Smart TV
For nearly 30 years, Ant and Dec have been omnipresent on TV. How long can the magic last?
SOMETIME IN THE mid-1990s, my pal Richard went home to find his mum happily watching a new BBC children’s show. When he queried this strange turn of events, she pointed at the TV, saying, “These two are good. They’re like Morecambe and Wise.”
Nearly 30 years later, “these two” return this week with the 20th series of Saturday Night Takeaway – a primetime smorgasbord of sketches, competitions, chats with celebrity guests, general family fun. Nothing atom-splitting in the mould of weekend evening entertainment, until you factor in the special sauce – the Geordie duo at the heart of it all.
So many presenters have been and gone from our screens in the intervening decades, it’s worth returning to one of my favourite topics over a Coke and crisps: what is Ant and Dec’s magic ingredient, and can it ever be copied?
At the root of it all is their genuine, long-lasting, tried-and-tested friendship. You see it on I’m a Celebrity… and Britain’s Got Talent when one of them goes off-script, and the other one corpses in delight. I’ve seen it in pubs along the Thames in west London where they both hang out, choosing to spend Sunday afternoons with one another’s friends, families and dogs. And you saw it when Ant had what would have been for anyone else a career-ending 2018, and emerged freshly grateful for Dec, who professed himself not angry but disappointed, even while he clocked up 90 per cent of the effort for their joint NTA award that year. They now have 44 of these things; I’m amazed anyone else turns up.
We can hold the value of that bond up against equally charismatic solo stars, such as Michael McIntyre and James Corden. Both gifted at holding an audience – or an American one in the latter’s case, at least – but both have to strive much harder to prove their authenticity. Meanwhile Ant and Dec can just continue bouncing off each other. They keep each other real, and their mutually appreciative laughs make it easy for us to laugh, too. And it helps that neither is over-tall, and both have their hair.
But while their ordinariness is key to their appeal, behind all the capers are a pair of tireless workhorses. They’ve barely been off the box in all that time, and their rehearsal hours are legendary. Plus, they share a business savviness, a keen sense of their place in the firmament – from children’s TV to teenage p
