Controversies
In 1997, Welsh pop duo 'And all because...' successfully obtained legal aid and filed legal papers against Ant & Dec, along with their management team, record company and producers for copyright infringement over the song "Falling", and this was subsequently Ant & Dec's last single.
Law firm Olswang were commissioned to investigate the 2005 British Comedy Awards when the producers overturned the voting public's first choice, The Catherine Tate Show in favour of Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway for the People's Choice Award. The incident is also the subject of an investigation by media regulator Ofcom.
Following allegations of fraud in 2007, an investigation by auditors Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu discovered that two shows, Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon and Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, had defrauded viewers participating in phone-ins. The programmes were subject to a further investigation by Ofcom which found that between January 2003 and October 2006 Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway had:
- selected competition finalists before the telephone lines were announced as closed
- staggered the selection of competition finalists which meant that viewers entering the competition did not have a fair and equal chance of winning
- selected finalists on the basis of their suitability to be on television and where they lived
- selected an individual already known to the production team to be placed on the shortlist of potential winners and who went on to win the competition
and between September and October 2005, Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon had:
- on six occasions in the Prize Mountain competition, selected winners based on their suitability to be on screen
- failed to account for almost half of the competition entries
One episode of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! was also found to be in breach of Ofcom rules.
The pair were ridiculed for their alleged participation in the fraud on the front cover of the satirical magazine Private Eye.
On 10 September 2008, Ant & Dec announced that the frauds "will never happen again", insisting that a high-tech system and strict rules will ensure viewers cannot lose out with poorly monitored premium rate phone lines. On 30 September 2008, it was reported that Ant & Dec were being sued for $30 million by Greek American stand-up comedian and actor ANT for using his name in the United States. The lawsuit, among other things, alleges trademark infringement and fraud. The suit was dismissed in May 2010. In October 2009, Kelly Brook claimed that Ant & Dec had been the cause of her removal as the fourth judge on Britain's Got Talent. She claimed that she was asked to leave the show after she upset the pair.
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