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Title: POPULAR IDOLS Subheading: Some people say Ant and Dec are bland. Their 16 million viewers might beg to differ. By Andrew Duncan. Main photograph by James Stenson

Title: POPULAR IDOLS Subheading: Some people say Ant and Dec are bland. Their 16 million viewers might beg to differ. By Andrew Duncan. Main photograph by James Stenson

ENTERTAINMENT Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway Saturdays ITV1

Main body: (Page 1) Their names trip off the tongue with the cosy familiarity of seaside confectionery: Ant and Dec; skittish, ubiquitous and easily digested, although leaving a queasy aftertaste in a minority who perceive their three top-rated programmes – Pop Idol, I’m a Celebrity… Get Me out of Here! and Saturday Night Takeaway, which returns this week – as the ultimate in tacky, dumbed-down TV. Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, both 28, bubble with wholesome enthusiasm. They’ve supped from the poisoned chalice of Saturday-night TV and emerged triumphant, laden with awards. But are they too anodyne to be true? “After this interview we’re going to the pub to get rat-arsed,” says Ant, while Dec chuckles behind him. “People say I’m normal – I take that as a compliment.”

They sit together as they appear on TV: Ant on the left facing you, Dec to the right. Ant says: “It helps viewers recognise us. It’s weird to realise that 70 percent don’t know which is which. Maybe no one cares. Fair enough.” Indeed, they seem interchangeable – the same Geordie accent, bright eyes, sense of fun – with none of the obvious differences (straight man and joker; light and dark) of most double acts, from Morecambe and Wise to Lennon and McCartney. As individual performers it’s doubtful that they would have been such a success, but together they make a formidable team: sweet, approachable, eager to please. They live two doors from each other in a west London mews and seem to never have had a cross word in their lives. Heavens, they’ve even just started playing golf together. “That fad won’t last,” says Ant. “We’re rubbish. When you have cash you buy all the best gear and turn up looking like a high-priced fool.”

There’s been very little scandal surrounding them – last year Dec “romanced” a six-foot lap-dancer (“He was a tiger in bed,” she said) after a dissolute night out, and is now single after a long relationship with an actress, Clare Buckfield. Ant has lived with singer Lisa Armstrong since he was 18: “We’ve talked about marrying and always said we will – one day.” Any differences are subtle. Dec is slightly smaller, and more easy-going. Ant takes longer to warm up. When they met in April 1990, on the set of the children’s TV soap Byker Grove, in which they played PJ (Ant) and (Page 2) Duncan (Dec), Dec says he looked at Ant, who was sitting with his head in his hands, and thought, “Miserable sod.”

Pop out info box on page 2: Title: GROWING UP IN PUBLIC

Subheading: How two likely lads became our most-watched TV presenters

GROOVY GROVERS Kids loved Byker Grove’s PJ and Duncan, and even sent them into pop charts. Yeah, thanks!

(This box features 4 pictures with captioning underneath. Captions listed as follows: top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right)

TAKE OFF SM:TV Live became must-see TV for adults as well as children. Beats shopping!

GETTING IN TUNE Ant and Dec were Messrs Nice to Simon Cowell’s Mr Nasty on Pop Idol

PRICES, SURPRISES, DISGUISES Yes, Saturday Night Takeaway is the Noel’s House Party de nos jours

THE BUG TIME The lads, not the creepy-crawlies, made I’m a Celebrity unmissable for 16 million

Main body (cont.)

“Nothing much has changed,” says Ant. “I was scared, although I’m accused of being miserable a lot of the time. I’m nervous and quite shy.” Dec adds: “It’s nice to hide behind this persona of the TV presenter, which is an exaggerated version of your real personality. Ant still makes me laugh every day. At work you can develop a siege mentality and sometimes think it’s us against the world, so we have to trust each other. It’s fraud when double acts pretend to be friends on telly but really don’t get on.”

Saturday Night Takeaway is a live mix of stunts, surprises and outside broadcasts, with a raucous studio audience who compete for prizes by answering indecently easy questions. Last year it attracted eight million viewers a week. “We felt really nervous about starting it,” says Dec. “We were on a hiding to nothing. Variety was a dirty word and viewers had stopped watching TV on a Saturday night. To go from there to picking up a National Television Award last year for most popular entertainment presenters was quite a journey.”

They take criticism in their stride. “You can sneer and say we’re dumbing down,” says Ant. “I don’t agree. There’s snobbery about a lot of people enjoying the same thing on a Saturday night and there shouldn’t be. Our show brings the family together after tea, when Dad’s home from a match and Mam’s done the shopping.” “It’s not cool to be popular,” adds Dec. “But who wants to be cool? I’d prefer to be popular and watched by millions rather than a select few who ‘get’ it. I’ve never regarded myself as cool.” “God, no,” Ant echoes. “I don’t worry if people say we’re bland and unthreatening, but if we enjoy something risqué we’ll go with it because you have to keep challenging yourself as a performer. We try to push the boundaries a bit because that makes exciting telly, but we never intentionally set out to offend or be rude that early on a Saturday night. If we didn’t understand and respect family values we’d perform late-night on a smaller station and amuse ourselves by being very blue for an hour.”

Another of their popular shows, Pop Idol, has, like Fame Academy, been accused of celebrating mediocrity. “Why shouldn’t you celebrate mediocrity?” asks Ant, perhaps ironically. Dec adds: “It’s nothing that hasn’t been done before with Opportunity Knocks and New Faces. It’s a talent show, that’s all. You can’t become over-analytical.”

Family-oriented television is what they’ve always aspired to. “As a little boy I’d get up in the morning and run downstairs to watch Noel Edmonds on Swap Shop, says Dec. “These people who call themselves critics – did they say ‘Mummy, when I grow up I want to criticise what everyone else does’? That’s not an ambition.” Noel Edmonds has noted that they’ve “adapted” many of his ideas. Dec smiles. “Bless him,” he smiles wryly. “We’re doing telly for the next generation.” Ant adds: “You draw from your influences.”

Despite the actors’ initial lack of mutual appreciation on the set of Byker Grove, their two characters became friends. “We were forced to hang out together,” says Dec. “and we realised we liked similar telly and music, lived ten minutes apart [in Fenham, Newcastle], and had the same working-class background. [Dec’s dad is a plumber and he’s the youngest of seven; Ant’s father ran a pub, and he’s the oldest of three.] Then we started supporting Newcastle United together.”

Highlighted quote in paragraph above: “Who wants to be cool? I’d prefer to be popular” – Dec

Main body (cont.)

They have knocked down almost impenetrable barriers: first by transforming themselves from child actors to pop stars. They had ten top-20 hits – initially as PJ and Duncan, later simply as Ant and Dec – and recorded the farcically bad We’re on the Ball for the 2002 England World Cup squad. “We were offered a record contract, but we had no aspirations to be singer-songwriters,” says Ant. “We enjoyed ourselves, fulfilled a three-album deal and then thought, ‘Hang on, they’re going to find us out if we continue.’ Have you heard some of our records?” He looks horrified. “To be honest, there wasn’t much money in it at our level.”

Their next TV manifestation was on the BBC in 1995 with The Ant and Dec Show, where one highlight was “Beat the Barber”, in which a child’s head was shaved if they gave wrong answers to questions. “Certain producers wanted to tone it down for a third series,” recalls Ant. “We thought there was no point in taking a step back, or censoring ourselves, so we parted company.” Then Channel 4 commissioned one series of Ant and Dec Unzipped before ITV took them on as hosts for the Saturday-morning children’s show SM:TV Live in 1998. It became the Swap Shop of its day, beating BBC1’s Live and Kicking into second place in the ratings. From there, they made the difficult transition to mainstream programmes and now have a wide audience ranging from kids to grannies, culminating in the huge success of the last I’m a Celebrity series, which attracted up to 16 million viewers.

“In America the presenters play it straight – it’s very gung-ho, and the (Page 3) fittest wins. It doesn’t work so well,” says Ant. “Ours started with the idea of filming a documentary style, taking it seriously, with psychologists, but it evolved. You have to take the piss out of the fact that ten celebrities are stuck in the jungle doing ridiculous things to earn food for the rest of the camp. In the first series the Bushtucker Trials weren’t that gruesome, but they’ve grown in awfulness and disgusting-ness. We love the show dearly but aren’t afraid to take the Mick at any given opportunity.”

Highlighted quote in paragraph above: “We have a lot of fun and love going to work. It’s as simple as that” – Ant

Main body (cont.) “You can’t take it seriously and believe it’s an acute social experiment, because it’s not,” says Dec. “It’s ludicrous, an entertainment. Snobs say they won’t watch because they assume it’s rubbish. Well, 16 million viewers can’t be wrong. A few years ago, we laughed at the Japanese making similar shows, and thought we’d never do it. The levels of what we tolerate on telly have changed very rapidly. The question is, where do we go from here? I don’t know. I admire contestants for having the balls to do it. Neither of us would.”

In the future, they’d like to return to acting, undeterred by the poor reception for their 2002 “tribute” to The Likely Lads, where they remade the classic episode No Hiding Place. “Sitcom has always intrigued us,” says Ant. “But it’s hard to get right. We wouldn’t assume that because we’re Ant and Dec we’d come up with a hit. But, like Saturday Night Takeaway, we wouldn’t be put off because people say it’s another poisoned chalice. People in this business can be cynical, but for God’s sake, we have three of the biggest formats on ITV and viewers enjoy what we do. We’ve had ups and downs, so we appreciate the good times. We have a lot of fun and love going to work. It’s simple as that.” And with that. It’s off to the pub.

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