Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story Read online

  Okay, I’ll wait till you’re ready to talk about it. Typical.

  When I’d be waiting for Dec in town, people would come up and say, ‘You’re thingy from Byker Grove. You’re not filming now, are you?’, and I realized I could have a laugh with it, so I’d say, ‘Yeah, I am actually, could you keep walking?’, and they’d say, ‘Sorry, sorry,’ and walk off, ducking down to avoid this invisible camera. It meant no one ever stopped to talk to you.

  Well, not unless you had your pyjamas on…

  The worst kind of attention came from lads the same age as us. These lads often had a lovely way with language, calling you ‘poof’, ‘wanker’ and ‘tit’. You’d get it from lads in town, on the bus, or at the end of your street – they weren’t fussy.

  To be honest, I didn’t blame them, you’d have been the same. No thirteen-year-old is going to go up to a child actor, pat them on the back and say, ‘Well done, Declan, I really enjoyed your gritty portrayal of arcade addiction, darling!’

  As we got more and more airtime, we’d get recognized more often. It all became a bit like that bloke down my local supermarket who talks to the shopping trolleys – a bit weird and a bit scary.

  At first, just being looked at in the street felt a bit odd. It was all new to us – you don’t get lessons at school on how to react when you’re being stared at. Although, even if you did, we would have missed them, ’cos we’d have been busy at Byker Grove.

  It could be hard to deal with. Just stop for a moment and imagine what you were like at thirteen. If you were anything like most teenagers, you were probably awkward, self-conscious and uncomfortable – and that’s if you were one of the more well-adjusted kids. Most teenagers that age didn’t like their own family looking at them, never mind having their peers pointing and laughing at ‘that poof off the telly’.

  Of course, the staring did have one big advantage: girls. If girls were looking at you, you’d be thinking, ‘Wicked, I wonder if they fancy me?’, even though they were probably thinking, ‘Look, it’s that poof off the telly.’

  If it was lads doing the staring, you always thought the same thing – ‘Oh no, this could end up in a fight,’ and, as a child actor, fighting was never going to be one of your strengths.

  If those lads had wanted me to pretend to have a fight with them, great, I was their man – acting hard wouldn’t be a problem. But a real fight? No thank you. So you’d keep your head down and concentrate on playing the part of a terrified child actor who was determined to avoid a fight. Over the years, it was a role we both became very good at.

  Being recognized is a weird thing, though. Even now, when one of us is on our own, people say, ‘Look, it’s Ant and Dec,’ and you think, ‘Well, not really, it’s just me.’

  That’s a second lesson, if you do ever see us out and about. Just to refresh your memory: the first lesson was talk to me, not Ant, I’m better with new people. The second one is, don’t say, ‘Look, it’s Ant and Dec.’ I know you may not know which one’s which, but at least say, ‘Look, there’s one of Ant and Dec.’ It’ll make us really happy, and we’ll know you’ve read this book.

  At Byker Grove, Matthew made sure we had someone to turn to in case the weight of fame as an international celebrity on children’s telly became too much. The night before the first ever episode went out, he rang me up with a warning.

  He said now that I was on telly I was going to get a little bit of fame; he said it wouldn’t be easy and it was important to keep both feet on the ground. I immediately took my feet off the sofa and made sure both of them were firmly on the ground. Suddenly, my mind was racing – how would I keep both my feet on the ground when I went to bed? He was right: this wasn’t going to be easy.

  After Matthew had patiently explained the concept of metaphors, he told me I should get an agent. He sent me to see someone who he knew and trusted, Dave Holly. Dave was the biggest agent in the North-east and, over the years, he had looked after household names like Robson Green and Jimmy Nail.

  Dave worked out of a small office on the upper floors of the Tyne Theatre and Opera House. I remember going to see him for the first time. I clambered my way up several sets of stairs to his office, the walls of which were covered in black-and-white photos of various men and women. I was immediately curious – how did he find the time to be a theatrical agent and a keen amateur photographer? He later told me they were all his clients – the actors and actresses on his books.

  He was a big man with a neat swathe – I love that word – of black hair and the wheezy chuckle of a heavy smoker. He was a really lovely bloke. I signed a twelve-month contract with him and agreed that he would take 10 per cent of my earnings. That meant Dave’s income was due to shoot up by something in the region of £65 a year, although he did a very good job of hiding his excitement.

  Matthew had the same chat on the phone with me when I started – and I was very aware that nobody in my family had ever done anything like that before.

  Acting, I mean, not talking to people on the phone, they’d done plenty of that. An agent sounded like a good idea. I contacted Dave straight away, but I heard nothing until the end of the second series.

  I discovered much later on that he’d found my performance in my first episode ‘awful’. To Dave, clearly everything was black and white and, to be fair to him, I was quite awkward on screen to start with. By the end of the series, I’d improved enough for Dave to take me on and try and put me right where I belonged – on his wall, in a little picture frame.

  I think Byker Grove also gave us both a newfound sense of maturity – suddenly you had a job, and it wasn’t a paper round, so you had to take it seriously. No offence to any paperboys reading this: you guys do a great job.

  In fact, I was one of you for a while. In between Why Don’t You? and Byker Grove, I had a paper round. Like any out-of-work actor, I needed to make ends meet between gigs and, like any eleven-year-old, I needed money for sweets. I delivered for the corner shop at the top of my street, and worked every morning before and after school, for a whopping weekly wage of £6.10. I’m not embarrassed to admit I was the world’s worst paperboy. The shop would give you a laminated card that listed the houses you were delivering to, and the paper they wanted, and you had to check it every single morning, because people’s choices changed from day to day. The only trouble was I kept posting the laminated card through the letterboxes by accident, which meant I had to knock on the door, wake up the residents and sheepishly ask for it back. Needless to say, that career didn’t last long, and once I realized the paper round wasn’t going to work out, I knew I had to take acting seriously.

  As I say, we both treated acting like a job from the start – and our families were a huge part of this. When I started on the show, I sat down with my mam and dad and they said, ‘We’ll support you whatever you do but, ultimately, you’ve got to make your own decisions.’ They gave me a lot of responsibility, which I appreciated and took seriously. We were both treated like adults at an early age, but in very different ways.

  My mam had two jobs, so if she was still at work, I would make dinner for Sarha, tidy up, or just generally help around the house. I had responsibilities at home from very early on, and that meant I was mature enough to try and deal with all the changes that came with being in Byker Grove. It also meant I did a mean Spaghetti Bolognese…

  He still does.

  More of my culinary adventures – and Dec’s inability to cook even beans on toast – later in the book.

  That’s some tease, isn’t it? Go on, admit it, you’re thinking, ‘Beans on toast? I can’t wait for that story.’

  Well, you’ll have to wait; we’re on Byker Grove for now. We both relished our newfound responsibilities, but also managed to have a laugh. One of the best things about being in the cast was the premieres; they were a celebration of finishing another series and months of hard work. The producers would put on a screening at the Civic Centre in Newcastle for the cast and crew, then we’d all have a bi
t of a ‘do’ afterwards. Imagine a Leicester Square film premiere – the red carpet, the press, the glamour. Now imagine the opposite of that, and you’ve got our premieres.

  They were great nights. All the girls would put on make-up, get their hair done and stick some high heels on, and the lads, well, it would always be the same – go to town, buy a new shirt from Topman and then cover yourself with aftershave, even though you hadn’t started shaving yet. They should call it ‘Before Shave’.

  Matthew would say a few words before they showed the first episode, and then we’d sit back and watch ourselves on the big screen. I never liked watching myself in Byker Grove, though, and for my first few episodes, I think most of the viewers felt the same. I was never a big one for making the family watch it at home either.

  Me neither.

  The novelty of one of the family being on telly wore off pretty quickly anyway. People had lives to lead – my mam had to go to work, and Sarha had friends to play with and homework to do. My sister was a really dedicated student, especially on Tuesdays, at 5.05 – she’d always make sure she did her homework then, which, coincidentally, was exactly when Byker Grove was on.

  My mam was the same – the minute Byker Grove started she’d go and put the dinner on – you could set your watch by her.

  Chapter 4

  Inevitably, we grew close to our fellow actors, and a lot of the cast formed relationships. At that age, there are a lot of hormones flying around, so there’d always be someone who was constantly giggling, flirting and fluttering their eyelashes. And it was usually Ant.

  All in all, there were quite a lot of intercast shenanigans. I’m sure it’s the same on most soaps. Matthew told us that Ethel’s little Willy had an affair with Den and Angie’s Roly once…

  I went out with Jill Halfpenny, who played Nicola Dobson. Jill later went to be on EastEnders, Coronation Street and Strictly Come Dancing. Even on Byker Grove it was clear to everyone that she was a very good actress. For a start, she convinced people she found me attractive, which is still probably the most impressive performance of her career.

  Jill and I fancied each other from the moment we met, but I was rubbish at reading the signs. You know what you’re like at that age – terrible at picking up on those subtle hints, such as, ‘Ant, Jill fancies you.’ She once asked me what I was doing on Saturday; I told her I was going to see Newcastle play Grimsby.

  She said she’d love to come, and if you knew how bad Newcastle were back then, well, you’d know that she either fancied me or had a screw loose – some people would say they go hand in hand. I still didn’t quite get it.

  We were a couple for exactly a week – and we spent the most of that week talking on the phone but not seeing each other, even though we were officially ‘seeing each other’. At the end of that week, we went on our only real date – to see Dances With Wolves. Even when I see Jill now, she swears it was The Commitments, but I know it was Dances With Wolves and, trust me, a three-hour western is not the ideal film for a first date – not unless you’re taking a cowgirl to the cinema. If you’re reading this and you’ve got a first date coming up, do not, I repeat, do not go and see Dances With Wolves. You’d probably have trouble finding a cinema showing a western from 1990 anyway but, if you do, avoid it like the plague.

  While we’re on the subject, I’ve got a few bones to pick with Kevin Costner – no one, not one person, danced with a wolf in that film; it should have been called ‘Riding On Horses’, but I’m getting sidetracked. After the film, we had a little kiss at the metro station and, the next day, Jill rang me and said she didn’t think it was going anywhere, and that spelt the end of our week-long, one-date whirlwind romance. I don’t know if it was my fault, or if Costner was to blame but, at the time, I was gutted. Jill was very mature about it, though. We had to work together the next week, and it could have been awkward, but she made it easy, and I got over the whole thing fairly quickly.

  Within a few months I was going out with Jill’s onscreen younger sister. Her character name was Debbie, and she was played by Nicola Bell.

  It sounds like something from Jeremy Kyle, doesn’t it? ‘Help! I can’t stop dating sisters from Byker Grove.’

  Apparently, according to the cast gossip, or Dec, as it was otherwise known, Nicola had fancied me for a while. We got talking at a party one night, and Nicola looked really pretty, and I think that was when we had our first kiss. Miraculously, unlike the previous effort, the kiss didn’t lead to me being dumped the next day. Nicola was my first love, and our relationship really blossomed, helped by the fact we didn’t see a single Kevin bloody Costner film the whole time we were together. It was great having a romance with someone you saw on set every day – and Nicola was certainly a lot better looking than Keith the cameraman, who was lovely, but just not my type.

  It was going really well, and everyone was really happy for us – until our characters started going out with each other on the show. And then the unthinkable happened – there was a scene where we had to kiss. I know what you’re thinking ‘Kiss your own girlfriend? What next, wear your own clothes? Eat your own lunch?’

  The whole thing was hilarious…

  You might think I’m overreacting, but stop for a moment and imagine yourself as a teenager kissing your first boyfriend or girlfriend, and then imagine that being televised. See? I had sleepless nights for weeks before we filmed it. I was worried people would question my technique, or that they would tease me.

  When the day came, the cast and crew ribbed us all morning. It was the last thing to be filmed before lunch. I assume that, if it was done after lunch, they were worried about people being sick. We both anxiously sat on set, cringing whenever the director called out ‘Action!’ When he finally did, the kiss was fine. We had to do a couple of takes, though, and each time the director yelled ‘Cut!’, we immediately stopped kissing and giggled nervously, which was daft, considering we were going out with each other anyway. Like so many things in life, the anticipation was much worse than the event itself.

  Ant’s first date may have been Dances With Wolves, but I went for something a bit shorter that was horse-less and wolf-less. It was Three Men and a Little Lady, the disappointing sequel to Three Men and a Baby. My companion was a girl called Lynne. I’d met Lynne a few years earlier, at primary school. She was in the year above and widely regarded to be ‘the best-looking girl in the school’, and I can still remember asking her out. I got her phone number, rang her up, and after mumbling, ‘Is Lynne there?’ to her mam, she came on the phone.

  ‘Hi, Lynne, it’s Dec. Would you like to go to the pictures?’

  ‘Yeah, okay then.’

  ‘Great, ’bye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  I put the phone down and punched the air with delight. I was over the moon, and then, after a couple of seconds, realized I hadn’t made any arrangements – I suppose I’ve never been any good at the finer details in life. I rang her back, and we agreed we’d go on Saturday. She was my first proper girlfriend, and we went out for a couple of months. I’d go round when she was babysitting her nieces, and we’d watch videos like Ghost and Dirty Dancing. Basically, if it had Patrick Swayze in, we watched it. I don’t really remember how our relationship finished – maybe there weren’t any Swayze films left to see, and the magic just went.

  After my romance with Lynne, I looked further afield for love, unlike Ant. I wasn’t the kind of bloke who was happy to go out with someone just because they were in Byker Grove, I had my eyes on bigger things – Grange Hill. In 1990, on my second year on Byker Grove, the cast of the two biggest children’s dramas… on a weekday… afternoon… on BBC1 went head to head in a charity football match in Newcastle for Children in Need. I noticed a girl who I had only ever seen on the telly, and I tried to impress her with my dribbling. I quickly realized that it wasn’t working, so I wiped my chin and played football instead. That girl was Clare Buckfield, who played Natasha Stevens in Grange Hill, and I fancied her at first sight –
I’m a real romantic like that, I’ve always believed in fancying at first sight.

  Understandably, she didn’t really take any notice of me but, the following year, we went down to London for the return fixture of Byker Grove versus Grange Hill. After the game, we all went to the bar together, and the two of us got chatting. She said all the right things – ‘How’s the arcade-game addiction? When are you next on pirate radio?’, that kind of stuff – and we hit it off straight away. We all went on to another pub, and John Jefferson, who played Fraser, chatted up Clare’s sister, Julie, and in the process got her address. That’s right, not her phone number, her address. When the time came to leave, Clare told me to get her address from John, and that was how we stayed in touch. The telephone had been invented, I hasten to add, it was just addresses that were given out that night. Don’t ask me why.

  I got home the next day, and decided to write Clare a letter. The only paper I had was Byker Grove notepaper, so I wrote it on that – classy or what? I can’t remember what I said in that letter, but after an agonizing two-day wait, she wrote back to me – I don’t think it was on Grange Hill-headed note-paper, but I didn’t mind too much. In the letter, Clare gave me her phone number, so we could stop acting like it was the 1920s and have an actual conversation, and that was the start of our relationship. We’d visit each other whenever we could – she’d come up on the coach with her sister, or I’d go down to London, and every day we’d write to each other. I’d spray my aftershave on the letters I sent, and she’d spray her perfume. It cost me a fortune in fragrance and stamps, but it was worth every penny. It all felt so romantic, and I was happy as Larry, whoever that Larry bloke is.