Ant and Dec told the audience at Sunday's BAFTA TV Awards and the millions of viewers watching at home that they fully expected to be beaten as they took home the award for Entertainment Programme.
It was no surprise that, when the nominations for the BAFTAs were announced at the end of March, that the Geordie presenters were among the contenders, with their hit ITV programme Saturday Night Takeaway on the Entertainment shortlist and the lads up for Must See TV Moment for their jibes at Boris Johnson on I'm A Celebrity. Ant and Dec are of course no strangers to a winners' podium, given their record breaking winning streak at the National Television Awards, but they looked genuinely shocked to see off competition from the likes of Strictly Come Dancing and An Audience With Adele to win the first award of the night, when Saturday Night Takeaway triumphed.
Olivia Colman presented the hosts with their award and, prior to reading out the nominations, joked that the category should be renamed 'the Ant and Dec award,' and, after receiving the accolade from The Crown and Heartstopper actress, Dec said: "What a thrill! We were convinced we weren't going to get it last year. We just came for a bit of a party, so this is..." before being interrupted by their Takeaway co-star Stephen Mulhern, who shouted: "Thank you guys!"
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Dec continued: "This is a really wonderful cherry on the cake. This is for series 17 of Saturday Night Takeaway, which we shot with no studio audience. We were just in there walking around to the sound of our own footsteps and we were kind of going 'Is this any good? Is anyone watching? Clearly it was." Chipping in, Ant added: "We still love doing it. We just completed a series," before heaping praise on the whole Takeaway team.
Other early BAFTA TV Award winners included Cathy Tyson, who got Best Supporting Actress for her role in Help and Big Zuu's Big Eats which got Best Feature.
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