Ant and Dec
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Anthony McPartlin (born 18 November, 1975) and Declan Donnelly (born 25 September, 1975), from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, are popular presenters of light entertainment television programmes in the United Kingdom.
Although the young Ant had built up some television experience with a brief stint on the children's classic, Why Don't You?, Declan made his acting debut on the set of the BBC children's drama series Byker Grove. Their friendship continued off screen as well as on.
After they left the TV series, they turned their hand to pop music, releasing (under their Byker Grove character names "PJ and Duncan") songs such as "Let's Get Ready to Rhumble" (sic) which included the lines "Watch us wreck the mic, watch us wreck the mic, watch us wreck the mic, psyche!" which briefly caused the use of the word psyche as in "I was only psyching you out", in the playgrounds of Britain. In total, they released three albums: Psyche and Top Katz as PJ and Duncan and The Cult of Ant & Dec as Ant and Dec.
Later the duo moved into television presenting, having their own sketch show on Children's BBC in 1995, as well as an early evening show on Channel 4 in 1997. After presenting various other BBC programmes they signed to the rival ITV network in the early 2000s.
They enjoyed success fronting ITV's Saturday morning children's programmes SMTV Live and CD:UK and subsequently moved to Saturday evening to present fare aimed at adults such as Friends Like These (for the BBC), Pop Idol and Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. Their highest audience figures to date were obtained whilst presenting I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! in February 2004.
In 2002, at the very young age of 27, Ant and Dec received a joint Special Recognition Award at the National Television Awards. Indeed they are such good friends, that they are hardly ever seen apart on screen. This leads to them receiving joint nominations for awards, and frequent jokes from other celebrities about not knowing which is Ant and which is Dec. In fact, a 2004 Daily Mirror poll found that 70% of viewers could not tell them apart [1].
In 2005, as part of the ITV Network's 50th birthday celebrations, they were back on television fronting Ant and Dec's Gameshow Marathon, a celebration of some of ITV's most enduring gameshows from the past 50 years.
They have, albeit infrequently, returned to acting. They played themselves in the film Love Actually (in which Bill Nighy's character referred to Dec as "Ant or Dec") and returned to their Geordie roots in a one-off tribute to The Likely Lads by remaking one of the classic episodes. They have also returned to Byker Grove for Geoff's funeral.
Their latest project is the film Alien Autopsy. Their next major TV series is a game show called The Con.Test which will air on ITV1 during 2006.