There’s currently a lot of excitement in the air among 90s kids after Ant and Dec revealed they’d filmed a special documentary with Cat Deeley looking back at the story of SM:TV Live.
But on Tuesday, fans were transported back to where it all very first started for the Saturday morning trio with a look at their original screen test – and it’s fair to say they came a long way during their time working together.
Cat had a blast from the past when she appeared on This Morning, after hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield revealed how the daytime show had a surprising connection to SM:TV.
It turns out Ant, Dec and Cat filmed their first screen test together for SM:TV in the This Morning studio in 1998, with the footage then played during Cat’s interview.
It saw her introducing herself to Ant and Dec, who were then better known as PJ and Duncan, before they made a series of awkward jokes.
Cringing at some of her lines, Cat repeated: “A ‘fresh and funky show’?!”
She added: “I don’t remember anything about it at all. I just remember we were on your set.
“You always check out your barnet and what you’re wearing, and I’m alright, I’m having an All Saints moment. But then Ant has got his fringe and Declan has got this big collar. But I’m very Brummie at the time.”
Cat previously said that it took her, Ant and Dec a while to make the show a success after it launched, admitting they were initially “rubbish”.
Writing in The Big Issue’s Letter To My Younger Self column, she said: “People forget, when we started SM:TV we were rubbish. And nobody watched it at all.
“It only stayed on air because Nigel Pickard, who was in charge of ITV kids’ programmes at the time, said: ‘We’ve got nothing else to fill the slot with. I know they’re rubbish now, but I think they’ve got something; let’s just keep them on, no one’s watching anyway.’
“So we had this amazing luxury, where we were all learning together. And because we were surrounded by a brilliant crew it came together, there was a lovely chemistry between myself and Ant and Dec.
“Also, we all genuinely really liked each other.”
Ant, Dec and Cast hosted SM:TV Live together for three years, before the Geordie duo stepped down in 2001, with Cat later hosting with the likes of James Redmond, Tess Daly and Brian Dowling.
SM:TV was known for its unpredictable – and usually fairly chaotic – live studio segments, which included recurring features like the quiz Challenge Ant, the game show Wonky Donkey and Chums, a weekly parody of Friends.
Earlier this month, Ant and Dec confirmed that an SM:TV reunion special, featuring themselves alongside Cat, has already been filmed.
The one-off documentary will look back at the story of the hit Saturday morning kids show and how it came about and will air later this year.
During an appearance on Zoe Ball’s Radio 2 Breakfast Show, Ant said they would love to host a one-off special of SM:TV Live on a Saturday morning, but “doesn’t know if we can” in the current circumstances.
The presenting duo were previously tipped to have been reuniting with Cat for a one-off instalment of SM:TV in 2018, to commemorate the show’s 20th anniversary.
However, these plans were seemingly quashed when Ant decided to take some time out of the spotlight to focus on his recovery, following his arrest for drink-driving.