Ant and Dec are celebrating their first UK number one after topping the singles chart with their revived hit Let's Get Ready To Rhumble. The TV presenters took the top spot following a hilarious performance of the pop-rap fusion track on their show Saturday Night Takeaway last weekend, prompting the tune to soar up the iTunes chart as fans rushed to download it.
Let's Get Ready To Rhumble – originally released in 1994 when it reached number nine – stormed to the top of the mid-week charts and held the position all week, no fewer than 17 years after the duo's chart career came to an end. Ant and Dec are stunned. "Wow. This week has been crazy!" Ant, 37, told Officialcharts.com. "We never expected such an amazing reaction to us performing the song on the show. To be number one in the official charts is just unbelievable." His presenting counterpart, Dec, also 37, added: "To get a number one single with this song 19 years later is very surreal, but we're genuinely chuffed." The pair had several hits in the 1990s when they were known as PJ and Duncan, their character names from TV drama Byker Grove. And they briefly returned to their alter-egos to perform the song last weekend, showing off their original dance moves and raps as they belted out the track.
The popular duo had TV audiences in stitches when they sang on their show Saturday Night Takeaway, which featured fellow 90s pop acts Five, Atomic Kitten and Blue. "We thought, well, we could possibly dust off the old baseball caps, and give it a go, for a laugh," Ant told ITV's Daybreak. "The production team on Saturday Night Takeaway went mad, 'Oh yeah, we remember that song. Let's do it'." Dec added: "We did a little bit of rehearsal on Thursday. We had four hours in our schedule, to rehearse the dance. We spent an hour and it all came back to us. We've obviously done it so many times in the past." The presenters, who knocked The Saturdays' What About Us featuring Sean Paul off the top stop, tweeted: "Thanks to you mental lot who downloaded the track. It's all down to you. We are no1! Still can't believe it! A".Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly plan to donate the profits of the single to Childline.
