Ant McPartlin and Dec Donnelly have revealed two major shows they turned down and admitted they recently declined some offers, ahead of their return to I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! for its 2026 series.
The pair are famed for working as a duo for more than 30 years, having first met on Byker Grove in the early 90s, where they starred in the teen drama as PJ & Duncan, and have since built a hugely successful TV career around their pairing.
They can usually be seen fronting the likes of I'm A Celeb and Britain's Got Talent, following the end of their hit show Saturday Night Takeaway, and in more recent years, they have turned to quiz shows with Ant and Dec's Limitless Win.
Podcast revelations
Back in January, they revealed they would be taking on a first in their three-decade career, as they announced that they were launching their first podcast series, Hanging Out With Ant & Dec.
It was on the latest episode of the podcast that Ant and Dec revealed that they turned Simon Cowell's ITV talent show numerous times before taking on the hosting role, and also revealed which other programme they could have been the faces of.
"We turned down Britain's Got Talent about three times, four times," Dec revealed on Hanging Out With Ant & Dec. "[We] kept going back and saying no, and they kept coming back and saying, 'No, no, you should consider this!' They sent us some tapes of the very early US versions, which were being hosted by Regis Philbin. And Regis is a very old-school American host who'd been around for years and years, and he didn't really have a role on the show."
Turning down The Big Breakfast
He went on: "He would just come out and introduce an act and he would disappear for ages and they sent us the clip and we were like, 'There is no role for a host. You don't need a host!'" Ant interjected: "It was just a montage of auditions, really," before Dec continued: "So we said no and then they went away and offered us again. We said, 'No, there's still no real role for a host'. Then they went well, we're doing a pilot, and Paul O'Grady hosted the pilot, and it was called Paul O'Grady's Got Talent."
"So they did a pilot of the show and it was all set in a studio and it didn't really work, and so they shelved it, and then they went back to looking at doing it in theatres again, and then they came back to us and said, 'If we developed the role for the host, would you reconsider it?' We went, 'Yeah, if you can make it so that we're actually part of the show', and we said if Simon [Cowell] is a judge, then yes." Ant added: "Because he wasn't gonna be a judge..."
While Ant and Dec did end up hosting the show, they also revealed they turned down presenting Big Breakfast. "We turned that down, and then they gave it to Johnny Vaughn and Denise Van Outen," Dec revealed. Ant then teased: "But we have turned down stuff recently which I won't name."
