Ant & Dec is the collective professional name for the entertainment act of Declan Donnelly and Anthony McPartlin. Throughout the 2000s they had a highly-rated Saturday-night ITV show, called Saturday Night Takeaway. It was the initial competition for the BBC Wales version of Doctor Who when it returned to the network in 2005. An early sign of the strength of the revitalised Doctor Who was that it trounced Ant & Dec in the ratings, breaking their three-year hold on Saturday night audiences.
Declan Donnelly was the one-time domestic partner of actress Clare Buckfield who appeared in several Big Finish Productions audio plays.
Years later, they were involved in the National Television Awards Sketch 2011.
NTA sketch
In the sketch, Ant & Dec knew the Eleventh Doctor. They had been bound in invisible space handcuffs and needed the Doctor to release them. Dermot O'Leary told them that the Doctor was a little too busy to do so.
Like other celebrities in the tongue-in-cheek sketch, it's difficult to say that Ant & Dec are actually a part of the DWU.
