How TV’s Dec and his Catholic priest brother almost swapped careers
WHEN Declan Donnelly — better known as the shorter half of Ant and Dec — ties the knot this summer, it will be in a setting of suitable splendour for one of our nation’s biggest stars.
There was never any danger of this Bafta-winning presenter entering holy matrimony in a quiet rural chapel.
Instead his famous guests, a veritable Who’s Who of British showbusiness from Simon Cowell to James Corden, will witness t he big event f r om t he cloistered pews of St Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle.
And as he exchanges rings with Ali Astall, who’s both his life partner and manager, there is one man he would not dream of being without.
Not Anthony McPartlin — or Ant, as his best friend is more commonly known — but Dermott, Declan’s older brother and the Roman Catholic priest who will preside over the wedding.
For had life dealt a different hand to each of them, there is every chance that these siblings could have been standing on opposite sides of the altar: Declan the priest, Dermott the showbusiness star.
As they grew up in Cruddas Park, Newcastle, their eight-year age gap was easily surmounted by how much they had in common.
Both were born with the gift of the gab (a blessing when you are among seven siblings in a working-class family of Irish immigrants), along with an innate ability to amuse and entertain. And both felt a calling towards the Church.
Of all the siblings, Dermott and Declan were especially close, and both were minded to join the priesthood.
In Declan’s words: ‘It was something I thought I could do and maybe I should do. But I went through the process and realised that I couldn’t do it.’
The fork in the road came when Declan was auditioning for Byker Grove, the BBC1 series which gave him his break at the tender age of 12. As he made his first steps in the career which would earn him a fortune and make him a household name, his brother Dermott was preparing for holy orders.
Today Declan’s worth around £60 million, he lives in a gadget-packed house in Chiswick, West London (he has spoken of installing devices to c l ose t he curtains), and spent £50,000 on Ali’s engagement ring.
Yet while Declan’s £20 million golden handcuffs deal with ITV enabled him to buy his current £4 million home without needing to sell his previous house ( now worth £ 1 million), Dermott lives in a spartan set of rooms at St Mary’s Cathedral.
AS The Dean of the cathedral he will earn as much as £10,000 a year in stipends, significantly more than the £4,000 an average rural priest pulls in — but a sum his younger brother earns in a couple of days.
Yet they still remain as close as ever. Dermott is a regular visitor to his brother’s shows, while Declan travels to the North-east frequently to attend mass and visit the youth projects which have been a labour of love for Dermott s i nce the Nineties.
That said, their daily lives could hardly be more different. Declan may be regarded as one of the less flashy stars in his profession, but his car collection has included an Aston Martin, a Maserati and a soft-top BMW 6 Series.
Dermott, like his fellow priests, has been told by Pope Francis: ‘A car is necessary to do a lot of work, but please, choose a more humble one. If you like the fancy one, just think about how many children are dying of hunger in the world.’
And while Declan had an 11-year relationship with the actress Clare Buckfield, followed by liaisons with Sky Sports presenter Georgie Thomson and now his fiancee Ali (as well as an ill-advised romp with a lapdancer, which was splashed across the tabloids), Dermott gave up his dreams of a family life to dedicate himself to the Church.
Scratch the surface, however, and the brothers’ differences are not so clear cut. Declan has been dealing with Catholic guilt all his adult life. The lapdancer incident of 2001, for example, prompted him to go to confession many times.
For many years after he hit the big time he drove around in a £950 Mini Metro, feeling anything more would be an indulgence.
he’s also known for a punctilious politeness and graciousness to fans rare in the brash world of TV.
The roots of this behaviour lie in their upbringing, with a huge influence being exerted by their father Alphonsus (universally known as Foncey), who moved over from Northern Ireland in the Fifties and ran the Tyneside Irish Club, where a young Declan entertained locals with a repertoire of songs and jokes.
home was a three-bed semi, and the family — mum Annie, now 75, and children Patricia, 53, eamonn, 50, Martin, 49, Dermott, 47, Moyra, 46, Camalia, 44, and Declan, 39 — built an inseparable bond.
Family photographs show Declan mucking in with his nieces and nephews at special occasions, such as eamonn’s 50th last year, while a busload travelled down to London when he hosted pop’s Brit Awards.
Dermott also had a performer’s streak, and put this to good use after taking holy Orders in 1992, in the cathedral where he will officiate at his brother’s wedding.
he started out as a curate in Chester-le-Street until, two years later, he was asked by the Bishop of hexham and Newcastle to set up a youth outreach programme aimed at i ntroducing disadvantaged youngsters to the Catholic Church.
he transformed the Youth Ministry Team into a thriving concern, and a few years later in 2010, with the help of Ant and Dec, he launched the Global Youth Village Centre on a former holiday camp in County Durham.
It’s obvious that having a famous brother helps. As Dermott himself conceded at the time: ‘I don’t advertise that I’m Dec’s brother, but the kids always seem to know. It bridges the gap between me and them.’
Appealing to everyman has been a shared talent. Dermott has always taken pride in Declan’s achievements, as well as his humility.
Byker Grove’s boss, Matthew Robinson, puts it this way: ‘Dec had a tremendous amount of precocious, childhood charm — and he knew it. he’s still got it today.‘ ‘It was pretty clear to me from the moment I met him that he had star quality.’
he adds: I’ve worked with a lot of actors who achieved great fame and their egos got warped. Ant and Dec have avoided that. They think it’s all a dream and it might be taken away from them tomorrow. They’re very close to their families, who won’t put up with any nonsense.’
There is no mistaking the family’s pride in Declan, yet they present a united front of silence when anybody pries into his business. This is due, in part, to the benefits which come with a famous relative.
No one knows this better than Dermott, who has always acknowl- edged that his role as an expert in youth work requires a sprinkling of stardust to keep the kids listening.
his services are more lively than most offerings i n the Catholic Church and, with the help of a healthy dose of nepotism, he has flirted with TV fame himself.
Some examples are gentle enough, such as an appearance on Junior Songs of Praise last summer when he was interviewed by a puppet called hacker T Dog about church life. With questions such as: ‘Do you have to be a Christian to go to church?’ it was hardly taxing.
BACK in 2001, however, he had a more controversial brush with fame. egged on by Dec, he was in negotiations to front a show for Channel 4 called Confess. Incredibly, the show’s selling point was that it would encourage viewers to confess their sins on air, with a tagline: ‘ Share your sins, relieve your soul.’
Dermott was cast as the showbiz-savvy priest who, while not going so far as to offer them absolution as in a genuine confessional, would at least counsel them on the correct course of action.
A pilot show was shot, but once it was announced, the outrage from the Catholic Church was strong enough to see it quietly dropped. Some of the kinder remarks from church officials decried it as ‘intrusive’ and ‘superficial’.
So much for Father Dermott’s protestations that the show would ‘put a human face on the Church and encourage people to go to speak to their local pastor or minister.’
Dermott went back to the day job, while Declan’s star continued to rise. There have been no failures in Ant and Dec’s career. From SM:TV Live to I’m A Celebrity, Britain’s Got Talent and Saturday Night Takeaway, they have presided over hit after hit and won countless awards in the process.
Declan has been able to buy his mother a £600,000 house in the upmarket Darras hall area of Ponteland, near Newcastle, where neighbours include former england football captain Alan Shearer.
The family were devastated when their father, Foncey, died in 2011 at the age of 78. If anything, it cemented their faith, and Declan travels to the North-east regularly to attend mass with his mother.
It is a rare celebrity these days who will admit to a strong faith, but it speaks volumes of the bond between Declan and Dermott that he does not hesitate to speak out.
Indeed, when a newspaper found out about Dermott’s youth village, a story was published about the visits of his famous brother, which Declan said made him out to be ‘some religious hermit’.
Declan was understandably upset — but not for the reasons you might expect.
‘No, not the religious hermit bit,’ he boldly stated. ‘The bit that really bothered me in the story is they said I was 5ft 3in. That drove me totally mad. I know I’m short, but I’m not that short!’
he is, in fact, 5ft 6in. And there, in a nutshell, is what brings the two brothers together. humour and faith, in equal measure, make the material differences f ade i nto insignificance.
One suspects both will be strongly in evidence come this summer’s grand wedding.