Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story Read online

  There’s no easy way to follow a section about Comic Relief, so I’m just going to take you on a trip to America.

  After a failed attempt to get Saturday Night Takeaway made in America a few years earlier, in 2007 we finally got to make a series there – and we didn’t even have to listen to a vertically challenged bloke playing ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’ to make it happen. In January, we’d had a meeting with Andrea Wong, the President of Entertainment at ABC. On the day of the meeting, we’d just had typhoid and yellow-fever injections for our Comic Relief trip to Kenya, so we weren’t on the greatest form. That, and the fact that we’d already had our fingers burnt with the American version of Takeaway, meant that we were fairly indifferent to the idea of cracking America.

  Although it wasn’t a deliberate ploy, it seemed our indifference worked a treat because, a few weeks later, Andrea rang up and told us she had a show she wanted us to host. It was called Wanna Bet?, and it was going to be an American version of a show we knew in Britain as You Bet, which had been hosted by Bruce Forsyth, Matthew Kelly and Darren Day – not together, by the way, at different times.

  Working out there, we quickly discovered there were lots of differences between making a TV series in England and making one in America – and not all of them were good. For a start, there were the floor managers. Most of the shows we do in the UK are floor-managed by our good friend Alan Conley. He’s brilliant at his job, totally reliable and now owes us another £50 for bigging him up in this book. In LA, we had two floor managers, Donny and Steve, two old West Coast hippies in their fifties, and to say they were slightly laid-back is like saying Simon Cowell is slightly critical.

  When it came to do the first show, we were both very nervous – this was our American network television debut and we were working in a country where no one really knew who we were. Phil Gurin, the producer, had prepared what’s called a ‘sizzle tape’, which was basically designed to introduce us to the audience – it featured us interviewing the three princes, working with Simon Cowell, shooting our film, and basically anything that would make an American audience think we were kind of a big deal.

  On the day of the first show, they played the tape in the studio. It went down a storm. We came out on to the stage to a standing ovation, the audience were clapping and cheering, they laughed at our jokes and the whole show went like a dream. We came off stage on such a high. We couldn’t believe how well it had gone. This was it, we were going to crack America – mansions, limos and our own swimming pools were surely around the corner.

  ‘I like to live in America! OK by me in America!’

  Shush. We turned to one of the American producers and said, ‘Wow, what a brilliant audience.’ Without missing a beat, he replied, ‘Yeah, it’s amazing what you can get for $15 an hour.’ Seeing the puzzled looks on our faces, he patiently explained that studio audiences in America actually get paid.

  And we thought it was because we were hilariously funny and brilliantly entertaining. The alarm bells should have been ringing the moment we made that assumption. We enjoyed making the show, though, and spending time in LA – it’s a crazy place, but there’s no better city in the world to be working in showbusiness. It’s a show-off’s paradise, but I’m not sure I could live there full time…

  Good, ’cos nobody’s asked us to…

  After we’d finished filming the series, and to celebrate our first American show, our management company, James Grant, treated us to a trip to Vegas.

  We started the day in LA with a hearty breakfast and headed off with Paul, Darren and Ali to the gambling capital of the world. They’d arranged some fantastic stuff – we had rooms at the Bellagio, one of the best hotels in Vegas, they’d booked us a limo to ferry us around and show us the sights and told us the only thing we’d have to pay for was drinks and our chips. Incidentally, I mean gambling chips; we weren’t going to the local Vegas chippie for dinner. The five of us went to a fantastic steak restaurant in the Hotel Wynn, and it was shaping up to be one of the best nights of our lives. Ant and me had just ordered our steaks when disaster struck.

  I think it was me who went to the toilet first. I’d suddenly come over very queasy and, once I was in the restroom, which is American for toilet, I started throwing up. A lot. After about ten minutes of continuous vomiting, I pulled myself together and went back to the table, trying to convince myself I’d feel better soon.

  That was when I got up and ran to the toilet. I won’t go into graphic detail in case you’re reading this while you’re having your dinner, but I had a very upset stomach. After about ten minutes of continuous… well, l’m sure you can guess, I got back to the table, and everyone told me I’d gone white as a sheet. Well, everyone except Ant, who was on his way back to the toilet to throw up again.

  The two of us spent the next hour playing tag-team toilet. We were the only two who’d eaten eggs that morning, so we worked out we had food poisoning. Ali suggested we get back in the limo and go back to our hotel. All the hotels in Vegas have everything you can think of inside them, including chemists, so on the way to the car, Ali popped in and got us some Alka-Seltzer and a packet of chewable Pepto-Bismol.

  We were both feeling more sick with every passing minute. I popped the tablets into my mouth and began to chew. We made our way towards the exit, through the casino, past all the gaming tables. The sound of fruit machines filled the air, and it was like a monkey banging a pair of cymbals in my head. We quickened our pace, as the tablets hadn’t yet had the desired effect and were only succeeding in making me feel even more queasy.

  I got in the limo first, and was busy turning a lighter shade of green when I looked round to see Dec, bent over a bush, vomiting everywhere.

  And, of course, being Vegas, the bushes were plastic. Everything out there is fake, and I still hate to think of some poor sod having to wipe clean the shrubbery the next day. What made it worse was that because of the Pepto-Bismol tablets, my vomit was bright pink.

  Meanwhile, I’m in the limo with Ali, who started shouting, ‘Dec’s being sick! Dec’s being sick!’ All I could say was, ‘What do you expect me to do? I feel bad enough myself.’ The limo took us back to the Bellagio, which it managed without Dec turning the inside of it bright pink, and we both went to our rooms, determined to pull ourselves together and get back to our Vegas night-of-a-lifetime. We were in our rooms for the next twelve hours. The whole night, the only time I spent that wasn’t in the toilet or in bed was when I got up to read a text someone had sent. I crawled over to where my phone was and opened the message, which was from Darren. ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ I thought, ‘he’s texting to see how I feel.’ He wasn’t. His text simply read, ‘Can you believe it? I’ve just won $500 on roulette – whoopee!’ I think I threw up immediately.

  We got up the next morning, ready to fly back to LA. We were both on the mend by this point and whatever it was that had given us food poisoning was obviously well and truly out of our system and safely in a fake bush at the Hotel Wynn. As we came out of the lift, we met Paul, Darren and Ali in reception, which leads straight on to the hotel casino floor. Paul and Darren said, ‘You can’t come to Vegas and not gamble once.’ They gave us each a one-hundred-dollar chip and told us to stick it on the roulette table. We headed to the nearest table, where the croupier told us to place our bets. I put mine on red and Ant went for black – that way, we thought, we were bound to come away with something between us. The croupier spun the wheel, released the ball and, after what seemed like for ever, the ball hopped, skipped and jumped and finally came to rest.

  ‘Zero!’ the croupier shouted. We looked at the table – zero was neither red nor black. It was green. We both lost our one-hundred-dollar chips.

  It summed up the whole trip to Vegas – disastrous.

  We arrived back in LA, at the hotel where we’d stayed while filming Wanna Bet? We were determined to rest, recuperate and, most of all, avoid having eggs for breakfast. This hotel had the best maître d’ in Hollywo
od and, once he found out we were English and in TV, he always had some celebrity gossip to share with us. He would come up to us and say things like, ‘Michael Caine will be dining with us tonight, do you know him?’ ‘No, we don’t,’ we’d reply, much to his disappointment. ‘David and Victoria Beckham will be dining here this evening, do you know them?’ And, for once, we could say yes. They’re not our best friends or anything, we’d met them on a handful of occasions, but we weren’t going to hang around the restaurant hoping to catch a glimpse of them. Plus, we had dinner plans ourselves, so we went off for some food and, by the time we came back to the hotel, well, let’s just say we were a little the worse for wear. I decided to go to bed – I’m always sensible like that: I know when I’ve had my fill.

  He’s never sensible like that and he never knows when he’s had his fill but, for some reason, on this particular night, he retired early. I was in the bar with Ali, and on the way back from the toilet, I get accosted by our friend the maître d’. He tells me that David isn’t there, but Victoria is and ‘Would you like to come and say hello?’ I tried to tell him I didn’t want to disturb her, but he took me by the arm and walked me towards the restaurant. On the way, he says, ‘Eva is there – do you know Eva?’ Before I know what’s going on, I’m standing in front of Victoria Beckham, Eva Longoria and about four other stunning women, clearly on a girls’ night out. Suddenly, matey boy peels away and leaves me on my own. They all look up at me expectantly and I look back at them, drunkenly. In a flash, I decide the only way out of this potentially embarrassing situation is to be as loud and brash as I can.

  ‘Alreet?’ I say to Victoria. ‘Thish town issssn’t big enough for the both of ush!’

  I’m embarrassed just listening to this.

  To be fair to Victoria, she was lovely. She got up and was very nice and asked what I was doing there and how things were going, and we had a quick chat. I’d held it together, so I decided to get out of there and said my goodbyes. As I turned to leave, my foot struck something hard and metal, which clattered across the dining-room floor and came to rest in full view of everyone.

  ‘Hey, that’s her crutch,’ cried Victoria.

  I couldn’t believe it. One of Victoria’s friends had had a crutch leaning against her chair, and I’d sent it flying halfway across the restaurant. Embarrassed, I went over, picked it up and tried to re-balance it on the back of the chair. I don’t know if anyone reading this book has ever tried to balance a crutch on the back of a chair in front of Victoria Beckham and Eva Longoria after a few beers, but if you haven’t, then trust me, it’s not easy. Eventually I managed it, said my goodbyes – again – and left Victoria, Eva and the girls to it. I got back to the table where Ali and the rest of our little posse were sitting and told them about the whole incident. Straight away Ali pointed out that Dec was going to be devastated at missing an encounter like that – Eva Longoria is his ideal woman.

  I love that Desperate Housewife.

  Just then I got a text from Dec. ‘Has he heard Eva’s in the hotel?, I wondered. ‘Shall I go up and tell him the woman of his dreams is just a few floors away?’ All these thoughts instantly vanished from my head the moment I read the text, which simply said:

  ‘Ring home and tell Lisa to Sky-Plus Match of the Day.’

  Well, Newcastle had just beaten Bolton – and they don’t win very often these days.

  We enjoyed a lot of things about that trip to LA, but when the show finally went out, about a year later, it didn’t do as well as we’d hoped. It wasn’t in a great time slot and it got hardly any promotion on the channel. We went out there and promoted it ourselves but, without the channel behind it, it was always going to be fighting with one arm behind its back.

  On the plus side, I’ll be dining out on that Victoria Beckham and Eva Longoria story for the next five years.

  I still can’t believe I missed it.

  Don’t worry, I’m sure yours and Eva’s paths will cross one day.

  No, Match of the Day, I meant – you forgot to tell Lisa to Sky-Plus it. I still haven’t seen those goals.

  Chapter 41

  After we got back from LA, I laid the foundations for one of the biggest projects of my whole life – literally. I began to build a new house. The previous year, after their wedding, Ant and Lisa had moved to a bigger place, and not long afterwards, I decided the time had come for me to start looking for somewhere new. I wanted to stay in Chiswick and I found what I thought was the perfect spot. There was only one problem – it was three doors away from Ant and Lisa’s new house. People thought it was weird enough when we lived next to each other before, so for the two of them to move, and then for me to follow, well, I was convinced everyone would think it was doubly weird.

  My attitude was ‘Sod what everyone else thinks, I think it’s a great idea, but there’s one person we should ask first – Lisa.’ So Dec came round to mine to have a word with her. Once we were all sat in the front room, she looked at us both and, having seen that look on our faces a million times before, immediately enquired, ‘What? What have you two done now?’

  Silence.

  Finally I broke that silence. ‘Dec’s got something to ask you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I thought. ‘Leave it to me then.’

  ‘I’ve found a spot for my new house,’ I said, not quite telling the whole story.

  ‘Great!’ Lisa seemed to be genuinely happy for me.

  ‘Erm… It’s three doors away from your new house…’ ‘You are kidding…’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I piped up immediately, ‘I’m not going to buy it, people will think it’s weird.’

  ‘That’s a shame; I think it’s a great idea.’

  ‘Great! In that case I’ll buy it then! Can I borrow your tin opener?’

  The last bit isn’t true, but Lisa was completely fine about having a new neighbour – well new-ish – and it was exciting to think I’d be living close to my best friends again. When they moved the first time I had no one whose house I could just drop in to, and have a chat with, and more importantly, no one to remind me which night to put the bins out. Lisa really does look after me – and always has done. When Clare and me split up she was a great help and has been ever since, which has meant a lot. She’s brilliant with the little things too. For example, if one of our friends has a birthday, the two of us always have the same conversation:

  ‘Have you got a birthday card?’

  ‘Oh no, I’ve completely forgotten.’

  ‘Well, it’s a good job I’ve bought one for you then.’

  By the way, apologies to any of my friends who’ve just realized I don’t buy their birthday cards. It’s also quite common for Ant and me to be in the car, on the way home from work, and I’ll get a phone call. Ant hears me saying, ‘Pork chops?… Sounds great… Lovely – see you about six.’ I’ll then turn to Ant and let him know we’re having pork chops for tea. Lisa’s brilliant and I love her dearly and, if you don’t believe me, ask yourself this, if she wasn’t, would I let her off with calling me ‘Deccy Doolittle’ all the time? Exactly.

  Whilst we’re on the subject of embarrassing revelations, you’d think after Ant’s crutch-kicking antics in Los Angeles he might have learnt his lesson about being clumsy, but you’d be wrong. It almost ruined the next series of Saturday Night Takeaway. We were filming a pre-recorded feature called Beat the Boys, where we raced against other famous double acts – strangely Victoria Beckham and Eva Longoria didn’t respond to our invitation to appear – and, thanks to a self-inflicted injury, Ant put the whole shoot in jeopardy.

  I’ll pick up the story from here, shall I?

  Okay, but be careful you don’t drop it.

  We’d both been out playing five-a-side football and, when I got home, Lisa was in the middle of one of her cleaning sprees. I recognized the symptoms the moment I opened the front door – a strong smell of Mr Sheen, air freshener and Febreze and the sound of Lisa singing. It was about ten o’clock at night and I just wanted to h
ave a long soak and sort myself out for the following day’s filming. Lisa was in the study, all dusters and determination, so I popped in to say hello and give her a kiss. Fatal mistake. The moment I walked in, she asked – by which I mean told – me to give her a hand. She was eyeing a cabinet that’s home to – and there’s no easy way to say this without sounding like an egomaniac – my awards. Within seconds, Lisa had devised her strategy: I had to hold on to the awards while she dusted the cabinet. Even though I like to think of myself as a fairly decent goalkeeper, I made a schoolboy error and dropped one. On my bare foot. I was in agony and, when I looked down, I noticed there was blood pouring uncontrollably from my left foot. Lisa wanted to call the hospital, but I refused, it was only a silly little cut. I bandaged it up in what can only be described as a haphazard fashion – wrapping about ten Elastoplasts round it – and insisted I was fine. I was NOT, under any circumstances, going to the hospital.

  Five minutes later, after a futile attempt to stop the bleeding and all the Elastoplasts had fallen off, Lisa was driving me to the hospital.

  We arrived in A&E to find that it was, as you’d probably expect, packed. Is there ever a time when any A&E department anywhere isn’t packed? There was a stream of doctors and nurses passing by and people with a variety of injuries waiting to be seen. There was some bloke with a head wound, a kid who appeared to have swallowed a small toy and, my personal favourite, a drunk in the corner who kept slapping himself in the face. ‘Great,’ I thought, ‘first I maim my own foot and now I’m at the back of the queue behind slappy-face guy – could things get any worse?’ My early night before the next day’s big shoot was out the window and I still hadn’t had that bath. Eventually, my name was called and I hobbled up the corridor to see the doctor, Lisa by my side. The doctor drew the curtain, sat me on the edge of the bed and looked at his clipboard. ‘So, Mr McPartlin, what have we here? What exactly did you drop on your foot?’ Me and Lisa both answered his question at once: