Much as I respect the professional judgement of Ant and Dec, they got something totally wrong last weekend.
Because, fellas, the happiest part of the week was not the minute you spent on Saturday Night Takeaway giving away holidays.
In my house, unbridled joy did not erupt until half an hour later. That’s when Dec said: “Let’s go back to the Captain of Competitions, Andi Peters”, and the TV Gods finally answered every long-suffering ITV viewer’s prayers.
A miraculously timed technical fault treated us to a few beautiful seconds of silence – ended only by Ant spluttering: “We can’t hear Andi Peters.”
It could only have been more perfect if Ant had added: “But if you do want to know what Andi said, text this standard rate number or send a postcard to this random PO Box in Derby.”
Still, it’s live telly. Things go wrong. In retrospect, Dec probably wishes the sound had instead dipped at the start of the show when he told a woman in the audience “close your legs”. (No, me neither.)
Or at the end of the show, when he sent his beloved Newcastle to their first cup final in 24 years with a euphoric “Ha’way the lads!”
Then again, how was Dec supposed to know that some cheeky scamp was going to sneak an earpiece in Sven Botman’s ear and tell him: “Now, deflect Marcus Rashford’s tame shot over your flapping goalkeeper to put Man Utd into an unassailable two-goal lead”?
OK, there was probably no such cheeky scamp at Wembley.
Ant and Dec did produce another show-saving piece of earpiece tomfoolery on Takeaway, though.
Alison Hammond’s haunted hotel prank lifted an otherwise flat series opener, in which the studio audience’s whooping and hollering felt even more at odds with what we were actually watching on screen than it usually does.
The Hammond house of horror was her own fault, mind. Ant and Dec revealed they’d only done it because she’d publicly boasted they’d never get her. If that’s true, I have just one thing to say...
Dear Roy Keane, please boast publicly that Ant and Dec will never prank you.
Thanks.
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