Dermot O'Leary and Rochelle Humes hit out at tardy Simon Cowell for always being late after Ant & Dec almost quit BGT
DERMOT O'Leary and Rochelle Humes hit out at tardy Simon Cowell for always being late after Ant & Dec almost quit Britain's Got Talent.
The Geordie pair were fed up with the show guru’s timekeeping and former X Factor host Dermot and Saturdays singer Rochelle revealed they'd had the same frustrations with their former boss over the years.
The topic came up on This Morning today – which Dermot hosted with Rochelle – and the pair exchanged stories of Simon's nightmare timekeeping.
Dermot said the music boss is like infamous diva Mariah Carey and operates on his own schedule.
He revealed: "When I saw this (story) I mean, just empathy, I've got a lot of empathy for them."
When guest Matthew Wright asked how late Simon would be, Dermot replied: "Well he is rather late, like Mariah late …
"I think it was just 'Cowell Time' so it is like, somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. Somewhere only he operates in, and then there is the rest of the world."
And Rochelle added: "Five hours maybe, it could be hours."
And when guest Nicola Thorp commented: "I think when you are consistently late for things it shows a lack of respect off other people."
Rochelle nodded and remarked: "As Nicola, said if you are known for that, it is a bit…"
The Geordie duo revealed that waiting for Simon Cowell to turn up at auditions “drives us nuts” as they shared some of the frustrations and tensions they felt on the hit show.
In their new autobiography Once Upon A Tyne, Dec, 44, explains: “A couple of hours after we arrive at the theatre, we focus on one of the key elements of any BGT audition day: waiting for Simon Cowell to turn up.
“Once we’ve got started on that, we’ll often film interviews with some of that day’s acts, then have a bit of food, then get back to waiting for Simon.”
Cowell, 60, who also contributes to the book, admits: “They used to have a real issue with me being late and it used to drive them nuts.”
It prompts Ant to quip: “We’ve still got a real issue with him being late and it still drives us nuts.”
The TV favourites reveal how matters came to a head when they became infuriated by Simon’s lateness — and footage they had recorded being edited out.
They complained that having large parts of their footage edited out of the final show was wasting their time.
The pair told horrified ITV chiefs they planned to walk away from telly’s most popular entertainment show — forcing Simon to desperately fight to win them back.
Describing the dispute, Ant, 44, says: “It was on a trip to America, in 2012, where we had to have a serious conversation with Simon.
“The previous series of BGT had been especially tricky for us two.
“The audition days had been very long, which in itself we don’t mind, but after filming interviews and interacting with every single act, as well as making jokes, giving reactions and everything else we always do, we found that when the show went out on TV, we hardly seemed to feature in it at all.
“We began to feel that we were wasting our time doing the auditions because all the footage of the work we were doing was ending up on the cutting-room floor.
“And, what’s more, with Saturday Night Takeaway about to come back into our schedule, we could have been putting our efforts into that in January, when the auditions happen.
“The experience left us feeling like we were being sidelined.”
Dec adds: “We’d been to see the bosses at ITV and told them we were strongly considering leaving BGT.
“At that stage, it felt like it may as well have been anyone hosting the show and we said that when our current contract expired, we thought it was time to move on.
All the footage of the work we were doing was ending up on the cutting-room floor
“This isn’t something we’re in the habit of doing and they aren’t easy conversations to have, but we felt like honesty was the best policy.
“I remember waking up in Birmingham on the last day of the 2012 tour, opening my curtains and thinking, ‘Well, this is the last time I’ll be doing this’.”
The complaints led to Simon inviting the duo to meet him in Los Angeles, where they held clear-the-air talks as he made a frantic bid to persuade them to stay.
Ant says: “The ITV bosses told Simon about the conversation we’d had with them and he asked to meet. We agreed to catch up with him in LA to talk about it.
“We’ve always had a lot of respect for him and, whatever happened, we wanted to talk to him face to face.”
Dec adds: “The three of us went to a restaurant in West Hollywood called Ceconni’s and we sat outside, partly so we could soak up the glorious Californian sunshine, but mainly so Simon could smoke.
"And it’s worth mentioning that Simon was only one minute late for that meeting, which for him is the equivalent of being three days early.
“The three of us sat down and me and Ant went either side of him, so we could do the full pincer movement.
“He started by saying how he’d thought the last series was amazing, how well it had gone, how pleased he was with the talent, and then he asked us how it had been from our side.”
Ant explains: “And then we let him have it with both barrels.
"We told him everything — that we weren’t being used, that we could be doing other stuff, that maybe someone else should take over.
“To be fair to Simon, he sat there, took it all and listened intently for four, maybe five cigarettes.”
We’d been to see the bosses at ITV and told them we were strongly considering leaving BGT
Dec says: “He made a promise to us: that things would change and that we’d never feel like that again.
“He desperately wanted us to stay and we told him we’d do the next series and see how it went — and, to be fair to him, he was as good as his word, things did change.
“At the end of the evening, Simon offered us a lift back to our hotel in his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce.
"We were only staying around the corner, but apparently nobody walks anywhere in LA; plus, we’d never been in a Rolls-Royce before, so we said yes, settled the bill and made our way to the car.”
Commenting in the book, Simon adds: “If they’re p****d off, they’ll tell me to my face.
"And there’s no drama. There’s no entourage.
“If they’ve got something to say, they say it themselves, which I respect.”
He adds: “We had to come up with some kind of compromise, which now means we work earlier.”
BGT returns to our screens on Sunday with a pre-recorded show revealing the semi-finalists.
Bosses were forced to pull the series off air earlier this year due to the Covid-19 shutdown.
The live semis will then begin on September 5 — but Simon will be absent after suffering a broken back in a horrific electric bicycle accident earlier this month.
He hopes to make his comeback in time for the series finale.
Ant and Dec have hosted the show — which is now in its 14th series — since it launched in 2007.
Opera singer Paul Potts was the first winner.
The show remains one of the most popular programmes on ITV with around ten million viewers still tuning in.
Copyright © 2020 Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, extracted from Once Upon A Tyne: Our Story Celebrating 30 Years Together On Telly, published by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group on 3rd September 2020, hardback price £20 (eBook and audio also available).
- A donation has been made to the Prince’s Trust on Ant and Dec’s behalf for this serialisation.
Duo have long been Si’s guys
ANT and Dec first worked with Simon Cowell on the debut series of Britain’s Got Talent in 2007.
The pair signed a two-year golden handcuffs deal with ITV when they began hosting the new show.
Since then, they have fronted all 14 series, bar one in 2018 when Dec hosted the live shows alone with Ant in rehab.
The pair also presented ITV game show Red Or Black, which was created by Simon and his team.
It first aired on ITV in 2011 but was cancelled after the second series, in 2012, failed to ruffle the ratings.
Ant and Dec also got Simon involved in their hit series Saturday Night Takeaway in 2014 – pranking him in an episode of American Idol, on which he was a judge.
Simon stood by Ant when he went to rehab after he was found guilty of drink-driving in April 2018.
The mogul said: “We’ve known each other a long time. You stand by people you work with. We stand by friends. We’re all human.”
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