Ooh! What a Lovely Pair Our Story (36 page)

At the end of every episode, as you know, we always head into camp to announce the results of the viewers’ votes. Those moments can be strange at the best of times. We walk across three huge rope bridges, just us two, the floor manager and the cameraman, and then you reach camp and have to go in and deal with a load of starving, angry, smelly celebrities. We always walk in there expecting the unexpected. And with John Lydon in there, you’ll understand why we were particularly apprehensive that series. For the whole first week, John was as good as gold – he didn’t do anything risqué, and the closest we got to an ‘incident’ was when former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read and Lord Brocket gave us charcoal moustaches.

But then the atmosphere changed, as it always does. The mood in camp becomes much more about survival and much less about fear of trials.

We stood there in camp, listening to the countdown in our earpieces, trying to avoid the flies and the smoke from the fire and attempting to concentrate on revealing who the British public would be sending home. As ever, we took turns reading the names and, when it came to me, I wafted some smoke out of my eye, looked at Johnny Rotten and said, ‘John, they’ve decided… it’s not you.’

To which he replied, ‘Oh, f
g c
ts!’

Right there and then, on live TV, John Lydon used the C word. It’s shocking, it’s unsuitable and it’s not Christopher Biggins. And, to make matters worse, he’d only gone and chucked in an F word before the C word.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d really enjoyed watching John in that series, and he’d just done the most predictable thing possible for an old punk. There was a deafening silence in our earpieces. I heard myself saying, ‘Hey, come on now. Come on, John,’ in a tone of voice that we all remember from our childhoods that says, ‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.’ Then the
absurdity of the situation dawned on me: I was standing in the middle of the Australian rainforest at seven in the morning chastising the lead singer of the Sex Pistols for saying a naughty word. Our earpieces suddenly crackled into life, and a voice came through: ‘Apologize, APOLOGIZE!’ Dec apologized immediately to the viewers and, after we’d finished the rest of the voting announcement, we left the camp. A few days later, John decided to leave the camp too – he walked off the show and went back to the hotel, where he could use all the F, C, W and B words he liked.

When we weren’t at work telling off old punks, we managed to get in a bit of sunbathing, and we both got the worst sunburn of our lives. Most Geordies will tell you they burn easily, and us two got a shocking dose of it on that trip. The back of my legs and my back were absolutely beetroot-red, while Ant scorched his back and his forehead.

Yeah,
I
know: there’s plenty of it to burn.

We were in agony, and Claude, our make-up artist, suggested a remedy. ‘She’s a make-up artist,’ we thought. ‘She knows about skincare.’ She looked at us with a completely straight face and suggested we put sliced tomato on the burnt areas. We burst out laughing, but she was serious – Claude said it worked a treat. We were in agony, so we were prepared to try anything and, five minutes later, we were both lying on our front with sliced tomatoes all over our backs. After that experience, I can offer some great advice to any readers who suffer sunburn in the future: don’t put tomato on it; it doesn’t do a thing.

That’s not true, it does do one thing – it makes you look like a complete idiot.

The series was won by Kerry McFadden who, after a very shaky first few days, really embraced life in the jungle. As we all know, going on ‘a journey’ is the name of the game on reality TV, and I’m not talking about a first-class flight from Manchester to Brisbane. In a way, though, the real winners were ex-couple Peter and Jordan, or Katie Price, as she’s known
these days. The thing about
I’m a Celebrity…
is that it’s impossible to hide your true personality: no one can put on an act all day every day for nearly three weeks.

Before Jordan went into the jungle, a lot of people had made up their mind about her. They thought she was just another glamour model, but she turned out to be feisty, opinionated and honest, and people warmed to that – especially feisty, opinionated and honest people. She was also falling in love with the bloke who sang ‘Mysterious Girl’ and would go on to wow us all with his latest composition, ‘Insania’. As you’ll remember, almost ten years earlier, we’d lived in the same building as Peter Andre and, while he’d hit the gym every day, we’d be eating Chinese Pete’s barbecue ribs. And now, here we were again, only this time, we got to go to the gym every day while he shared a cup of hot water round the campfire with former BBC Royal Correspondent Jenni Bond. Peter was such great value and, alongside his endless renditions of ‘Insania’ and flirting with Jordan, he would come out with a gem every day which, frankly, made our job a hell of a lot easier.

I don’t think anyone would have put Peter and Jordan together before the series. She had a boyfriend when she went in, and no one had heard from him for years – to most people he was a cheesy nineties pop star (and that can be a very hard label to shake off. We should know). It was the first time two people began a relationship on the show, and it was fascinating to watch. We were so excited, me and Ant even talked about getting hats for their wedding, like Cilla used to on
Blind Date
.

Series three was fantastic – there were so many intriguing characters and so much going on
– and the ratings reflected that. The final was watched by an incredible 15.7 million people, which was the biggest audience we’d ever performed to – and yes, that does include
Slap Bang.
It meant so much because we’d worked so hard with the team to get the tone and the style of the show right. It hadn’t been easy but it was well worth all the hard work – the show had become a phenomenon and we were ecstatic.

The wrap party for series three had something that no other
I’m a Celebrity
… wrap party has had – a VIP area, which meant we got to
spend some time with Mike Read and Lord Brocket, who, for some reason, were dressed as women.

I think I like it better when there
isn’t
a VIP area…

The other thing I remember from that party is doing shots with Kerry, and Jordan chasing after Dec, who she had propositioned during her departure interview. He managed to avoid her all night, but her mum did corner him a couple of times and try to set him up with her. He wasn’t having any of it.

At the party, I was really in the mood for a big night. When it finished at around two in the morning, everyone else – Dec, Ali, and Toni and Claude – went back to their rooms and went to sleep. I wanted to keep going and was in a boozy huff that no one wanted to join me. I went back to my room, got my CD player and portable speakers, a few CDs, a couple of beers and headed down to the beach, where I sat watching the sun coming up. I was desperate for some company but, apart from a bloke with a metal detector, who I did have a quick chat with, the beach was deserted, so I texted Ali and said, ‘Fancy a swim?’

Ali said the moment she got the text, she panicked: she knew I was in a party mood and she was terrified I’d gone for a drunken swim in the hotel pool. She checked my room first. The door was open, but I wasn’t there, so then she tried the pool, then finally headed for the beach and found me, sitting cross-legged on the sand listening to music and with a face like thunder – all because no one wanted to party with me. I was in such a bad mood I thought nothing in the world could make me feel more irritated. Then Mother Nature intervened and proved me wrong. A huge wave appeared and washed my CD player and speakers into the sea.

What were you listening to? Katrina and the Waves? A bit of Billy Ocean perhaps?

Shut up – it still makes me angry to think about it.

The Beach Boys?

Just leave it.

As well as providing great drama of its own,
I’m a Celebrity…
was also throwing up people we would soon be seeing again for Undercover, our hidden camera strand on
Takeaway.
For our latest series, we went back to the king of the sit-ups, John ‘Fash the Bash’ Fashanu.

All our Undercovers had to be planned with military precision. In Fash’s case, we had a very clear plan to catch him out. ITV had a show called
Celebrities Under Pressure,
where celebrities went to live with a family and learnt a skill with them. The plan was that Fash would go and live with a ‘family’ from Newcastle and learn the skill of karaoke. However, this, as they say, was no ordinary family. The dad was Dec, the oldest son was me, and the rest of them were actors, but of course Fash didn’t have a clue about that.

The idea was that at first the family would be excited at Fash’s arrival, then when they realized he was a terrible singer, they’d give up on their task and try to swap him for another celebrity. As always, that first moment when we come face to face with our victim was extremely nerve-wracking but, when he saw us, Fash didn’t bat an eyelid. Batting an eyelid, incidentally, was no mean feat for us two – wearing prosthetics meant that we could barely see two feet in front of us at times, which was a big worry: what if that made me even clumsier?

Over the course of the shoot, we practised karaoke with Fash and then, as planned, got angry with him and tried to throw him out – it made a change for us to be laughing at someone else’s singing – and that was supposed to be the end of the hit. But he wouldn’t go. Fash’s response was ‘Come on, guys, we’re a team – we can do this!’ That put a major spanner in the works.

We did the only thing we could do and kept going with the fictional karaoke challenge. It got to the point where we were standing in the kitchen with Leon Wilde, who was directing the Undercover but posing as the director of
Celebrities Under Pressure
, saying to each other, ‘What do we do now?’ Fash had fallen for the lot – the family being rude to him, the endless hours of karaoke, sharing a bedroom with one of the kids… and he still hadn’t sussed us out, so we did something we only ever do in extreme circumstances.

We sang ‘Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble’. In the garage of the ‘family’ home.

Before that, we’d sung ‘If You Don’t Know Me by Now’, and he still hadn’t got it, but we thought once we went into ‘Rhumble’, he’d rumble us straight away. We were wrong. At the end of the song, when Fash had been giving it his all, and wrecking mics left, right and centre, we asked him if he knew who’d sung the original. He didn’t. We told him it was Ant and Dec. Still nothing. In the end, we were forced to remove our false teeth and fake faces and say, ‘I’m Dec and he’s Ant.’

Even though by the time we told him who we were, my forehead was starting to melt and Dec’s nose was looking very torn, he still would’ve fallen for anything. It was the best moment of the entire series, and if we hadn’t just given up and told him who we were, there’s a good chance we’d still be there now, singing karaoke and living with John Fashanu.

And no one wants that, do they?

Chapter 34

The third series of
I’m a Celebrity…
had been so successful that, by the time we came to do the fourth one, interest in the whole show had increased dramatically. As well as the celebs, that interest, bizarrely, extended to us two. There were more paparazzi skulking around the town we stayed in, and our biggest worry was that, after a day’s sunbathing, people would take pictures of us lying around with sliced tomato on our backs.

To deal with the increased press presence, the show hired a security guard (who also doubled as our driver) to stop us being bothered. His name was Junior, and he was a huge exrugby player from New Zealand. To give you an idea of his size, I’d say that one of his legs is bigger, stronger and more powerful than me and Ant put together. He was incredibly professional and couldn’t have been more vigilant if he’d been looking after Barack Obama – although Barack is unlikely to host
I’m a Celebrity…
any time soon. Not unless him and us two did some sort of job swap - and I’m not sure that would work. We’d be fine running America, but I’m not sure how he’d cope with the Bushtucker Trials.