TV duo Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly have been in the business together for decades, but their respective careers could have looked very different if an “ugly” row back in 1995 had got even uglier.
Ant and Dec recently shared their plans to bring drag queens back to Saturday Night Takeaway.
They earned praise in early December for a “deep-cut callback” to a moment during I’m A Celebrity in 2016, when Martin Roberts was a contestant. Martin said it made his day!
Now, back to that scrap…
Ant ant Dec had a row in 1995 that got physical – and ‘ugly’
By the mid 1990s, Ant and Dec had known each other for five or so years. They met while working on the second series of children’s drama Byker Gove, in 1990.
In 1994, they released Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble under the name PJ & Duncan. That was the same year they got their first presenting job, for which they used shortened versions of their real names.
But no, not Ant and Dec. back then, they were Tony and Lan.
Anyway. 1995 rolls around, and they’re in Spain on a drunken summer escapade. They were preparing for their stint on GMTV’s Fun In The Sun with Anthea Turner, broadcast live from Torremolinos.
“Our tour manager Kim Glover told us we had the day to ourselves before appearing on GMTV the following morning… so we went to the pub,” Ant writes in their book Once Upon a Tyne: Our Story.
But they ended up having one too many, and things got ugly…
Ant ‘proves’ Dec is ‘rubbish at fighting’
By 10pm, after his share of beverages, Dec decided it was bedtime. They had an early start the following morning.
But Ant wasn’t ready to call it a night yet, and, he writes, he asked his co-presenter, “What the hell are you going to bed for?”
Dec didn’t take any notice, and continued to “stumble towards the lift,” which “incensed” Ant. He “lost it”.
“Don’t you dare walk away from me when I’m talking to you,” he said to Dec. This prompted Dec to start “ranting”, and Ant writes, “Who the hell does he think he was, talking to me like that?”
Eventually, they made their way into the lift together and, when Ant started to defend himself, per the Express, Dec put a finger into each of his ears and began to jeer, “La la la la, I can’t hear you”.
Ant apparently “punched Dec in the chest,” his “blood boiling” at Dec’s childish behaviour. Dec responded with an attempted strike at Ant’s cap, leading Ant to conclude that he “proved Dec is rubbish at fighting when he’s had a few”.
It was the last interaction they had of that nature. They haven’t had an altercation since – and that was 30 years ago!
Read more: Ant and Dec apologise to their wives for ‘working so much’ after NTA win
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