Well that’s it - the last of the audition shows for Britain’s Got Talent 2010 has been and gone and it’s been one hell of a ride. It seems like we’ve had everything in this week’s show, from pigs to pole dancers, dance troupes to dummies, funny fellas to fathers and sons, monks to Madonna and everything in between. It was a virtual tour de force of all that makes Britain’s Got Talent great and was the perfect way to send off all the insanity, eccentricity, hilarity and phenomenal talent that’s been the 2010 auditions.

Piers, Simon and Amanda truly had their work cut out whittling down the 200 acts that made it through, but now we have our final 40 for what promises to be a rather spectacular bout of semi final fever. Trust us when we say we can’t wait to begin the next round…this is when it gets truly competitive as each act realises it’s make or break, sink or swim, dance or die!! (Well, not literally of course…).

7:30pm tonight will be the start of it all as the first eight acts go head to head for your vote, the chance to win £100,000 and that all important place at the Royal Variety Performance. It’s going to be a truly unforgettable week of talent - even your goldfish will be hard pushed to etch the next seven days out of their tiny aquatic minds!

As we saw last year, anything can happen. Even we never know what to expect, and we’re blimmin’ hosting the thing! The order of the day is to expect the unexpected and brace yourselves for a white knuckle rollercoaster ride!

We’ll keep you updated with all the backstage gossip as the week goes on, but in the meantime let us know if your favourites made it through, who you’re most excited about seeing and who you tip for the win! We may even pass a few of your messages on!

See you on the telly tonight!

Ant & Dec

©  2010

The copyright in this blog is owned by Ant and Dec. If you are using a quote for publication purposes, copyright law requires you to acknowledge officialantanddec.com as the original source.

It was a week for those of a somewhat loony disposition on BGT last Saturday. We started with Marlene showering the judges with gifts, a tactic which looked promising to begin with, but unfortunately turned into an act that was…well, a bit rubbish really. Although she did get it right by giving Simon a pair of Devil horns! Mark James, otherwise known as René and Renato had us convinced he was going to belt out a number from Phantom of The Opera, (as you would have heard Ant continually mention to him) but we got it completely wrong and he ended up confounding expectation with a performance that had less to do with Phantoms, and more to do with just being a little scary. Belting out “save your love my Darling” in an outfit that apparently took four hours to make. Do you reckon he got the bus to the Theatre dressed like that?

Thank goodness then for the ray of light provided by Twist and Pulse, who entertained with their own unique brand of ’streetomedy’, a mix of street dancing and comedy. With their bright hip hop outfits and body popping moves, they reminded us of ourselves back in our PJ & Duncan days with one small difference, they COULD actually dance, and we…um…couldn’t.

Talented London student Josh Barry continued the BGT tradition of finding great young singers, and helped set the tone for the good vibe the London auditions seemed to give off. Everyone was in a really good mood in old ‘Laandan’ town, not least Mr Grumpy himself Simon Cowell who was in an unusually laid back state of mind.

We had the obligatory BGT dance group in the form of ‘Ice’, who were almost forced to fire their own choreographers which caused quite a bit of drama backstage, and finally we had Paul Burling who Piers said was possibly greatest impressionist they’d ever had on the show. Trust us when we say that a standing ovation for a non-singer is no mean feat.  Could a non singer/dancer actually go all the way and win this year’s BGT?? Thoughts please?

Until next week,

Ant & Dec

©  2010

The copyright in this blog is owned by Ant and Dec. If you are using a quote for publication purposes, copyright law requires you to acknowledge officialantanddec.com as the original source.

So this weekend was the big one, what we’ve been waiting for the past 4 years we’ve been doing Britain’s Got Talent - the chance to bring the circus to our hometown of Newcastle. It was our chance to bring the judges to the Toon for the first time in BGT history and to prove once and for all (to one judge in particular) that Newcastle really HAS got talent. Senor Cowell was so smug and convinced that we wouldn’t find any talented Geordies in our search that he actually had a side bet on with us. With all of the world famous exports our fine city has produced - Cheryl Cole, Jimmy Nail, Alan Shearer, Newcastle Brown Ale, Us! - Simon should really have known better than to imply we wouldn’t find talent there in the North East.

First up was AKA, a dance troupe of young ladies who kicked off the show in spectacular style. The ladies, resplendent in gold and lashings of fake tan were a fantastic opening act and definitely had Mr. Cowell doubting his little wager.  It wouldn’t be a BGT audition if it weren’t for one or two more ‘eccentric’ acts and Flute Magic definitely fit that description. Their combo of magic tricks sound tracked to the flute must be one of the more bizarre acts we have ever seen but weirder still was the fact that Amanda and Piers actually put them through!

Connected, the boyband whose average age is 14, took to the stage to perform and you could almost feel every single female in the room let out a collective “ahhhhhh”. They got the crowd going with their closely arranged harmonies and slick dance moves. Simon is probably already picturing them packing out arenas in a year’s time. The other big find of the week has got to be Olivia Archbold, the 14 year old singing schoolgirl with the voice of an angel, which brings us to….

The Big Question Of The Week

Who has been your favourite BGT talented youngster?

From Connie Talbot to Shaheen Jafargholi to Andrew Johnston to George Sampson. Who’s been the best?

Finally this week, Different Dreams are sadly a double act we probably won’t be seeing perform at the Royal Variety performance anytime soon, much to their dismay. Unfortunately, they couldn’t quite cut it as a duo, nor could they by going solo. But they did finish off the first ever Newcastle auditions and much fun was had by all, especially us, as we were only 20 minutes from our local pub!

See you all next week X

©  2010

The copyright in this blog is owned by Ant and Dec. If you are using a quote for publication purposes, copyright law requires you to acknowledge officialantanddec.com as the original source.

Well, Britain’s Got Talent is back with a bang!

What a way to start the series - we saw everything from the ridiculous to the sublime! ‘Doubletake’ and their tambourines, sorry timbrels, kicked off this year’s series, didn’t quite make the cut and off we went. We’ve barely scratched the surface of the talent we saw but what about little Chloe who blew everyone away with her stunning rendition of ‘White Cliffs of Dover’… It was deservedly met with a standing ovation and a lot of leaky eyes from the audience. 

Tobias Mead got a fantastic reaction with a very creative performance, another skilled street dancer to add to the already bursting list of street dancers Britain’s Got Talent has discovered over the years. And wasn’t it great to see Kieran the drummer boy back? So many of you were gutted after he didn’t make it through last year, (as were we) so it was a real treat to see him back and finally getting the recognition he deserves. It was touch and go there for a while wasn’t it, but the judges’ decision to send him away, dump his Mum and Dad and let come back as a soloist was absolutely the right call! We both let out a collective sigh of relief and a shout of joy, (not easy, try it), when he made it through. As with Chloe, he’s a lovely kid with a good chance in the competition this year and is it just us or does he remind anybody else of a young Adrian Chiles!

The other big story of the show of course was that Simon was stuck down by flu, which meant there was a space on the panel that desperately needed to be filled. And who else can desperately fill a space quite like Louis Walsh!? The other two, Piers and Amanda were like school kids when the proper teacher is away and you’ve got a supply teacher in, they were quite mischievous. It was actually quite nice to have Louis around the place for a few days, and I think he enjoyed being out of his sheltered accommodation for a bit, bless him! And boy oh boy he absolutely loved that buzzer didn’t he? He couldn’t get enough of it, watch out for him bringing his own buzzer along to next year’s X Factor auditions!

Simon’s illness meant he missed out on one of the best dog acts we’ve ever seen on the show, Tina and her best friend Chandi. They were brilliant weren’t they!? Simon is a huge dog lover and is still gutted to this day that he wasn’t there for their audition.  Their appearance has created a bit of an argument between the two of us though, we can’t decide whether Kate and Gin the dog from series two are better than Tina and Chandi. We started to argue about it and we can’t quite agree so gang, please help us decide in our…

 Big Question Of The Week…

 Were Tina and Chandi better than Kate and Gin?

Let us know in the comments below!

Until next week,

Ant & Dec.

©  2010

The copyright in this blog is owned by Ant and Dec. If you are using a quote for publication purposes, copyright law requires you to acknowledge officialantanddec.com as the original source.

Phew…after months of tweaking, weeks of rehearsing and a whole heap of sleepless nights, we’re finally ready to go.

Push The Button is just around the corner and our excitement level couldn’t be higher! In fact, we’ve been getting a little over excited - if we see a button, we now feel obligated to push it.  If you see us driving around with our hazard lights on, chances are it’s because that big red button in the middle of the dash board has just proved too tempting not to push! People are getting sick of Dec trying to prod their belly button…it’s starting to get weird…

The last few weeks have been nothing but practice, practice, practice. It’s been amazing to sink our teeth into a brand new show, and honestly we couldn’t be happier with the way it’s been going.

We met our first two families on Monday, the Greenwoods from Warrington and the Fosters from Coventry. We paid a surprise visit to both families, and as you’d expect in order to keep our visit precisely what it was meant to be: a surprise, we had to keep a fairly low profile. That meant lots of sneaking, whispers and general silence as we approached. 16 year old Lucibeth Greenwood opened her front door, saw us and let out a scream so piercing it practically woke the entire neighbourhood! She frantically called the rest of her family to let them know they’d made the show and as her relatives popped round to see if the news was true the screams got louder and louder. At one point we thought the mother Carol was gonna lose control of her bodily functions. It was hysterical and we couldn’t have planned a funnier reaction - absolutely brilliant.

After our surprise visit to Warrington, we headed to Coventry to drop in unannounced on the second family. Helen Foster had popped to the local Sainsbury’s for some shopping - so after a few minutes of pretending to work the checkout (Dec doing the bleeping and Ant doing the bagging), we jumped out to surprise here. Her face was an absolute picture - we were the last people on Earth she expected to bump into. The whole store soon knew of our arrival and very quickly a crowd gathered to cheer us on. We left to a rousing cry of “C’mon Coventry!” and some very odd stares from some old ladies doing their weekly shop.

We can’t wait for both the families to go head to head, they’re both great fun and willing to do whatever it takes to win the cash prize, and that’s the fighting talk we like to hear!

So for now it’s back to rehearsals, practice and a whole lot o’button pushing in preparation for the first show.

We’ll see you on Saturday night, 7:45pm on ITV1. In the meantime get on over to our official Facebook Page to play the warm up game!

©  2010

The copyright in this blog is owned by Ant and Dec. If you are using a quote for publication purposes, copyright law requires you to acknowledge officialantanddec.com as the original source.