Inside the final ever Saturday Night Takeaway as Ant and Dec tease 2 hour extravaganza
After 22 memorable years on our screens, Saturday Night Takeaway is officially set to bow out with a two hour star-studded extravaganza this weekend, as they bring to a close their epic staple of Saturday night telly for one last time. Ahead of the final show, hosts Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly teased what lies ahead as they gave their fans an exclusive behind the scenes glimpse of the show preparations on Friday’s edition of This Morning (12 April.)
While sitting down to chat to presenters Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary, the Geordie Duo fondly looked back at their time on the show over the past two decades and discussed some of their most memorable moments with a bittersweet sense of nostalgia. Yet while the trip down memory line packed an emotional punch for many viewers, it also gave eagle-eyed fans their first glimpse at the set construction ahead of Saturday’s show.
Seated on an outdoor stage surrounded by scaffolding, Dec revealed exactly how the final show had come about and how they’d decided to bow out of the series in style. He explained: “It’s a big one to start with. We all kind of sat down at the beginning of the series, or before the series had even started and said right, we know what we’re going to do this series, but how do we end this thing?”
Dec added: “I think we kind of came to the conclusion that the best way to do it, is to look back over the 22 years of being on air and just kind of celebrate it and celebrate the journey we’ve been on with our audience. It’s kind of a look back, but also going out with a big party.”
Alison then revealed that the final episode of Saturday Night Takeaway featured not one, but three stages as she cheekily teased a potential takeover of the show with a mocked up 'Ali & Derm's This Morning Takeaway' sign, before asking the boys whether they’d paid for the huge finale party themselves, or had help.
Dodging the question with a laugh, Ant then weighed in and said: “It’s a two hour extravaganza, so it’s normally 90 minutes but we’ve extended it to two hours, because we’ve got this stage here, right at the front of TV centre, a stage back there and we’ve obviously got the studio inside. It’s the biggest audience we’ve ever had.”
Likening the show to a music festival, the pair also went on to tease a number of new additions among their look back, in order to keep the show fresh and exciting while still nodding back to their roots.
Ant added: “You want to make sure you get enough new stuff in and fun stuff, so it’s not just a look back for two hours. And it’s not! We’ve got the final Ant vs Dec, we’ve got goals, and we’ve also got the Get Me Out of Here restaurant revenge.”
In addition to a number of unique games, gags and laugh-out-loud fun, the show will also feature a star studded guest lineup including Girls Aloud, S Club, Kaiser Chiefs, Tony Hadley and a whole host of TV icons such as Holly Willoughby, Scarlett Moffatt, Oti Mabuse, Simon Cowell, Davina McCall, Rylan and Amanda Holden!
As excitement builds for the upcoming finale, the end of an era has also proved harder than expect for Ant, as he admitted: “It’s been quite hard this week, knowing it’s the final week of rehearsals and script meetings and stuff. So we’ve kind of kept a lid on it until now - until we got here and kind of saw the stage - it feels quite final.”
However, Dec still stood by their decision to bring the show to an end - for now - as he explained: “When we first came to the decision to rest it, we did it because 20 series feels like a good time to do it, and we told our management first. We said we want to rest it and do other stuff, but we reserve the right between now and the end to change our minds several times - and we have! But I think we know in our heart of hearts that it’s the right thing to do both for the show and for us personally.”
Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway concludes Saturday 13 April at 7pm on ITV and ITVX
