Britain's Got Talent returns for a brand new series this weekend and hosts Ant and Dec have told how they cheekily wound up brand new judge, Bruno Tonioli who has joined the show following David Walliams' departure.
The new series launches on ITV on Saturday, April 15 and cheeky hosts Ant and Dec will be back on ITV Saturday prime time once more - just a week after winding up the latest series of Saturday Night Takeaway - and the Geordie pranksters will be at the helm. Ahead of the show launch the pair revealed they'd been playing tricks on the Italian, who was part of the Strictly Come Dancing panel for 15 years until 2019.
Speaking ahead of the series, Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly said that on the first day of auditions, they gave the new judge a number of different rules to confuse him.
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"We, quite mischievously, kept telling him different rules," they said. "So when he hit his golden buzzer on the first session of the first day, mid-way through an act, we told him not to worry because he had another golden buzzer tomorrow, and that he had one every day. That might have something to do with the fact we have more golden buzzers this year."
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The fun was flipped, too, when Ant and Dec joined forces with Bruno to prank the other three judges, Alesha Dixon, Amanda Holden and Simon Cowell. Dec added: "We also played a prank on the rest of the judges by going into their room and doing a BGT quiz, but secretly gave Bruno all the answers in advance. That was quite fun to see the look on everyone else's face."
Ant added: "Much to Simon's annoyance that somebody else would win a quiz about his show. He quickly worked out it was a prank and didn't like it! But we loved it." Amanda described having energetic Tonioli on the judging panel as "putting a Berocca into water and watching it fizz".
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