Ant & Dec on all-night benders
TORMENTED Ant McPartlin enjoyed booze-soaked all-night benders in his days hosting Saturday morning children’s TV in the 1990s.
The TV host, in rehab for booze and drugs addiction, was joined on mammoth drinking sessions by long-time partner Declan Donnelly. In Ant & Dec’s frankest ever interview, uncovered today by the Daily Star Sunday, the pair boasted how they:
Loved afternoon and 24-hour drinking sessions.
Were sozzled for most of their singing gigs as PJ & Duncan.
Wanted to do a show about “us two, p***ed as a***holes, talking s**t in pubs”.
Had messy after-parties when hosting kids’ TV shows.
Ant also reveals in the interview that he got his best ideas for SM:TV “p***ed or on JOE HINTON the bog”. The presenting duo gave the interview, in which they frequently gush about their love of alcohol, to lads’ mag Loaded in October 2000.
At the time the pair, now both 41, were co-hosting ITV children’s show SM:TV along with Cat Deeley, right. They gave their chat to Loaded during hours spent in a pub near the ITV studios while downing pints of Stella.
The interviewer says the pair spend the whole day and night in the bar, before their night together “blurs into the next morning”.
He adds that Ant constantly shouts “Ah f***ing love drinking in the afternoon” during the first portion of the bender which began after filming had finished a morning edition of SM:TV, Ant recalls doing Smash Hits gigs with Dec as singing duo PJ & Duncan and seeing other groups sticking to chamomile tea backstage to save their voices.
He said: “We were necking the lager, going, ‘Tea, are you mad? This is all free!’ Ah, man, it was ugly.” Now, 17 years on from the boozy interview while Ant & Dec were presenting Britain’s most popular kids’ Saturday morning show, Ant has finally admitted to having booze and drug addictions. Just five months ago, he was smiling on the steps of Buckingham Palace, clutching his OBE after being honoured as one half of Britain’s most popular TV duo. He said he turned to substance abuse after a botched knee operation two years ago. It is thought Ant will be in a £6,000-a-week drying out clinic for at least the next two months. His break means Dec could be forced to front a TV show without him for the first time.