Ooh! What a Lovely Pair Our Story (5 page)

‘Are you Fonsey and Anne’s littl’un?

‘Yes.’

‘Are you still in that TV show?’

‘It’s funny you should say that actually, I’m filming it right now.’

‘Is that why you’re wearing them pyjamas?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, tell your mam I said hello.’

‘Will do. ’Bye.’

To be fair, it
was
sometimes possible to have a laugh when you got recognized in town. When we used to meet up at the Monument on Saturday afternoons and go to the football together, we were so famous that sometimes as many as two people would come up to us and say, ‘You’re thingy and thingy from Thingy Grove, aren’t you?’

And if one of us was waiting for the other, then…

Hang on, that’s not right, what I really mean is, when I’d be waiting for Dec – which, incidentally, I’ve spent half my life doing… Why are you always late?

Ah, there’s a good reason for that. It means I never wait for anyone… shall we talk about this later?

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 bit 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.