Before becoming the hosts of shows like Britain’s Got Talent, I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! and Saturday Night Takeaway, Ant and Dec were best known to a generation of children (and many older viewers) for fronting SM:TV Live.
The Saturday morning show was known for its madcap and chaotic atmosphere, as well as the celebrity guests they roped into the fun.
However, in a new interview with HuffPost UK, the duo admit that not every star who came on the show was as willing to get into the anarchic SM:TV spirit.
Asked for a celebrity who was more reluctant to join the fun, they both name Christina Aguilera, with Ant recalling: “She sat there in her shades, and wouldn’t take them off. It was a pre-recorded interview, because she didn’t want to do it live.
“Everything pointed towards it being a bad interview. And it turned out to be a bad interview.”
Dec continues: “I remember Jennifer Lopez coming down, and seeing that whole thing about having six dressing rooms and room temperature Evian – all the riders and stuff.
“She was really lovely, but yeah, it was a big old stink around the studio, ‘she needs this, she needs that’. We had very few bad celebs, but we had a lot of entertaining riders and stuff.”
The pair also speak about the rocky start that SM:TV Live got off to, although the show’s fortunes were eventually reversed thanks to a certain fellow Geordie.
“The first kind of [big] guest we had on was Sting,” Ant says. “I think he agreed to do it because we were Geordies.
“And as soon as we got him, other people started saying, ‘oh if Sting’s been in it, then I’ll do it’. And in the end, everybody who was anybody was on the show.”
Dec agrees: “There were a few weeks where I think we had, in succession, Blur, U2, Paul McCartney.
“We were sat interviewing Paul McCartney – and that was a proper ‘pinch me’ moment. We’d come from hardly anybody watching it, and there we were with a Beatle. I couldn’t believe it.”
Ant and Dec return for a new series of Saturday Night Takeaway on Saturday 25 February on ITV.
Read the full exclusive interview with Ant and Dec on HuffPost UK this Saturday.