Off-screen, everyone refers to Ant and Dec as ‘the boys’. It fits. Dressed in baseball caps and baggy trousers, rapping and dancing on their variety show Saturday Night Takeaway, they look more like teenagers than middle-aged men.
They’ve been professional ‘cheeky chappies’ for so long — right back to the late Eighties when they starred in the children’s soap Byker Grove — that we can’t imagine them growing up. Even though they’re now 37, they are eternal kids — and they know that’s their appeal.
But Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly were as surprised as anyone when their charity single Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble rocketed to the top of the charts on Sunday. With all the profits going to ChildLine, it has been selling around 20,000 copies a day.
Number
one: Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, better known as Ant and
Dec, show that nice guys do not finish last in show-businessEveryone knows them, even if many would never admit to watching the shows they host, which include I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and Britain’s Got Talent.
And so that viewers can tell them apart, they use a simple trick — Ant is always on the viewer’s left, and Dec on the right. Always.
Admittedly, not all of their series are hits — Red Or Black flopped badly and Push The Button turned out to be a forgettable update of The Generation Game.
Attempts to break America have also failed. Ant, in particular, is unhappy that some of the successful formats the duo have launched here have transferred to the States without them.
On
top: After reaching the top of the charts this weekend, the pair
tweeted 'O.M blummin' G! We're Number blummin' 1! Thank u! You're all
nuts but we love! Cheers! D #LetsGetReadyToRhumble'What’s fascinating is that Takeaway is hardly a trailblazing format — it’s fairly standard family telly along on the lines of Noel’s House Party. The element of alchemy comes in the sheer infectious energy of Ant & Dec, and it’s meant they’ve never had to be controversial or crude to keep their act fresh.
Unlike most TV personalities, they appear to understand that what they’re doing is not deep and meaningful. It’s called light entertainment for a reason, and it’s none the worse for that.
They recognise their limitations, too, and are never afraid to share a stage with other talents. In this sense, they’re mirroring Morecambe and Wise, who are often regarded as their role models.
Eric and Ernie — the greatest double act in British comedy — were always happy to bring in guests such as Glenda Jackson and Shirley Bassey, who loaded their shows with star presence.
Ant and Dec may not be quite in the same league but they do exactly the same. Last Saturday, they brought in Lewis Hamilton, Simon Cowell and the singer Michael Bublé.
The duo’s instincts to never hog the limelight or seem as though they believe their own publicity helps us to avoid overdosing. Unlike other stars who seem too ubiquitous — Stephen Fry is an obvious culprit — Ant and Dec know how much exposure is enough.
Old school: Cheeky chappies Ant and Dec as Pj and Duncan back in the days when they were ready to 'rhumble'Both Ant and Dec grew up in three-bedroom council houses in Newcastle. Dec was the youngest of seven children born to an Irish couple, Anne and Alphonsus. Five years younger than his nearest sibling, he was always the baby and centre of attention.
Money was tight: the four boys slept in one room, the three sisters shared another, and their parents had the third. Dec was soon supplementing the family income by performing jokes and dance routines at the Tyneside Irish Centre, which his parents ran, and going around afterwards collecting tips in an ashtray.
Ant had one sister, and lived opposite his mother’s parents. His parents separated when he was eight, and four years later he joined the cast of Byker Grove as the laddish PJ. Dec was already in the series, as the mischievous Duncan.
The producers immediately saw the potential of pairing them in comic storylines. But they didn’t become friends until a couple of years later, when Ant sent Dec a Christmas card with a PS: ‘Fancy going to the Newcastle-Swindon match on Boxing Day?’
‘Boxing Day 1990 was our first date,’ Ant jokes. ‘But there wasn’t a magical moment where Dec and me bonded and decided to spend the rest of our lives together.’
Two years later, they launched a pop career as PJ and Duncan, performing at under-18s discos. They reached No 9 in the single charts with Rhumble and No 5 in the album charts with Psyche but neither was a fan of their own music — Dec admits he prefers Sinatra to anything recorded in the past 50 years. They dropped the PJ and Duncan characters, and started presenting children’s programmes as themselves.
Like the reality shows and variety bills they host today, the Bafta- winning Ant & Dec Show on CBBC appealed to all ages. They make the sort of telly that grandmas can watch with grandchildren.
That gives Ant & Dec licence to mock other celebs, and even to put them through tortures in I’m A Celebrity. But they never come across as vindictive or spiteful.
Through all of this, their magic formula is to project a genuine friendship. They bicker but with affection; they tease, sulk and send each other up so naturally it feels as though they are simply extending their off-screen relationship in front of the cameras.
Winning:
The loveable pair have come a long way since PJ and Duncan and Byker
Grove and are two of the most popular television hosts in BritainBut they have resisted the temptation to cash in greedily like many contemporaries — by doing ads for loan firms or injury lawyers, for instance. And in 2010, when ITV’s finances were taking a battering, they accepted a reduction in salaries, rather than tout their services to the highest bidder.
They are, in short, professionals. As Dec once recalled: ‘We might have been kids but we were getting paid, and there was a word for what we were doing. It was called a job.’
A major difference in their lifestyles that could have pushed them apart — Ant is married while Dec is single — seems to have sealed the friendship. When Ant wed his long-term girlfriend Lisa Armstrong in 2005, Dec was best man.
Dec’s former girlfriend, TV presenter Georgie Thompson, says: ‘Lisa is such a strong character and she has to be. She has been the person who grounds them through it all. Dec is incredibly close to her — they are like brother and sister. And it’s a lovely relationship between the three of them — it works really well.’
The duo’s temperaments are different, too. Dec is confident and gregarious. Ant is more reserved, taking his time to size up people.
His reticence sometimes comes across as aloofness, which can cause problems: last year, while watching football in a pub, he was punched by a yob who had been taunting him. The incident echoed a similar assault 20 years ago, when a man walked up to him at a bar, insulted him then hit him in the face, blackening his eye.
Despite these differences, Ant and Dec are inseparable — they even live within a few doors of each other in West London — and in interviews they hint they’ve taken out £2 million life-insurance policies because the death of one would surely end the other’s career.
The money would be scant compensation, of course, and not just for their rumoured £6 million salaries at ITV. As Dec puts it: ‘Ours is a career built on a friendship, not a friendship built on a career.’
That can’t be faked. And as long as they make us believe we can share that bond, we’ll keep tuning in.