. You can probably guess which ones but, just in case, I’ll give you a clue – it wasn’t Auto Trader. It was never about money to us, though, this was a personal day to share with our friends and families and not something we wanted to see on the shelves of W. H. Smith. We looked at quite a few venues, and settled for Cliveden House in Berkshire. Cliveden is set in 376 acres of National Trust parkland and overlooks the River Thames and was built in 1666 as a hunting lodge for the second duke of Buckingham. In later years, it was regularly visited by Queen Victoria and, now, me, a lad from Fenham, was getting married there.

  I asked my old mates Boppa, Athey and Goody, plus Lisa’s brother, Stephen, my step-brother Robbie and my brother-in-law, John, to be ushers, and kitted them out with tailor-made suits from Tom Baker, the master tailor who makes most of our suits for our TV shows. And, of course, as best man, Dec got a suit too.

  Took you long enough to book me as best man though, didn’t it? The only reason you actually asked me was because Lisa made you.

  That’s not strictly true.

  It strictly is true. Let me fill you in, readers. When Ant and Lisa came back from Dubai, we held a little engagement drinks party for them, and then they got on with organizing their wedding. To be fair, I did assume I would get the best-man gig, but he’d never actually asked me outright. A month or two after the engagement, I was round at his one day, and he made a joke about something to do with the wedding, then he said, ‘Well, you’d better know that you’re my best man.’ ‘Am I?’ I replied, then Lisa pitched in with, ‘Well, have you actually asked him?’, to which Ant said, ‘No, I just assumed… so, will you… be my best man?’, and of course I said yes – it was never one of those dramatic, blood-brothers moments, although we did go round the corner for a pint to celebrate.

  22 July was an incredibly hot day, and getting hitched went off without any hitches. Dec didn’t even forget the rings – in fact, he didn’t even pretend to forget the rings.

  It was amazing. Lisa looked beautiful. She was wearing an incredible ivory satin dress with a lace bolero jacket and a tiara. She looked absolutely stunning as she walked down the aisle. As well as being the happiest day of my life, it was also the hottest day of my life. Everyone in the church was fanning themselves with their order-of-service sheets; it was like getting married in Louisiana. As Lisa approached, I realized I was pouring with sweat: it was literally running down my face. Fortunately, she grabbed a hanky from her dad, who was walking her up the aisle, and when she arrived at the altar, passed it to me. I can still see that hanky now: it was embroidered with a picture of one of my favourite men in the world, someone who’s been an inspiration to me for years – Homer Simpson. I gratefully mopped my brow but didn’t notice that the embroidery on the hanky had left scratches all over my face. I looked like I’d been dragged through a bramble bush. Luckily, the scratch marks had disappeared by the time we got our photos taken.

  After the ceremony, we made our way back to Cliveden for the champagne reception and wedding breakfast. As part of the day, we’d booked a magician, who was going to work the tables doing close-up, sleight-of-hand magic, although he almost didn’t make it into the venue. When Lisa and me first arrived, we were waiting outside, ready to be called in for that bit where the bride and groom arrive and everyone claps. I looked over and there was this guy sitting there in a black suit hanging around, and neither me nor Lisa recognized him, I thought he was a photographer or a journalist, and we were about to have him thrown out. One of the security guys went up and asked who he was, and he told us he was the magician and he was waiting for everyone to arrive before he came in – he’d nearly managed to make himself disappear before he’d even started work.

  We had two rooms for the meal – there were so many people there that we couldn’t fit them all into one. Before the food arrived, I quickly went round all the tables to thank everyone for coming. One of the last tables I spoke to had Ed, who executive produces Takeaway, and Andy, our scriptwriter, on it, and I chatted away for a couple of minutes and then ended by saying something funny. The whole table laughed, and I walked off at the perfect moment, slick as you like, and opened the door that would take me back to the next room. There was only one problem – it wasn’t the door to the next room, it was the door to the cleaning cupboard. I’d had a tableful of people in stitches, and opened a door that revealed an ironing board and a couple of bottles of bleach. It got a bigger laugh than anything I said at the ceremony.

  Before the wedding, we were both given one piece of advice: make sure you spend some time together on the day; everyone will be wanting a word with you both, but make sure you spend time together, which we did. After an incredible afternoon at Cliveden House, it was speeches time. We headed to the grand staircase, Lisa took her seat on a throne that looked like it might actually have been used by Queen Victoria and was flanked by me and Dec.

  Ant had told me he was just going to do a really quick speech and that would be it – he said he wasn’t going to do loads of gags, he’d keep it simple and say his thank-yous. The liar. He did a brilliant speech that went down an absolute storm. It was almost as if he’d spent half his life performing to big groups of people. Lisa’s dad went next and did the same – everyo
ne loved it. By the time it got to me, I was in a right panic. I might be a natural show-off, but being your best mate’s best man is a different kettle of fish. I’ve never been so nervous – my mouth was too dry to even swallow the glass of wine in front of me, and the paper was shaking in my hand. Forget drinking tea in front of Prince Charles, making a film, hosting TV shows or performing at Truck Fest, this was the toughest gig of my life.

  I’d put off writing my speech until a week before and, even then, I didn’t know where to start. In the end, I decided to start at the beginning – I’m clever like that. I sat down in front of my laptop with a blank page looking back at me and just started to write. Ant was born two months premature, so I started there and pretty much cracked jokes at his expense from that point on. I finished it in an afternoon, printed it off and just hoped it was good. The night before the wedding, I got the opportunity to have a practice run. All the lads got together for dinner after a day’s golf, including Jonny Wilkes, who unfortunately wouldn’t be staying for the wedding, as he had a prior engagement that he reckoned he couldn’t wriggle out of – it was performing to 80,000 people at the San Siro stadium in Milan with Robbie which, when you think about it, is a pretty decent excuse. Jonny really wanted to hear my speech, and I realized I’d only ever practised it out loud to myself on the sofa, so this would give me an audience – and a welcome rehearsal.

  I read it from start to finish, putting in all the pauses, hitting the punchlines bang on, and finished the whole thing by telling Ant and Lisa how proud and happy I was to be part of their big day. I finally got to the end, looked up and saw Jonny sitting there with tears running down his face. He looked at me and said, ‘It’s beautiful,’ then I started crying too. I thought, ‘How the hell am I going to do this to a full room?’

  Of course, the following day I found out when the big moment arrived – I stepped up to a round of applause, took the mic from Lisa’s dad, looked down at the sheet of words in front of me, up to the expectant faces in the room and began to talk and talk and talk. For five pages. Somehow I got through it, and it seemed to go down okay…

  ‘Okay?’ Don’t be so modest, it was fantastic. The speech was perfect – it was emotional, touching, moving but, most of all, it stitched me up an absolute treat. I’ve got your speech written out here. It included gems like:

  Most of the stories I wanted to tell about Ant would have got him strung up by his mam; a lot of the others would have got me strung up by my mam; and the rest of them involved Ant stringing himself up in a pair of fishnet tights.

  And also:

  He’s been a brilliant friend to me over the years, he was there when I broke my nose playing football. In fact, he broke it. He was there when I split up with my girlfriend, he was there when I fell off a motorbike while filming and broke my arm. In fact, come to think of it, you’ve been a bloody jinx!

  After the speech, Dec moved on to the telegrams, and the first three were:

  To Ant and Lisa, congratulations! To our no. 1 customers, from everyone at the Crown and Anchor.

  To Ant and Lisa, our best customers! Hope you have a wonderful day, from everyone at Thresher.

  To Lisa and Ant, wishing our best customers lots of luck, from Hounslow Council Bottle-Recycling Team.

  It was hilarious. He’d really taken a lot of time on it, and that’s not something you can always say with Dec: he usually loses interest in things pretty quickly. After the speeches, me and Lisa went back to our room to freshen up and, when we re-entered the main hall, it was time for our first dance.

  The band played Burt Bacharach’s ‘This Guy’s in Love with You’. Years earlier, when Lisa and me first met, I had that song on an old Telstar CD in mine and Dec’s flat, and it became ‘our song’ – that’s mine and Lisa’s, by the way; me and Dec don’t have a song, that would just be weird. When we were in the studio with Ray ‘Mad Man’ Hedges working on the second album, I actually recorded a version of it, with me singing, and gave it to Lisa. Incidentally, the best version of it ever is the Sacha Distel one, which I’ve still never been able to find, so if anyone out there can find it, give me a shout, eh?

  After our first dance, it was time to party, and the next song the band played was the Kaiser Chiefs’ ‘I Predict a Riot’. And, let me tell you, the Kaiser Chiefs’ lyrics proved to be very accurate.

  There wasn’t actually a riot, I’d like to make that clear, we just had a great time.

  Me and the new Mrs McPartlin left the wedding reception at 2 a.m. in a carriage that took us down to the cottage in the grounds of Cliveden. When we arrived, the staff there had laid out all our presents and cards and a lovely spread of food, all of which was surrounded by candles. It was beautiful and, two days later, we went off on honeymoon to the Maldives, where we spent an idyllic two weeks together.

  I was absolutely lost without him – I even considered flying out there, but when I texted Ant to find out the name of his hotel, he never replied.

  Chapter 39

  As officially the busiest year of our lives, both privately and professionally, 2006 was also when we devised, hosted and sold our first gameshow, Poker Face, which, I should say right from the off, was nothing to do with hitting people in the face with a poker. It was ‘the question-and-answer quiz with an element of bluff’. The idea was basically to play poker with questions instead of cards, so the contestants had to bluff about whether they knew any of the answers.

  We tried it out with a few friends in the upstairs room of our local pub, and it seemed to work, so we went and pitched it to ITV. We met with Nigel Pickard, who was now the Director of Programmes, and Claudia Rosencrantz, who was still the Controller of Entertainment, at Soho House, a private members’ bar and restaurant in the middle of London.

  At the dinner, we’d talked about Takeaway and I’m a Celebrity …, as planned, and then we told them about our idea for a gameshow. ‘Great,’ Nigel said, ‘as long as it’s not another bloody question-and-answer quiz – I’m sick of them; all I ever get is question-and-answer quizzes.’ Never easily put off, we thought on our feet and asked him if he’d had a question-and-answer quiz where you don’t have to understand any of the questions or know any of the answers to win. He and Claudia both looked intrigued and, after a glass of wine, agreed to a pilot.

  We did two series of Poker Face, with the winner of each final taking away £1 million – I know, £1 million. It was an incredible feeling to know that a show we’d invented would change people’s lives for ever. The format has since been sold to, at the last count, fifteen countries, including India, Columbia and Norway – apparently, it’s also very big in Portugal. A couple of years after we’d made the British version, we were in Australia after finishing a series of I’m a Celebrity … and we went to Sydney to see Robbie Williams, who was playing a gig at the Telstra Stadium. There was a TV on backstage; and a trailer for the Australian version of Poker Face came on. It was a bizarre moment. I think it was just after Neighbours and right before Home and Away.

  We might have had an international TV hit on our hands, but we weren’t ready to rest on our laurels. We’d told the new production team on Takeaway that we wanted the latest series to really hit the heights, but what they came up with wasn’t really what we’d had in mind. The first Ant versus Dec challenge of that series was one of the scariest things we’ve ever done – and that includes an interview with John Lydon. We had to abseil down the side of the London Studios – on live TV. I still can’t quite believe we did it, but it was sprung on us during the live show and we didn’t have any time to really think about it. If we’d had a week of rehearsals, like we do with a lot of things, I’m not sure we would have gone through with it but, live, on the night, we just went for it.

  As usual, the challenge was revealed to us just before an ad break. During that break, we got changed, and went up to the roof. Some Royal Marines talked us through what was about to happen. Their first tip was that we shouldn’t, on any account, look over the edge. I liste
ned to what they said very carefully, took it all in and then looked over the edge. It was terrifying, and I immediately regretted it. I’d been relatively calm up till then.

  Next thing I remember was a marine strapping me in and saying, ‘There you go, Dec.’ He was about to send me down the side of a twenty-four-floor building and he didn’t even know which one was Ant and which one was Dec. He told me to go down slowly, because if you hit the ground too fast you can injure yourself and, after Dec’s trouble with the motorbike, the last thing we needed was more casualties. Once we were harnessed in, a Klaxon sounded and off we went. Just like I’d been told, I went slowly, then I looked over at Dec, who was ahead of me and going much faster, which was really annoying, because no matter how scared you are, you still get into the competitive spirit.

  I’ll be honest with you, once I’d gone off the roof, I just couldn’t wait to get to the bottom – partly because we’re both so competitive and partly because any sane person would. I remember going past all the floors of the building, looking through the windows and thinking, ‘I can’t believe how dirty those windows are… that’s a very messy desk, how can anyone work in such a mess?’