Ooh! What a Lovely Pair Our Story (7 page)

Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen, eh?

More like, ‘Treat ’em mean, because I’m scared of this whole thing and feeling really nervous.’

That’s not as good, as a catchphrase, is it? It doesn’t even rhyme…

The point is, I’d always wait to be asked when it came to autographs, I didn’t know how it worked, and I didn’t want to look big-headed.

I know exactly what you’re thinking: I’ve always looked big-headed.
Well, it’s not my fault, I was born with this forehead and I’m stuck with it.

One of the biggest events in the early nineties roadshow calendar was the
Mizz
magazine roadshow in Birmingham. Yes, you read that right, the
Mizz
magazine roadshow. I don’t think we need to tell you we were getting pretty big-time by then.

After a brief rehearsal to get our waving right before the doors opened for the audience, we got chatting to Tim Vincent. Tim had quite a similar background to the two of us, he was in the ITV kids’ drama
Children’s Ward
, and we had so many questions for him. Did they do a lot of work on location? What was the schedule like? And, most importantly, could me and Ant have his autograph?

I also asked Tim if
Children’s Ward
was on that week, and he said it wasn’t, because of the Budget. He obviously meant the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Budget – ITV were broadcasting it, so they’d cancelled children’s programmes for the day.

But I hadn’t quite got to grips with that, I thought he was talking about the budget for
Children’s Ward.
In my mind, that was the one that really mattered, not some stupid announcement that would only affect the entire British economy. So I said to Tim, ‘That’s weird, just missing out an episode in the middle of the series ’cos there isn’t enough money in the budget. You’d think they’d just do one less episode at the end – or plan their finances better.’

Tim looked at me like I was a complete idiot, which of course I was.

I immediately stepped in and explained the complex political repercussions of the Budget to Ant.

I think my exact words were ‘That posh bloke with the red suitcase means
Children’s Ward
isn’t on this week.’

My face turned crimson, and Tim just walked off. That was the first time I’d felt really embarrassed in front of someone else ‘off the telly’. But it wouldn’t be the last…

In spite of Ant’s Tim Vincent faux pas, the two of us had become best mates by now, and there was no doubt that helped with our performances on
Byker
Grove
. We spent all our time at work together, we’d meet at the weekends and go to football matches, we were both experiencing the beginnings of fame and we had become really close. I suppose you could say we were method actors – in the same way Robert De Niro drove a taxi round New York to prepare for
Taxi Driver
, we became best mates in real life and then best mates on screen.

I was starting to think that the scriptwriters didn’t have much faith in my acting abilities. My girlfriend off screen was now my girlfriend on screen, my best mate off screen was now my best mate on screen. I was half expecting them to write a storyline where I had an embarrassing chat about the budget with someone from
Children’s Ward.

They were definitely starting to give me and Dec more to do, though. We even had a story where PJ and Duncan tried to go underage drinking, which involved them going round various pubs in Newcastle and not getting served. For our characters, it was a rite of passage that typified the issues facing young lads but, for us, it was three days hanging round in pubs. We loved it. Even though it was a fairly small storyline, we’d been doing extensive research into that area for years.

By this point, we’d been acting for a couple of years and, the more experienced we got, the more inquisitive we became about how things worked. We were much more interested in what happened on the production side and what the producer and the director were doing every day.

We were starting to approach acting as a long-term career. We still had no idea where it was going to lead, but there was one thing we realized around that time: we both had a dream. We hoped that, one day, we could get that golden opportunity, that big break, the one thing the two of us wanted more than anything else: a part in
Spender
.

Spender
was a BBC1 drama set in Newcastle that was created, written by, produced and starred (phew!) Jimmy Nail. Local actors like Jimmy, Tim Healy and Kevin Whately were a huge inspiration to us. Robson Green was another one and, back then, it was a real thrill for us when he got a big part in
Casualty.
Those actors had ‘made it’ and, as far as we were concerned, they couldn’t have done better if they’d been cast as the new Batman.

For the record, I would pay good money to see Jimmy Nail as Batman, but it’s probably too late for the big man now. To jump from where we were, to the level they were at, seemed almost impossible. We thought the best we could hope for was a good run in
Byker Grove
, and then, if we were really lucky, a role in
Spender
as third motorcycle thug from the left.

W
ithout even realizing it, I suppose me and Dec were already mentally preparing for life away from
Byker Grove
and possibly for life as a double act. We were really starting to enjoy performing together, and this became obvious to us one night at the BBC Club, the staff bar at BBC Newcastle.

Due to phenomenal public demand, we’d retired our Doors tribute act after just one gig, so we had to come up with a new act, and we got up and did a rendition of an old soul song called ‘Me and Mrs Jones’.

The idea came from Dec, and this takes us on to something you should all know about the man sitting next to me: he has the musical taste of a ninety-year-old. His iPod is full of albums like
Now That’s What I Call the 1940s
and
The Best Chamber Music Album in the World… Ever.
When it comes to music, he’s got one very simple rule: if it was written after England won the World Cup, it’s too modern.

Old man Donnelly here played me this song and, to be fair, I really liked it. It’s all about a bloke who’s having an affair with Mrs Jones and how the two of them meet up in secret. Looking back, it seems a strange choice – not just because it was released before we were born, but because it wasn’t a duet, which meant the whole thing turned into a bit of a three-some – me, Dec and Mrs Jones.

When we got on stage and started singing, the audience seemed to find it very funny, so we began to ham it up further and play the whole thing for laughs. At least, that’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.

Dec’s right, though, we deliberately did the whole song very tongue in cheek, which wasn’t easy. You try singing with your tongue in cheek, it’s almost impossible.

Have a go. See? Chances are you’ve covered this page in spit and, if you’re on the bus, you’re probably getting some pretty strange looks right now.

But by the end of our performance, most of the audience was in fits of laughter at us trying to get through this song together.

I suppose that was the first time we really performed as a double act. It was also the first time we’d made an audience laugh and, standing on the stage, looking at the audience’s faces, I thought, ‘I didn’t realize I had that in me, I liked doing that.’

What’s more, we still had our tops on, which was good news for everyone.

We were having the time of our lives – showing off to girls, having a laugh and, at the same time, we were earning a living. We thought we’d cracked the holy trinity of job, money and girls, and it felt good. By now, school was a bit like MC Hammer’s career – a thing of the past – and
Byker Grove
was a full-time job, which meant, for the first time, we both had a few quid in our pockets.

I saved up all my wages to get my first car – I was so keen that I had my first driving lesson on my seventeenth birthday. I went to that lesson with the two things that were vital to my driving ambitions – my provisional licence and a cushion to sit on.

I eventually passed, at my third attempt, and spent £950 on an MG Metro Turbo. It was metallic blue with red go-faster stripes and red seatbelts. Yes, even as a teenager, I oozed class. The only thing that was missing was a pair of furry dice and stickers on the windscreen saying ‘ANT’ and ‘DEC’.

Obviously, we’ve both got them in our cars now – that’s one of the perks of being on the telly.

You know what it’s like when you first pass your test – you go
everywhere
by car. If I could’ve driven from the living room to the toilet in that car, I would have. When my mam needed a pint of milk from the shop at the end of the road, I’d have the keys in the ignition before she could say ‘semi-skimmed’.

I wasn’t quite so good as Dec with my wages. I didn’t have the foresight and business acumen to invest in an MG Metro Turbo – and even if I had, I didn’t have a driving licence, so it wouldn’t have been much use.

At first, when I started earning money, I was too young to have a cash card. My mam didn’t think it was a good idea to keep my wages in a shoebox under my bed – she was clever like that – so she gave me her card for an account she never used. The good thing was I could get my hands on my money whenever I liked, so I’d just take out £30, £40 or £50 at a time and buy trainers, clothes, CDs, petrol for Dec’s car, that kind of thing. In those days, you could get a pair of trainers, a couple of albums and a McDonald’s for… well, about £100. It’s pretty much the same as now really.

I’m not that old, you know…

The trouble was I never really paid attention to how much money was in that account. I wasn’t ridiculously frivolous, but I wasn’t shy of spending it either.

The other trouble was that all the statements got sent to my mam and, eventually, my spending caught up with me. One morning, my mam burst into my room, with a statement in her hand, and it wasn’t long before there was a statement coming out of her mouth.

If my memory serves me correctly, it was ‘Where the bloody hell has all your money gone?’

I had exactly £50 left out of what had been a couple of thousand pounds I’d earned over the years. I was the Nick Leeson of
Byker Grove.

I learnt a very valuable lesson that day, a lesson any younger readers would do well to heed – make sure your money goes into
your
bank account, and not your mam’s.

Shouldn’t that be ‘Be responsible and don’t squander your money’?

Oh yeah, that as well, yeah.

All in all, I learnt a lot from that spending and, in a way, I was glad it happened.

I wasn’t – I had to lend him £100 for Christmas presents.

That’s what being a teenager is all about, isn’t it? Wasting your money, hanging around with your mates and, of course, drinking.

My first real experience of drinking came at a family party when I was sixteen. It was a christening, and it was a very special day. I was so thrilled by a new addition to the family, so overjoyed at the gift of life, that I decided to celebrate… by drinking loads of lager.

The problem was we had a lot of filming to do the next day, but that didn’t stop me putting away three pints – yes, three whole pints. Drinking that amount at sixteen was no mean feat, especially given the added obstacle that no man actually enjoys the taste of beer when they first drink it. Despite that, I soldiered on – I’ve always been good with stuff like that.

What, drinking?

Yes.

I arrived at work the next day and to say I felt sick, dizzy, sweaty and disorientated would be the understatement of the century. Your first hangover is like your first love – you never forget it.

I tried to struggle through at work but, in the end, the producers sent me home – with suspected alcohol poisoning.

It seemed like a fancy name for a hangover, but I didn’t care, I got to go home and sleep it off, and that was all that mattered.

When I heard the words ‘alcohol poisoning’, right there and then I knew one thing – me and Dec were going to be friends for life…

We started spending more and more time together, and now that we were older, we started going out to concerts or, as you’re contractually obliged to call them as a teenager, gigs. Our first one was the Inspiral Carpets at Newcastle Mayfair, and it was absolutely brilliant. The first hurdle of the night was always getting past the bouncers – being in a children’s drama meant people looked on you as, well, a child, but it seemed like the bouncers didn’t even watch
Byker Grove.

They looked more like
Children’s Ward
fans to me…

Not only did the bouncers let us in, we were always left alone at indie gigs too. There was a good reason for that: the people there didn’t have a clue who we were either.

We also went to a fantastic Jamiroquai gig at the Newcastle Riverside. I can still picture those venues now – the air thick with the smell of cigarette smoke, old beer and stale urine…

They were really magical places.

We loved both those bands and, years later, our paths crossed again. Clint Boon, from the Inspiral Carpets, wrote the theme tune to
Engie Benjy
– a children’s animation series that me and Ant provided the voices for.