Matt Littler and Darren Jeffries: Aiming for a double dose of success

Jun 18 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

A startling finale to one of TV’s best-loved double acts could lead the way to competition for Ant and Dec. Laura Davis reports

IF YOU had graduated from children’s television by the early 90s, or were still young enough to enjoy Bagpuss without wondering why there seemed only to be five episodes, then you may not remember the classic pop song, Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble.

With their performance of the catchy lyrics – “Watch us wreck the mic, watch us wreck the mic, watch us wreck the mic. Psyche!” – it was clear that the Geordie lads, despite being nominated for a Brit Award, were destined to follow a different career path.

And, whether or not you have heard of PJ and Duncan, you would have to have been living in an electricity-free commune to be unfamiliar with their later guise of Ant and Dec, Saturday night prime time superstars.

From I’m a Celebrity to Britain’s Got Talent, there has been no other duo to rival their presence on screen, but perhaps it is time for them to start looking over their shoulders.

Here come Matt Littler and Darren Jeffries, aka Max and OB, from Hollyoaks, who, having left the Chester-based soap, are hoping to grab some of the limelight.

They have plenty in common with Ant and Dec, too – all coming from a series aimed at young people – and they have also, on screen at least, attempted to record a hit single – the pair and Max’s dad, Gordon, rapping Get Down With That Thing.

Matt and “Daz”, who won Best On-Screen partnership at the 2008 British Soap Awards, have already sent their first presenting showreel off to Channel 4 and are nervously awaiting the results.

But Matt says, despite looking forward to the future, it wasn’t easy leaving Hollyoaks behind.

“I finished filming about a month ago, and it was really emotional leaving,” he says. “All my mates from the cast were in the final scene. Me and Daz were looking at each other knowing it was our last moment on the show.

“We’ve got on brilliantly from the start. Winning the award with him at the end was the cherry on the cake.”

Known for being the only character on the soap with scruffy hair, standing out from the other uber-groomed characters, Matt didn’t play the typical partying Hollyoaks character.

While the rest of his friends were busy drinking and falling in and out of love, Max was changing nappies.

“I remember saying to the producers, ‘Max is a young lad looking after a four-year-old boy. I don’t think he’s going to have time every morning to shave and do his hair’. So let’s start making him less groomed and more ‘just done enough’.”

Max lost his father, Gordon, and stepmother Helen in a car crash while in his early twenties, and – along with help from best friend OB – was forced to raise their son Tom, alone.

The surrogate dads soon became two of the show’s most popular characters, and when they announced their departure, the producers were keen to give them both a great finale.

In February, OB left the fictional borough of Hollyoaks in Chester to be with his screen-girlfriend Summer, who had just landed the part of Maria in The Sound of Music in London (confusingly, in real life, as well as in soap land), and, on Friday, June 27, it’s Max’s turn to leave town.

“Max and Steph are going to get married and OB is going to be the best man,” explains Matt. “When OB arrives back from London, he finds out that the wedding’s off, because Steph’s having a tantrum.

“So, he says to Max, ‘Maybe you should think about walking away from all this and bringing Tom to New York’, because he and Summer are going to Broadway. ‘We’ll have a ball’. But then Max wins Steph around and they get married.