Top 5 PJ & Duncan songs that aren’t Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble

Last week, on their ever-entertaining Saturday Night Takeaway show, national treasures and loveable Geordies Ant & Dec revisited their PJ & Duncan days by reviving an old classic. The duo performed a surprisingly well executed version of their early 90’s hit Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble, as part of a feature that also saw newly-reunited 5ive (now 4our), Atomic Kitten and Blue all perform. It was amazing and is probably definitely already on YouTube right now. It’s also top of the iTunes charts this morning.

The performance got me thinking though. Everyone, and I mean everyone, remembers Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble. Of course they do. It’s a song that has become so richly ingrained, ironically or not, in our popular culture – certainly here in the North East. And it is, after all, a stone cold classic. I’m not going to deny that.

However, it kind of annoys me, even if it doesn’t bug them, that LGRTR is all people seem to remember from P&D’s extensive back catalog. As a certified AKA lover and owner of all three of PJ & Duncan albums, I can tell you there’s much more to the boys than rapping battles in Whitley Bay.

So, sit back cracker jack, here are the Top 5 PJ & Duncan songs that aren’t Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble…

5) Our Radio Rocks

This corking little tune was the last single to be taking from their debut album Psyche. Much like Queen’s Radio Ga Ga, Our Radio Rocks is a loving tribute to that early bastion of sound, the radio. Unlike Queen’s Radio Ga Ga, however, Our Radio Rocks is actually about Alan Robson’s Nightowls show. “There’d better be radio when I get to heaven.” Too right, Ant! How else will I listen to Tracey from Benwell tell the tale of how she saw a ghost whilst taking a dump on holiday in Cyprus in 1998.

I don’t know what’s going on the video but it looks like it’s been choreographed, directed and dreamed by MC Hammer on a dodgy batch of Es. It’s a catchy little ditty, with a hell of a hook for a chorus though. All together now: “Here we go, here we go, here we go” Hey that is good. That might catch on that…

4) Better Watch Out

In 1996, PJ & Duncan went all serious and dropped their Byker Grove associated monikers. For their The Cult of… Ant & Dec album the pair become known as… well, as Ant & Dec. And, well, not entirely serious, they were still, after all releasing singles with hilarious cult inductee interviews, like this. The first release of this glorious new era saw the cheeky chappies getting their head cobbled, whilst discussing the dangers of nailing some bird with a geet hard brother. Think Craig David’s Seven Days video but with less making love and more Ant & Dec pretending to fight two big bald men with a cement mixer.

3) Eternal Love

Imagine, for a minute, a world in which Ant & Dec aren’t the cheeky TV presenters we all know and love. Imagine Dec is, in fact, a creepy stalker man, who drags unwitting girls back to his castle, where he talks at her in a really weird, breathy way; while Ant, who appears to be some sort of Russian hitman, looks on as he prepares for an attempt to assassinate his love rival. Well, what you just imagined appears to be the story line behind the video for Eternal Love. Now imagine Dec approaching you. He cuddles you. As he does, he takes a deep breath, smells your hair and says, “Mmmm, summer’s here.”

I know, right.

2) Perfect

What is it with Dec and dragging girls back to his creepy love castle? This time he’s rolling around on a bed, with his shirt undone as he touches women on the face. Ant is looking on again, through a rain-stained window. This time it’s him doing all the breathy, creepy singing. Hang on, are Ant & Dec swingers? Is this some kind of orgy party? These lyrics are really odd too…

“I see the moon is out tonight/See your silhouette so bright“, “I’m never gonna leave, I’m gonna make you understand/Look at me with a tear-stained smile…”

It all combines to make one of the most unintentionally-sinister loves songs of all time, ever. The weirdest thing is that the girl with Dec just vanishes at around 3 minutes. Where is she? Did she escape? Is she safe? Has she ever been seen again? SOMEONE FIND OUT.

1) U Krazy Katz

In 2005, Swiss psychologist Dr Max Strauss did an extensive study looking into what makes people happy. He discovered that the average person is never happier then when watching two middle class Geordies rapping total nonsense whilst pretending to be in that jazz club from that scene in The Mask. Thankfully for Dr Strauss, and the world’s population, PJ & Duncan did just that a decade earlier in the video for their masterpiece U Krazy Katz. While the video is truly a work of cinematic magic, the song is a belta too. Lines like “Play that lick snake on your funky sax break/you shake it, you rattle, you roll” and “Hoot that toot flute in your sharp zoot suit/the one that you sold me this way” demonstrate the real lyrical genius stemming from the twosome. Wow. They really do have so many lyrics that they’ve got them coming out of their pores.

I genuinely had difficulty narrowing this down to five songs, so here’s a Spotify playlist where those 5 magically become 10 absolute stormers. Raw and pure like sushi.