Saturday Night Takeaway and I'm A Celeb hosts Ant and Dec have admitted that if social media existed back in their early days, they may well have been 'cancelled'.
Anthony McPartlin and his co-host Declan Donnelly, both 47, recently detailed some of their biggest TV blunders and prime time divas worked with throughout their thirty years in the showbiz industry.
And despite their monumental popularity and high rating as TV hosts, the pair have admitted that they 'would have been cancelled' if social media was looming when their careers started to blossom.
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The Express reports that over the years, the comedy duo have met with some big names including Christina Aguilera, Paul McCartney and Jennifer Lopez – to name a few, but one celebrity encounter that would have played out very differently nowadays was with Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash.
According to Dec the music maker 'dropped a couple of F-bombs live on the kids’ show' back in the 2000s. Recalling the occurrence in an interview with The Huffinginton Post, he said: “There was no social media!” adding: “[Now] it would be on there in seconds.”
Ant continued: “We were very lucky that it was on air in a time where we could learn our craft and make mistakes, and people might talk about it at school on Monday," before Dec joked: “Thank God, because we wouldn’t be here now. We’d have been cancelled 10 times over!”
Outbursts like this typically go viral by spreading across popular social media networks which can lead to a person being 'cancelled'. Cancel culture is a relatively new and popular phenomenon, which many celebrities have been vocal about over the past few years.
Those who are deemed to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner are 'cancelled' by being ostracized, boycotted or shunned by the public or industry in which they work. This has recently included the likes of Kevin Spacey, Chrissy Teigen, Kanye West and J.K Rowling.
Ant and Dec started out in the 1990s as teen actors in Byker Grove, before moving on to a pop career. After the pair had made waves in the music world, they decided to move into presenting.
The duo were then part of SM:TV Live alongside Cat Deeley which catapulted them into fame. Nowadays, the comedy favourites are best known for their shows Saturday Night Takeaway and I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!
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