Advent Calendar 2020 Day 22: Ant & Dec's Geordie Christmas

Blummin' old style YouTube editing restrictions. Anyway, it's hard to think about given their apparent ubiquity these past three decades but the end of 1997 was a piss-or-get-off-the-pot time for McPartlin and Donnelly. Their first album not as PJ & Duncan, The Cult Of Ant & Dec, stalled at number 15 (in fairness lower than any of its four singles) and the end of their recording contract meant it was also their last. In the spring their first grown-up series, Ant & Dec Unzipped, had had decent notices (and featured the last TV material written by Eddie Braben, though apparently most of his ideas were deemed too surreal for the show) but Channel 4 didn't recommission it and the pair don't think much of it either, though it introduced them to some of the production staff who would go on to SMTV Live. There was however a Christmas special from a boat on the Tyne at the end of the year, here rendered in filmed-off-a-telly-vision with the kind of Don't Forget Your Toothbrush overexuberant youth audience you don't get any more being presented with Joe Pasquale (with the "what does Joe Pasquale sound like on helium" experiment three years before Frank Skinner did it), Maureen Rees pretending to steer the ship of course, Aled Jones, Rowland Rivron as the ghost of Christmas past - sounds about right - transplanted sporting locals Rob Andrew and Warren Barton, too little of obligatory Mackems Kenickie, briefly youth entertainment-omnipresent Page 3 girl Jo Guest, lots and lots of gags about drinking and a big ending that doesn't work. Don't worry for their future, they'll be on Saturday mornings by the same time next year.