ANT and Dec came to blows in a lift before going live on national television.
The long-time pals, Declan Donnelly and Ant McPartlin, both 44, got into a punch-up early in their career as they were trying to make their names as pop stars PJ and Duncan.
They were supposed to perform on GMTV’s Fun in the Sun with Anthea Turner, which was broadcasting from Torremolinos in Spain.
But the boys had been given the day off before their big appearance and decided to enjoy a few pints.
They opened up about it in their new book Once Upon a Tyne: Celebrating 30 years together on telly.
“It was a special summer holiday version of the ITV breakfast show, in 1995, we were promoting Stuck On U,” Ant described.
“Our tour manager Kim Glover told us we had the day to ourselves before appearing on GMTV the following morning… so we went to the pub.”
As the Geordie boys got a few pints deep, Dec decided it would be best to be back at the hotel by 10pm so that they were not hungover for their performance the next day.
Ant said to Dec at the time: “What the hell are you going to bed for?”
Dec insisted on leaving and started “stumbling towards the lift,” but that set Ant off, “something about that incensed me and I lost it.”
Ant then barked at Dec: “Don’t you dare walk away from me when I’m talking to you.”
Dec refused to back down and said: “who the hell does he think he was, talking to me like that?”
He also admitted in Ant “was really pushing my buttons.”
They continued to argue in the lift all the way back up to the room, but Dec decided to put his fingers in his ears and started saying, “la la la la, I can’t hear you.’
That really pushed Ant over the edge who said in the book: “That made my blood boil… I punched Dec in the chest.”
Dec then tried to knock Ant’s cap off his head, but admitted they boys were better at showbiz than they were at fighting: “I didn’t quite hit the target and ended up just punching the peak of his cap.”
“I proved Dec is rubbish at fighting when he’s had a few.”
Tour manager Kim had to step in to break the boys up but not before they engaged in a bit more verbal sparring.
But two hours later they were up and in make-up chairs getting ready to perform, but still refused to talk to each other.
They claimed they have not had another physical altercation in the 25 years since their Spanish stoush.
Ant and Dec’s new book is full of shocking revelations, with it also being revealed that the long-term showbiz partners and best friends almost split up at the height of Ant’s addiction battle.
Dec wrote: “Since 1990 we’ve made every decision together for the sake of Ant and Dec. Every discussion we’ve ever had has been ‘what are we going to do? What’s best for us?’
“And now suddenly, we had to think about ourselves as individuals. ‘What do I want to do? What’s best for me?’. That felt like an alien mindset to adopt and it was very frightening.”
In April 2018, Ant, 44, was convicted of drink driving and went to rehab.
In January of the same year he’d also announced that he and wife Lisa Armstrong were splitting after ten years of marriage.
They’ve now divorced and Ant is in a relationship with his former personal assistant Anne-Marie Corbett.
When he hit rock bottom it forced him to cancel the Britain’s Got Talent live shows and I’m A Celebrity that year.
But it was while Ant and Dec were making ITV show Ant and Dec’s DNA Journey, which aired last year, that they patched things up.
