Britain's Got Talent hosts Ant & Dec have explained why they almost quit the ITV reality show, admitting they "weren’t having a very nice time" with judge Simon Cowell. Explaining why they nearly left, the pair, who have hosted the show since its inception in 2007, said it was down to Cowell's timekeeping skills.
According to the duo, music mogul Cowell wouldn't turn up to film the show on time so they considered exiting the project.
Speaking about Simon on the Stick to Football podcast, Ant said: "He’s a really charming bloke. He’s funny, generous and we get on well with him. We’ve always kind of had a good relationship with him because we’re quite honest with him and I think he appreciates that."
He added: "He asks our opinion and trusts our opinion, and I think he respects the fact that we’ve been doing it for as long as we have."
Saying that it wasn't always plain sailing, Ant said that they had "been annoyed at him a few times over the years".
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Describing the moment they decided they wanted to exit BGT, Dec said: "We went to LA to see him to tell him we were going to leave Britain’s Got Talent because we weren’t having a very nice time."
Ant claimed that Cowell "was always late" and "was going through his period where he would just never turn up on time".
Elaborating on Ant's comments, Dec said: "We were in the show less and less. It's taking up a lot of our time. We're not really in the show, we might as well leave and put our energies elsewhere."
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Dec revealed that Cowell expressed disappointment over the prospect of them leaving and vowed to turn up on time, adding that the pair would be "featured more" and "have more fun with it".
"So we sat there having lunch and he went, 'I can’t believe you were thinking of leaving me’, and he leaned over in the restaurant in the middle of LA and started tickling me going, 'You will never leave me'," Dec added.
Cowell addressed the claims over his lateness in the duo's autobiography Once Upon a Tyne, published in 2021.
"They used to have a real issue with me being late and it used to drive them nuts," he said, before later adding of a meeting that the three of them had: "We had to come up with some kind of compromise, which now means we work earlier."
Britain's Got Talent airs on ITV1 and ITVX.
Read more Britain's Got Talent news on our dedicated homepage
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Harriet is a freelance news writer specialising in TV and movies at Digital Spy.
A horror enthusiast, she joined Digital Spy after working on her own horror website, reviewing films and focusing largely on feminism in the genre.
In her spare time, Harriet paints and produces mixed-media art. She graduated from the University of Kingston with a BA in fine art, where she specialised in painting. She also has an MA in journalism from Birkbeck University.
