Ooh! What a Lovely Pair Our Story (44 page)

You might want to rephrase that.

Right, yeah, I meant the length of the chewing, not the length of the actual penis. Anyway, hats off to Matt Willis – he ate that kangaroo’s anus and he won the show.

That’s what I love about writing this book – it shows that we’re not just performers, we’re intellectuals too.

If we thought that, after watching the bass player from Busted chew a kangaroo’s anus, our job couldn’t get any stranger, we were wrong. For most of the previous year, we’d been talking on and off to Simon Cowell’s production company, Syco TV, about a new show called
Britain’s Got Talent.
We’d been sent tapes of the US version, which we both really enjoyed, but we thought the host’s role wasn’t as clearly defined as it could be. After much to-ing and fro-ing, we agreed to host the show on two conditions: (1) there was a clear role for us two and (2) Simon Cowell was one of the judges. We thought that, five years after
Pop Idol
had finished, people would be interested in seeing the three of us on screen together again. Even though we love poking fun at him, we respect Simon a lot and enjoy working with him enormously.

After a while, we all came to an agreement and, before we knew it, we were back on the road, and ready for the most important part of any talent show – the auditions.

Piers Morgan had signed up to join Simon on the judging panel, and the third judge, a female, was still to be confirmed. The producers were confident it would be Cheryl Cole but, for one reason or another, Cheryl never became a
Britain’s Got Talent
judge and the job instead went to Amanda Holden. Initially, what really appealed to us about the show was the fact that anybody of any age and any talent could enter, and the uniqueness of the prize – a spot on the bill at the Royal Variety Performance.

When it came to the auditions, we were very conscious of making sure our own role on the show was clear. As well as doing links and interviewing the acts, our most important role was, again, to stand at the side of the stage, watching the auditions. As with
I’m a Celebrity…
, our job was to be the voice of the audience – and, of course, to laugh at people when they did stupid things. What can I say? We have a gift. We found that, as we travelled round the country, the audience reactions differed a lot. The further north you go, the more vicious the crowds get. Cardiff can be quite sedate, London’s not too bad but, by the time you get to Glasgow, the acts have got about ten seconds to impress before the crowds starts chanting ‘Cheerio, cheerio, cheerio’ in a thick Scottish accent. Forget Cowell and Morgan – the nastiest judges are always the ones sitting in the audience.

I dread to think how us two would have fared as teenagers auditioning for the show. If I’d come out with a cabbage on a dog lead while Dec was reciting ‘There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Kathmandu’ it would have been three buzzes in quick succession, a series of no’s from the judges and all sorts of abuse from the audience. I take my hat off to each and every single act who has the bottle to give it a go, or at least I would do, if I wore hats.

It’s not always easy to look at an act and tell if they’re any good or not. The winner of the first series was mobile-phone salesman turned opera singer Paul Potts, and he didn’t exactly scream star quality. When he went on stage, there was an audible groan from the audience. And, I must confess, from the wings.

We’d interviewed Paul before he went on, and he didn’t give us much – it was mainly yes or no answers, and he wasn’t exactly overflowing with funny anecdotes about the Carphone Warehouse. So when he shuffled apologetically on to the stage and said he was going to sing opera, we both had exactly the same thought: ‘Let’s go and grab a sandwich.’ We weaved our way through the dark and dusty corridors of the theatre, got to our dressing room, sat down, tucked in, and then heard this sound coming over the Tannoy: it was Paul, and he had the most incredible voice you’ve ever heard. Being as professional as ever, we did the sensible thing – stuffed down the rest of the tuna baguette and legged it back to the side of the stage. We caught Paul on the way off and, that day, we realized two things: it was going to be a great series and, after missing Paul, we’d now have to interview every single act in the competition, just as we had with series two of
Pop Idol
after we’d missed Will Young in the first one. Hmm, there’s a pattern emerging here…

During
BGT
, we’re filmed non-stop in the wings. Somewhere in the bowels of ITV, there are hundreds of hours of unused footage of us two talking absolute gibberish.

I have to admit, there
are
days when we get slightly delirious and just try to make each other laugh – mainly with things that we know will never make it on to the telly. I’m afraid I can’t give you any examples, for the same reason they’re not broadcast. In fact, there’s one sure-fire way you can tell that we think what we’re saying won’t be used. If Ant is drinking a latte, then we’re pretty sure we’re in the clear.

After the auditions were over, we had to give the most important autograph of our entire career, when we signed our latest contract with ITV. By this point, we’d been exclusive to them for seven years and with three returning shows that we loved doing for different reasons, we weren’t interested in going anywhere else. The new contract would take us up to the end of 2009 and it was reported to be the biggest deal in UK TV history. There’s a very good reason we’re telling you that fact – not because we’re a couple of show-offs, but because of the effect it had on one man – Simon Cowell. The previous December, Simon had signed his new ITV deal, which, at the time, was reported to be the biggest ever – at least it was, until we signed our new contract. Simon later told us that he heard about our deal over breakfast one morning, and he swears that the news curdled his porridge and turned his milk sour. Turning that man’s milk sour ranks as one of our greatest achievements.

Aside from ruining the Prince Of Darkness’s breakfast, it was also an incredibly proud moment for both of us. After our first exclusive deal, that we signed in the car next to the newsagents in between rehearsals for
sm:tv
, we’d come a long way – we’d worked incredibly hard behind the scenes to get shows like
Takeaway
,
I’m a Celebrity…
and
Britain’s Got Talent
right, and this was recognition of that. The ink was hardly dry on the contract when we headed straight for the studios to host the first live shows of
Britain’s Got Talent
– where we’d watch dozens of acts, find the country’s best undiscovered performer and, best of all, really tease Simon Cowell about our new contract.

Chapter 40

The next project we embarked on couldn’t have been more different - or more heartbreaking - because we made an appeal film for Comic Relief. We’ve done stuff in the studio in the past, but this time we wanted to do something different, and we ended up going to visit some of the projects they fund in Kibera in Kenya. We both remember buying red noses when we were at school, and going to Kibera would give us the opportunity to see some of the projects first hand and try to raise as much money as possible for a very worthwhile cause.

No matter how many films you’ve watched and how much footage you’ve seen of the terrible conditions people live in, nothing can prepare you for what you see when you go there. One of the most striking things about our trip was just how close poverty and luxury coexisted – they were virtually side by side, and we stayed in a hotel very close to areas that are brutally affected by poverty.

On our first morning in Kibera, we got into a car with the director and the cameraman. The way they work is very clever – they hardly tell you anything, because the best way is to discover everything for yourself so they get a genuine reaction on camera. The journey to the slums, incredibly, took hardly any time at all. Bizarre as it sounds, we turned left at PC World, then down a dirt track and, suddenly, we were there – in the middle of the biggest slum in Africa. There are one and a half million people there, all living and eating and washing in what is essentially a giant rubbish tip. There were kids going through bins, and people would empty their toilets into a stream that, fifty metres further away, children were washing in.

It seems obvious to say it, but it was heartbreaking. We were in shock. We spent the first day looking around the place and talking to
some of the project managers, but by far the toughest part of it was the second day.

That was when we met children and families who lived there. You just can’t comprehend how people can live like that – day in, day out. A big part of the film was about the living conditions, and we spent some time in a tiny shack that thirteen people lived in together. Thirteen people. They showed us how they slept at night – lying top to toe with nothing but plastic covering on the floor. The room must have been eight foot by eight foot and, because it was so small, the few belongings they did have were hanging from the ceiling on pieces of string. I just kept thinking, ‘How the hell do they keep going?’ Every night, they just lie together in this cold, filthy environment, starving hungry. I was overcome by the enormity of the situation. They were a large, loving family unit, exactly like the one that I had come from, and yet they had less than the basic requirements for human survival. I had to walk away and try to pull myself together, but I could feel the emotion swelling inside me, and I burst into tears.

It was a complete tragedy, but the positive thing was that, by going there, we hoped it would make people donate and realize how terrible things are. I think we were both very proud that, in some small way, with that visit, we could draw attention to those people’s problems and try to change their lives for the better.

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.