Ben Mulroney

Benedict Martin Paul "Ben" Mulroney (born March 9, 1976) is a Canadian television host. He is the oldest son of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Early life

Mulroney was born in Montreal, Quebec and grew up in Ottawa, Ontario. He is the second of four children born to former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mila Pivnicki Mulroney, who is of Serbian descent. He attended the Hotchkiss School and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, with a major in history, from Duke University. He subsequently earned a Bachelor of Laws degree from Université Laval.

Career

Mulroney is best known as the host of the entertainment news program, etalk where he covers major events in entertainment, including the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and the Juno Awards. He is known for hosting Canadian Idol. From 2001 to 2002, he was entertainment reporter on Canada AM. He wrote a regular column for the Toronto Sun. In April 2009, Mulroney added radio show host to his résumé with the launch of the CHUM Radio show, etalk 20. The two-hour radio program is broadcast on 11 radio stations across Canada and counts down the top 20 chart-topping hits and includes celebrity interviews.

World Idol

World Idol (Germany: SuperStar Weltweit, Middle East: SuperStar El Alaam) was the title of a one-off international version of the television show Pop Idol, featuring winners of the various national Idol shows around the world competing against each other.

The performance show was held on Christmas Day 2003, with the results show held on New Year's Day 2004. It was made in the UK, using the set from the recently completed second series of Pop Idol. After presenting the competitors, viewers from the 11 participating countries were allowed to vote by telephone, but not for the participant from their home country. All participants sang in English except for Diana Karazon, who sang in Arabic.

British presenters Ant and Dec hosted the show in all English speaking countries, while local presenters hosted for their own country in the local language. The only exception to Ant and Dec's English speaking role was that CTV edited the show in Canada to use Canadian Idol host Ben Mulroney instead (the show on Fox, which used Ant and Dec as hosts, was not simulcast with the CTV feed, to prevent Canadians from calling the American toll-free number to vote for Ryan Malcolm). Victoria Beckham performed her UK No. 3 hit Let Your Head Go during the results interval.

Ant & Dec

Anthony McPartlin (born 18 November 1975) and Declan Donnelly (born 25 September 1975), known collectively as Ant & Dec or PJ & Duncan, are an English comedy and TV presenting and former music duo from Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

The duo first met as actors on the children's television show Byker Grove, during which and in their subsequent pop career they were respectively known as PJ & Duncan – the names of the characters they played on the show. Since then, they have had a very successful career as television presenters, presenting shows such as SMTV Live, Friends Like These, Pop Idol, Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, PokerFace, Push the Button, Britain's Got Talent, Red or Black?, and Text Santa. In 2006, they returned to acting with the film Alien Autopsy. The duo presented the 2015 Brit Awards and will also present the 2016 Brit Awards.

Ant is the taller of the two at 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m), and Dec is two inches shorter at 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m). To assist with identification, they follow the 180-degree rule; with the exception of some early publicity shots all of their television appearances and publicity photos have Ant on the left and Dec on the right.