Ant and Dec discuss their 'first date'

Ant and Dec have opened up about their first meeting two decades ago - but say it wasn't 'love at first sight'. The Britain's Got Talent hosts, who won the Outstanding Achievement Award at the TV Choice and TV Quick Awards, have been working together for more than 20 years. Dec revealed how the two became friends after Ant invited him to a football match. "We met on the set of Byker Grove when we were 13 years old. We are now both 34 this year," he said. "When I first met Ant he was a right miserable git. "It wasn't love at first sight. Ant sent me a Fred Flintstone Christmas card that first Christmas, and it said 'Dear Dec, have a yabba dabba do Christmas'. "Then it said 'PS do you fancy going to the Newcastle v Swindon match?' "So that was our first date and we forged an amazing friendship from there and I wouldn't have had it any other way." The pair have starred in shows including SM:TV Live, CD:UK, Pop Idol, Saturday Night Takeaway, I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! and Britain's Got Talent.

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.