Declan Joseph Oliver "Dec" Donnelly (born 25 September 1975) is one half of the English acting and TV presenting duo Ant & Dec, with the other being Anthony McPartlin. He came to prominence in the children's drama series Byker Grove and as one half of the pop music duo PJ & Duncan. Since then, Ant & Dec have had a very successful career as TV presenters, presenting programmes such as SMTV Live, Friends Like These, Pop Idol, I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Britain's Got Talent, PokerFace, Push the Button Red or Black? and Text Santa. They returned to acting, starring in a 2002 Tribute to The Likely Lads and the 2006 film Alien Autopsy.
Donnelly is the youngest of seven children born to Irish emigrants, Anne and the now deceased Alphonsus Donnelly (died 2011). He has three brothers: Martin, Eamonn and Dermott (a Catholic priest), and three sisters: Patricia, Moyra and Camalia. His parents hailed from Draperstown, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, migrated to Newcastle, where they bought a house in 1958.
Amanda Louise Holden (born 16 February 1971) is a British actress and presenter. Among her roles are Mia Bevan in Cutting It, Sarah Trevanion in Wild at Heart, and the title role in Thoroughly Modern Millie, for which she was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award. Since 2007, Holden has been a judge on Britain's Got Talent.
She is married to record producer Chris Hughes. Her marriage to Family Fortunes presenter Les Dennis ended in divorce in 2003.
Holden was born in Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire to Judith Mary Harrison and Naval petty officer Frank Holden. Her parents split up when she was four and she was brought up in the village of Waltham Chase, by Harrison and stepfather Leslie Drew Collister. She joined the Bishop's Waltham Little Theatre Company when she was nine, and credits Angie Blackford as influential in her early stage career. When she was 16 the family moved to Bournemouth and ran a small B&B while Amanda herself studied Drama and English literature A levels with Terry Clarke and Charles Lamb at the Jellicoe Theatre, now part of Bournemouth and Poole College. She successfully auditioned for the independent drama school Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in the Wood Green area of North London when she was 18, graduating in July 1994.
Peter Dickson (born 23 June 1957) is a British radio presenter, television announcer and voice over artist. He is best known as the current voice of E4, as well as the announcer for The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent, The Price Is Right, Family Fortunes and Chris Moyles' Quiz Night
One of the most prominent TV voice artists in the UK today, Dickson has been the voice for hundreds of television shows, radio programmes and advertisements, mainly through his extensive work as an announcer in the gameshow genre.
Peter was educated at Belfast Royal Academy in Northern Ireland, and later graduated with a BA hons degree in Psychology at Queens University. He then became a journalist at the BBC and later moved to the presentation department at Radio Ulster. From there he moved on to BBC Radio 2 as a newsreader and music presenter; At 17 he was the youngest TV news presenter in the history of the BBC. During the 1980s and early 90s, working closely with Steve Wright on his Radio 1 afternoon and morning shows, Peter created, wrote and voiced many household name characters for the award winning programmes. In 1990, he launched Melody Radio in London, where he presented the breakfast show for three years. He contributed to two series of Quote Unquote for BBC Radio 4.
Britain's Got Talent (sometimes shortened to BGT) is a British television talent show competition which started in June 2007 and originated from the Got Talent series. The show is produced by FremantleMedia's Thames (formerly Talkback Thames) and creator Simon Cowell's production company SYCOtv. The show and its sister show Britain's Got More Talent are broadcast on ITV. Anyone of any age with some sort of talent can audition for the show. Acts compete against each other in order to gain the audience support while trying to win the title of "The winner of Britain's Got Talent". Each year, on the morning of the first show of the new series, Britain's Got Talent has a special program titled "Most Talented", featuring interviews of the winners from the previous series and their progress since winning.
Throughout the show, contestants must perform in front of the judges, and each year initial auditions have been held in front of a live audience. Auditions precede live shows, where the final 40 contestants (45 in 2012) perform nightly for a week in order to impress the British public. There have been six winners to date: Paul Potts, George Sampson, Diversity, Spelbound, Jai McDowall and Ashleigh and Pudsey. The winner of each series is given the opportunity to perform at the Royal Variety Performance in front of members of the British Royal Family, including Queen Elizabeth II. The winner also receives a cash prize, which from series 1 to 5 was £100,000, but was increased to £500,000 in series 6. Britain's Got Talent is known as one of Britain's biggest television talent competitions and has also proven popular throughout Europe. The series 3 live final brought in 17.3 million viewers, (a 64.6% audience share). On 18 October 2010, ITV announced that Cowell had signed a new three-year contract renewing Britain's Got Talent until 2013.
Anthony David "Ant" McPartlin (born 18 November 1975) is one half of the English comedy and television presenting duo Ant & Dec, with the other being Declan Donnelly. He came to prominence in the children's drama series Byker Grove and as one half of the pop music duo PJ & Duncan. Since then, Ant & Dec have had a very successful career as TV presenters, presenting programmes such as SMTV Live, Friends Like These, Pop Idol, I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Britain's Got Talent, PokerFace, Push the Button, Red or Black? and Text Santa. They have also returned to acting, starring in a 2002 Tribute to The Likely Lads and the 2006 film Alien Autopsy.
Ant's first appearance on television was on the children's workshop programme Why Don't You? but he rose to prominence playing PJ in the Children's BBC series Byker Grove. It was here that he first met Declan Donnelly, who was cast in the part of Duncan, and real life mirrored the programme as the two became best friends both on set and off. In the guise of "PJ & Duncan AKA", they had a number of hit records, starting with "Tonight I'm Free", a song that they had performed on the show. The two left the series in 1993.