Ooh! What a Lovely Pair Our Story (32 page)

Once a show-off, always a show-off. He milks every single second of it – he’s practically kissing babies on the way down those stairs. I, on the other
hand, don’t really shake anyone’s hand – I’m deep in concentration and firmly focused on one thing and one thing only.

Not tripping over and falling down the stairs?

Exactly. When you’re as clumsy as I am, you could lose your footing at any minute. So if you do ever find yourself in the audience for
Takeaway
and I don’t stop on the way down the stairs, don’t take it personally, I’m just trying not to break my neck.

It’s live, exciting, seat-of-the-pants telly, and that’s why we love doing it. We love doing the other programmes too, but
Takeaway
is our baby. And I’m not just saying that because it requires constant attention, keeps us awake at night and often makes a mess of our clothes, it’s the show we love doing the most, because it’s constantly challenged us as performers, from stitching up Simon Cowell to working with two eight-year-old children that we christened Little Ant and Dec.

We’d completed the first series, but ITV had another show they wanted us to do – it would be live on air less than a month after we’d finished giving away the adverts, and it was the most insane TV show we’d ever been pitched.

Chapter 29

Tony Blackburn, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Christine Hamilton, Nell McAndrew, Rhona Cameron, Darren Day, Nigel Benn and Uri Geller.

I’m a Celebrity… Get Me out of Here!,
or the ‘new show that’s set in the jungle’, was the latest part of our golden-handcuffs deal with ITV, and it was pitched to us at the James Grant offices by Richard Cowles and Natalka Znak, the executive producers. From the moment they arrived, you could tell they meant business, because they brought pictures of rainforests with them. Even as they were explaining the show, I couldn’t stop thinking about the title and how long and strange it sounded.

We listened intently to the idea, and shot each other a few sideways glances as they explained how eight celebrities would live together in a tiny camp in the middle of a rainforest for two weeks. We would broadcast a show every morning, live from Australia, at around 7 a.m., and the public would control what happened with phone-voting. The celebrities would have to win their own food, wash their own clothes, and there were cameras there to capture their every move. After the meeting, I was slightly keener than Ant, although we were both very interested. I just remember saying to him, ‘We’ve got to do this because, if it works, it’ll be brilliant and, if someone else does it and it’s a big hit, we’ll be gutted.’

But I just kept thinking, ‘It sounds stupid – and that title’s far too long.’

Eventually, we signed the contract, which was really long – mainly because it kept mentioning the title of the show – and flew out for the first series to Mission Beach, Queensland, with Ali Astall, our artist manager. We didn’t have a clue what to expect. We were picked up from the airport by an Australian driver who spent the entire journey to the hotel telling us about spiders the size of dinner plates, deadly snakes and generally trying to scare the pants off us. Over the years, we’ve realized that scaring the English is a national pastime for the Australians, and this driver seemed to be some sort of national champion.

It wasn’t hard either, because I hate spiders, absolutely hate them.

We made it to Mission Beach to find a lovely big hotel that all the crew were staying in and, after a long flight, we were looking forward to checking in and chilling out. But we were informed that our accommodation was three miles down the road; we’d been booked to stay in a smaller, more private and intimate location. It was a small eco-hotel that was run by a gay couple called ‘Gary and Barry’ – at least, we think that was their names: it’s what we christened them anyway.

As we wandered from room to room, I couldn’t help but notice there were what I’ll politely call ‘erotic statues’ everywhere, the showers were outside and, most terrifyingly of all, there was no telly in any of the rooms. The whole place was like a hippy, sexy haven and two things we aren’t is hippies or sexy. Natalka, the executive producer and general all-round guvnor of
I’m a Celebrity
…, turned up at Gary and Barry’s to say hello, and when she asked us if there was anything we needed, we said, ‘Yes – a new hotel.’ We agreed to move to the crew hotel, climbed into the car and were just pulling away from the front door when I realized something important was missing. Dec.

I’d nipped to the loo and, when I got back, the place was deserted – apart from Gary and Barry, who were enjoying a pot of herbal tea while polishing their sex statues. And no, that wasn’t a euphemism, before you ask.

When we arrived at the big hotel, we had the first of several thousand surreal experiences we’d face over the next few weeks. We bumped into Keith
‘
Cheggers Plays Pop’
Chegwin. Every year on
I’m a Celebrity…,
they fly stand-ins out in case any of the cast get ill or realize what they’re getting themselves into and, in series one, Cheggers was that stand-in. One thing about Cheggers is that he’s a very heavy smoker and, when we ran into him, he’d just got off the twenty-four-hour flight from London. To combat his cigarette cravings on the plane, he’d come up with a carefully thought-out plan – he would wear nicotine patches, chew nicotine gum and drink copious amounts of Coke.

‘Cheggers drinks pop’ – ha!

All of this meant that, when we saw him, he was completely wired. He was also keen on showing us some of the home-video footage he’d already taken around the hotel. A lot of animals would wander freely around the grounds because, well, because they could, and because that’s the sort of stuff that goes on in Australia. One of the most notorious animals that did this was the cassowary – a kind of giant ostrich-meets-emu-meets-turkey thing that featured heavily in Cheggers’ home video.

The Aussies had already put the fear of God into us about these deadly birds, warning us that, given half the chance, they’d ‘rip your gizzards out’. We couldn’t believe they would just walk around the hotel – I think one of them even tried to check in at one point. Apparently, they’d just come down from Gary and Barry’s and weren’t too keen on the sex statues. The thing about these birds, though, is that they’re incredibly stupid. So stupid, in fact, they will attack their own reflection. When we bumped into Cheggers, he had just finished filming a cassowary attacking its own reflection in a car door. So there we were, jetlagged, standing in our second hotel of the day with wired Children’s TV legend Keith Chegwin showing us home-video footage of a giant bird attacking its own reflection.

And after that, things just got weirder.

There was so much wildlife in that hotel; it was as if we really
were
doing a zoo show. There were birds, snakes – Ant even found a spider in his shower.

I didn’t shower for two days. I’m not ashamed to admit it.

We also both found small, brown lizards in our rooms. We were reliably informed that they were called gekkos. On one hand, they were good, because they ate the mosquitoes, but the down side is they let out giant, bloodcurdling shrieks in the middle of the night, which as you can imagine, can be ever so slightly inconvenient, especially when you’ve got a large dose of jet lag. Fortunately, the lizard I was sharing my room with disappeared after a day or so.

I didn’t have such good luck – mine stayed in my room for a whole week. I christened him Michael – Michael Gekko – get it? It’s a kind of lizard-meets-Beppe from EastEnders pun… we’ve all done them, haven’t we? Every morning, conversations between me and Dec would go like this:

‘Morning.’

‘Morning. How’s Michael Gekko? Did he sleep all right?’

‘Not so good – he had a bit of a rough night.’

‘Oh well, give him my love.’

It was hilarious, but that might have been the jet lag.

After days of reptile-based comedy, the show actually started. Getting it on air was a miracle in itself – the format, the trials and the scripts were all constantly changing as we, and the production team, found our feet. We made sure we had a lot of input into the scripts and the overall feel of the show, after hosting
Friends Like These
and
Pop Idol
, we knew how important it was for the show to have its own language – and we thought it would benefit from having catchphrases. The long and ridiculous title of the show somehow stuck, and became one of those catchphrases. Screaming
I’m a Celebrity… Get Me out of Heeeeerreeee!’
from the bridge at the beginning was an idea we had during rehearsals, and it helped give the whole show a bit of an identity. It also meant we got a lovely view of the rainforest first thing in the morning. Which was nice.

And, by the way, for your handy cut-out-and-keep guide to a typical day in the life for Dec and me on
I’m a Celebrity…,
you can turn to that nice glossy photo section.

Before the first series aired, the press had been scathing, calling it ‘
I’m a Z-Lister… Get Me out of Here!
’, and other hilarious headlines. Some people were even speculating that the whole thing was fake and we weren’t in Australia at all. My sister Moyra heard a phone-in on a radio show where a caller said, ‘I’ve just seen Dec driving down the M1 in his Porsche.’ It was absolute rubbish. I haven’t got a Porsche.

That first week was a real struggle. The ratings were nothing to write home about and we were finding it hard to define our role. Aside from giving out phone numbers and going into camp to announce the results, it felt like we were just there to say, ‘This is what’s just happened, here’s what happened next.’ We didn’t know whether to play it for laughs or be straight. It seems a funny thing to say now, because the show is ridiculous (in a brilliant way, obviously), but it was all new back then and we didn’t know if trying to be funny was the right thing to do.
’

In the second week, things started happening. Darren Day and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson had got stuck into their crazy fight/relationship/hatred thing, and Rhona Cameron had gone off on a rant about every single person in there. Suddenly, there was a buzz about the show. The papers started to talk about it,
GM:TV
started covering it, word of mouth took over and ratings went up. It became a real-life Australian soap opera – and people loved it. It also started to do something it does every year – it gave the celebrities the chance to shatter the public’s perception of them.

The person who did that best was Tara, who showed, for the first time, that she was a real person. Everyone thought of her as this ‘It girl’ – a rich, spoilt socialite, but she proved she was funny, vulnerable, likable and, of course, slightly nuts. The public chose Tara to face the first ever Bushtucker Trial, and she had to stand under a tree while bugs and critters were dropped on her. Back in series one, not all of the trials were the kind of gruesome, vomit-inducing brand of light entertainment we’ve come to know and love. Christine Hamilton had to catch a pig. Nell McAndrew had to ride a bucking bronco. In a bikini. Nigel Benn had to sit under a tree in the dark for a few hours. Boy, those trials have progressed since then.

The scariest trial involved shutting Rhona Cameron in an underground coffin for ten minutes. We were all thinking, ‘This is too much… is this too much?’ There was a lot of debate with the producers about whether it was inhumane whereas, these days, we suspend the coffin hundreds of feet in the air and fill it with rats. It’s nice when you can see how a concept has progressed like that. I think we should all be very proud.

Halfway through the series, Clare and Lisa came to stay. They’d been given the full ‘scare the Pommies’ routine from the driver on the way from the airport and were prepared to spend the next week locked in our rooms. We managed to calm their fears and turn their attention to what really mattered – sitting around the pool with a tipple or two and having a lovely time. Of course, we would have to get up at 1 a.m., so we’d leave them down at the bar every evening when we went to sleep.

On the plus side, it meant I got some quality time with Michael Gekko.

One night, we got up for work and Clare and Lisa were still in the bar – we went round to tell them off, shocked that people could spend all night drinking like that. The moment we set eyes on them, we could tell it’d been a pretty heavy session. They were trying to hide from us by pretending to be lamps. It didn’t work.

The celebrities also had loved ones staying in the hotel and, to be honest, it could get a bit awkward. Over breakfast one morning, before the series had actually started we were treated to the sight of Christine Hamilton’s husband and former Conservative MP for Tatton Neil Hamilton doing press-ups round the pool in very – and I do mean very – skimpy swimming
trunks. Suddenly my sausages didn’t seem so appetizing. On another night, while they were enjoying a cigarette and a glass of wine or three, Lisa and Clare were approached by Uri Geller’s wife, who told them off for drinking and smoking. Like a lot of Uri’s best patter, it didn’t really have an effect.

Back in camp, the inevitable was happening – the celebs were starting to go feral, which is a polite way of saying that, amongst other things, they started to develop a certain aroma. Just be glad it’s not smell-o-vision, that’s all I’m saying. On the show, every day, we go into camp to reveal the result of the viewer vote. On about the fifth day, Tara came running over to sniff us, shouting, ‘You guys smell amazing.’ We were only wearing deodorant – and clothes, of course – but being in camp and away from the smells and sounds of everyday life had heightened Tara’s senses, and the smell of anything that wasn’t a campfire or a smelly celeb drove her wild.