A show filled with laughter and surprises
the Show Shows was Riverdance in 2013 – and they only got it at the very last minute.
Ant says: “Riverdance was the hardest one to learn. It never went right until we went live.
“One of us put a step wrong every single time we rehearsed it.
“But thankfully when we went live, it all went well.”
Dec recalls: “We ended up taking those guys on tour when we took Takeaway around the country and we did Riverdance every night, so that’s one we’ll always remember fondly.”
Viewers might recall Ant and Dec recreating Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble in March 2013, but their favourite End of the Show Show was when they doused Robbie Williams in buckets of water as he sang Singin’ In The Rain a month earlier.
Dec says: “We phoned Rob and he said ‘Yes, that’s one of my favourite ever musicals.’
Ant adds: “We rehearsed and rehearsed. It was brilliant, exactly how you wanted.”
Dec says: “We slammed him in the face with a bucket of water each at the end and I was like, ‘this works.’ I’ll remember that so fondly.”
The Undercover skits have tricked some of the biggest names in showbusiness and Ant’s favourite is when they fooled their Britain’s Got Talent boss Simon Cowell in 2014.
The pair donned bandanas, sunglasses and badly groomed beards and had a go at auditioning for American Idol where Cowell was on the judging panel.
The pair pretended to be brothers and performed Paula Abdul’s Opposites Attract to an extremely confused panel.
Talking of his favourite moments, Ant says: “Top one has got to be our Undercover on Simon Cowell.
“It was the first one we did. We flew to LA and auditioned for American Idol, which was really nerve-wracking.
“Also the prosthetic make-up didn’t turn up, so we had to do dodgy beards and stick-on earrings – but it worked.” ANT and Dec’s 100th episode of Saturday Night Takeaway was packed with a star-studded line-up and some nostalgic clips.
And as the Geordie duo celebrated reaching the landmark show at the weekend, we met one special guest who had an uncanny likeness to the boys.
Owen was jokingly introduced as Ant and Dec’s ‘love child’.
They then compared his face to a picture of Dec’s face swapped on to Ant’s head.
Dec joked Owen was a “handsome devil” as he presented him with a special 100th episode trophy.
Ant McPartlin and Dec Donnelly’s first episode of Saturday Night Takeaway, which also has a huge live studio audience, was broadcast more than 15 years ago.
It remains hugely popular and draws in more than seven million viewers. The pair were recently asked about their favourite moments of making the show.
Dec said: “We’ve done some scary stuff: abseiling down the building, collecting flags from the outside of the building, zip wiring, climbing up buildings, climbing down buildings.
“I broke my arm on a motorbike stunt one year.
“I don’t really like the scary stuff but they always manage to persuade me to give in and do it. Ant’s much better at those ones than me.
Ant added: “I’m not bothered so every time they give us a heights one I’m like, ‘Yes!’. You’d think that would put me at an advantage but it never works out that way. He always claws it back at the last minute or wins it back the following week.
“But yeah, we’ve done some pretty scary stuff over the years and some fun stuff as well that you’d never get to do if you weren’t on a telly show.”
The other famous faces making an appearance on Saturday were guest announcer Cuba Gooding Jr and of course roving reporter Scarlet Moffatt. As a surprise for viewers, the original title sequence from 2002 was shown at the start of the programme.