[Feefs]

As if to prove that's what they had in mind all along, this is from an interview with Ant and Dec on the PI site ...

Pop Idol has been the perfect vehicle for you two, hasn't it?
Ant: Absolutely. We were fans of Popstars and Big Brother and the way Pop Idol was sold to us was that they wanted us to have fun with it. Obviously there'd be a lot of tears as it's a contest, but we could do something lighter. So it took us about two seconds to say yes.
Dec: We were only supposed to come on board in the later stages but we went down to a few of the auditions and had so much fun with the contestants that we kept going back.