Ooh! What a Lovely Pair Our Story (14 page)

At least there were two of us – we only had
half the humiliation, half the embarrassment and half of Truck Fest growling at us – and we were best mates so, whatever happened, we would eventually try and have a laugh about it. The fact that we’ve both been through all this bizarre stuff together still makes everything easier today.

Whether it was to do with music or TV shows, we’ve never had to make decisions on our own, because we’ve always been each other’s second opinion. When it came to music, we never took the whole thing, or ourselves, too seriously. We never actually believed we were pop stars, and we always did everything with a wink. Well, not everything – you couldn’t spend your life winking all the time, people would think you were a right winker. There was just such a big gap between PJ and Duncan, the clean-cut, lovable boys next door, and Ant and Dec, who went back to the hotel every night and drank pints. Ant even smoked tabs. We were leading a double life: squeaky-clean pop stars by day and normal nineteen-year-old lads by night. It wasn’t exactly Clark Kent and Super-man, but it did feel like we were still playing characters, rather than truly being ourselves.

Throughout our time as PJ and Duncan, we always had an eye on the door. To survive in pop, you need a great songwriter in the band – and if there was one thing we didn’t have, it was a great songwriter in the band. And there were always elements we didn’t enjoy – the music itself wasn’t exactly to our taste and it could be a strain constantly pretending to be something you weren’t.

Still, we were determined to have as much fun as we could while it lasted, and on 7 November we released
Psyche
. At least, that’s when I’m told we released it, we were so busy there was no time for a big showbiz launch party, or even a small showbiz launch party, we just kept promoting and performing. We also released two more singles, ‘If I Give You My Number’ and ‘Eternal Love’, and announced our first headline tour of theatre venues around Britain. The press releases were despatched, the TV and radio shows were informed and the teddy-bear and rose suppliers were put on red alert.

Going on tour, our own tour, was a real thrill. We had a support band, which for them must have ranked as one of the lowest gigs on the musical ladder. I bet they’d rather have been headlining Truck Fest. They were an American boy band, and they’d go on half an hour before us to warm up the crowd, which wasn’t an easy job – most of the audience had come straight out without any tea and had to be up for school in the morning. On the first night, our new tour manager John McMahon came to find us so they could show us what these crazy American kids were doing on stage. There were five of them, and they employed a trick used by a lot of boy bands at the time: they’d pull a girl out of the crowd, bring her up on the stage and then sing to her. It was corny, it was slushy and it took cheesy to a whole new level. These jokers made us two look like Oasis.

They had a table on stage with a checked tablecloth and a red rose in a vase on it, and the lucky girl would sit down while one of the band sat opposite her and the other four posed as waiters. The whole thing was very unrealistic. For a start, most restaurants only give you one waiter at a time, and there wasn’t even any food on the table. The service was terrible. They were all singing a cappella to her, and we were watching from the side of the stage, laughing our heads off. This was the most clichéd, hammy rubbish we’d ever seen. Someone needed to tell these flash Yanks that this stuff was too cheesy for a UK audience. It was embarrassing and, if their little boy band didn’t buck its ideas up, it’d be going nowhere fast.

That ‘little boy band’ was called The Backstreet Boys.

They’ve sold over 100 million records.

They are the biggest-selling boy band of all time.

And you wonder why we ended up on telly?

Chapter 12

It was towards the end of 1994 that I met the love of my life, Lisa Armstrong. Meeting Lisa changed everything, and was the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me (I hope you’re reading this, pet). We met in the most romantic of circumstances – the
Smash Hits
Poll Winners Party Tour. Lisa was in a two boys, two girls band called Deuce, who were on the tour with me and Dec. We got talking, and I was attracted to her immediately. She was beautiful, she had a great sense of fun, and she was different from any girl I’d ever met (I hope you’re still reading, pet). I remember one late-night game of pool on the Isle of Wight being the moment I knew she was the girl for me. It was nothing to do with pool, that was just the moment I remember falling for her. Although, in case you’re wondering, yes, I did let her win (I hope you’re not still reading this, pet). We swapped numbers and, after the tour was finished, we’d spend hours on the phone talking about love, life and the best way to pot the black if you were snookered.

After a while Lisa would come to our PJ and Duncan gigs – that’s how nice she was – and she’d get the kind of abuse any boy-band member’s girlfriend faced from teenage fans. She handled it brilliantly and, being in a band herself, she knew that kind of thing came with the territory. Deuce released one album before going their separate ways. Lisa always says Steps came along and stole their thunder, but thank god Deuce did that album – I never would have met Lisa without them, and she’s been by my side for the last fifteen years.

And they make a beautiful couple. Not as beautiful a couple as
me
and Ant, mind, but beautiful nonetheless.

By December 1994, after a year of working non-stop and trying to get our music careers off the ground, we only had one thing on our minds, and that was Christmas at home. We’d spent the last few months of the year looking forward to it, like a couple of kids looking forward to Christmas. Apart from the occasional weekend or a night here and there, we hadn’t been back to Newcastle all year. We’d been far too busy seeing the world – the world of under-18s discos and single rooms at the Travelodge. We couldn’t wait to enjoy the peace and tranquillity of home, a place where we wouldn’t be bothered and where we were safe from the outside world. Basically, we saw Newcastle as a giant version of The Prev.

What we didn’t know was that everything had changed for us at home. Don’t get me wrong, our bedrooms hadn’t been rented out or anything, but things were definitely different. Local fans had found out where our houses were, and they decided to celebrate that fact by standing outside them morning, noon and night. And these girls were tough. They stood there for weeks on end, despite the fact that December in Newcastle is what a weatherman would call ‘absolutely bloody freezing’. They didn’t care about that, though; nothing could cure their adolescent obsession with staring at the front door of PJ or Duncan’s house. You were always caught in two minds about fans like that. On the one hand, they were the whole reason you sold records and had a career; on the other, when they were in your garden or sticking their noses to the kitchen window, it felt like a bit of an invasion. The best approach was to go out, sign some autographs, pose for a few pictures and hope that a trade-off like that would be enough for them to – how can I put it? – Go Away.

It wasn’t always that simple, though. There was one day during that Christmas holiday when my mam took pity on a couple of the fans. I came home one afternoon, walked into the kitchen and found two girls, who both let out huge screams when they saw me. I thought I’d walked into the wrong house at first, then my mam explained. She’d seen the girls freezing outside and invited them in for a cup of tea and some quality time in the McPartlin kitchen. It was an act of great compassion and generosity, which was to be applauded. Although obviously not by me – she’d left me alone with two of Newcastle’s biggest PJ fans. I stood in the kitchen with them
for the longest twenty minutes of my life. They spent the whole time in complete silence, which seemed strange, considering the talent they’d previously displayed for making noise. I stood there trying to make small talk about digestives, and they just carried on staring at me. The whole thing was very awkward, I couldn’t stand the heat but, unfortunately, I couldn’t get out of the kitchen.

That Christmas was hard work. Everyone would be asking me about where I’d been and what I’d been doing and, to be honest, it was the last thing on earth I wanted to talk about. I was wanting a nice, relaxing Christmas. Frankly, I was sick to the back teeth of PJ and bloody Duncan.

Going back to see my old mates felt different too. The first time I met up with Ginger, Boppa, Athey and Goody
that Christmas, it took most of the night to get up to speed about what they were doing. They’d ask about
Top of the Pops
and, to their credit, they managed to keep a straight face but, generally, I tried not to go on about life in the Top-65 fast lane too much. I was especially keen not to tell them about being second on the bill to a herd of cows and getting spat at by the teenage boys of Great Britain. Partly because I didn’t want to sound like I was bragging, and partly ’cos there was nothing to brag about. After all, I wasn’t head over heels in love with every single part of pop-star life.

And, in the pub, you just couldn’t win. Either you got a round in and everyone accused you of being a Flash Harry, or you tried to just pay your fair share and they’d think you were being tight. When you’re in your late teens, everyone’s life changes pretty drastically – people get jobs, go to university or appear on
Top of the Pops
in large orange shirts. In Newcastle, I’d always just been ‘Fonsey and Anne’s youngest’, just another one of the Donnellys, but now it seemed like people were looking at me differently, which is quite a disconcerting thing to happen. Suddenly nothing seems to be how it was, and when everything changes it can leave you a little disorientated and unsure of where to turn.

One day of that Christmas holiday really stands out, because I was the victim of a heinous crime. I was at home, and my mam had just finished what is technically known as ‘a big wash’. I came downstairs and, as I walked past the windows, I heard the by now familiar sound of the fans outside screaming – it always sounded like someone was showing horror films in our front garden. Walking into the kitchen, where most of the washing was drying, I suddenly saw this hand shoot in through the open window and grab a pair of my boxer shorts. My immediate reaction was ‘That’s burglary, I should call 999,’ then I began to imagine the scene if the police were called out to investigate The Great Boxer-short Mystery of ’94 and decided there was probably no point calling them. I always assumed it was one of the female fans whodunnit. She might even have been one of the girls who’d thrown bras and knickers at us on stage, but if she was trying to start some sort of underwear-exchange system, this wasn’t the way to go about it.

I managed to keep all my underwear, but I did have my own problems at home. Problems with, of all things, the telephone. My mam and dad were still in the phone book, so anyone could get our number – it was 0191 272 4321, in case you’re interested. Fans would find the number, then ring the house and ask to speak to me. You’d think that sort of thing could be slightly irritating, but you’d be wrong. It was infuriating. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that, on Christmas Day 1994, the phone rang solidly for fourteen hours. We got through the presents, breakfast, Christmas dinner and the Queen’s Speech, all to the sound of the phone ringing. We had relatives trying to phone and wish us Happy Christmas, and they couldn’t get through. The fans would just ring and say ‘Is Declan there?’, and I’d hang up, but before I could sit down, it would ring again. And again. And again. It never stopped, but my parents wanted to keep their number, because it ended in 4321, and they liked that set of numbers (at the time they were also huge fans of the chocolate bar 5-4-3-2-1 – they love a set of descending digits, my mam and dad). Only a month earlier, PJ and Duncan had released ‘If I Give You My Number’, and people were taking it a bit too literally for my liking. I was keen to record a Christmas single called ‘Please Stop Ringing My House, The Turkey’s Getting Cold’, but no one at the record company seemed very interested.

1994 became 1995, as you might expect, in early January, and that was when we got a call from Dave Holly. He had some amazing news.
Psyche
had gone platinum. It had peaked at number five in the album charts and had now sold 500,000 copies. We were stunned, it felt like a real achievement. I think the Christmas-present market probably accounted for a lot of that – at the time, we were told that an estimated 300,000 people had been given
Psyche
as a gift.

I think most of them rang my house on Christmas Day to tell me about it.

To celebrate this, we’d been booked to go on
Top of the Pops
’ special show on 5 January. We were due to perform heart-rending ballad and Truck Fest favourite ‘Eternal Love’, but it meant our Christmas was cut short. We had to leave for London immediately. In the space of a few days, I’d lost the rest of my precious holiday
and
a pair of boxer shorts. 1995 had not started well.

By February, we’d released our sixth – yes,
sixth
– and final single from
Psyche
, ‘Our Radio Rocks’, and, if you thought a platinum album and a second appearance on
Top of the Pops
was exciting, what happened next was probably the single biggest achievement of our music career. The record company tipped us off about what was one of the freakiest occurrences in the history of British pop music – PJ and Duncan had been nominated for a BRIT Award. I couldn’t have been more surprised if we’d made the shortlist for Rear of the Year. We were nominated in the category of Best Newcomer, and we just couldn’t believe it. Clearly the record industry was starting to take notice of
Psyche
’s success, and the fact that we were shortlisted for a BRIT award was a fantastic accolade.