Dec hosts Saturday Night Takeaway on his own - how did he do?

31 March 2018, 19:43 | Updated: 31 March 2018, 19:45

We never thought it would happen, but Dec has hosted a TV show without Ant.

Declan Donnelly presented tonight's (March 31) episode of Saturday Night Takeaway without his longtime co-host and best pal Ant McPartlin.

The unexpected change was forced to have occurred after Ant was charged with drink-driving, following a car crash in south-west London.

Ant still popped up in the opening titles, but Dec did not directly mention his missing on-screen partner.

Watch the intro below:

When opening the show, Dec said: "Thank you very much. Thank you for that very warm welcome, I really appreciate it. 

"We've got a jam-packed show this evening, and I've got twice the amount of work to do. So we're going to crack on…"

Paloma Faith was on hand to perform a couple of tracks during the show, while guest announcer Stephen Merchant, and regular contributors Stephen Merchant and Scarlett Moffatt also helped out.

Last week, Dec confirmed that he and ITV made the decision to host the show without Ant.

He wrote: "While I never thought I'd be in this position, after much discussion and careful consideration we've decided that the remaining two shows of this series of Saturday Night Takeaway will go ahead.

"We made a promise to take hundreds of deserving winners to Florida to watch the series finale, and we will honour that."