2013 In Review: Ant and Dec's Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble goes to Numbe

There are comebacks and there are comebacks, but one of the biggest and most surprising – and maybe the daftest – of them all was the revival of a song close to our hearts, but never top of the charts. Until 2013.

Two decades ago, before Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly became the infamous duo Ant & Dec, kings of primetime TV, they were pretty successful popstars. Starting out as bezzers PJ & Duncan on soapy children’s TV drama Byker Grove, the talented twosome had 13 Top 40 hits from 1994 to 1997. Apart from a brief foray back into the charts in 2002 with We're On The Ball for the World Cup, Ant & Dec’s pop aspirations were pretty much a thing of the past. And then…

Never underestimate the power of TV and the ease of grabbing a quick download. In March this year, ITV2’s The Big Reunion was the show everyone was talking about. Popstars from the ‘90s were being brought back together for a special concert and fly-on-the-wall documentary.

As Ant & Dec’s weekend variety and quiz show Saturday Night Takeaway welcomed stars from The Big Reunion, such as Atomic Kitten, Liberty X and Five, the boys brought PJ & Duncan back out of retirement for one night only to perform one of their most-loved hits, Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble. And we watched them wreck the mic, watched them wreck the mic, watched them wreck the mic. PSYCHE.

Watch the performance we never thought we’d see again:

Response was huge and instantaneous. Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble had been the first top 10 hit for PJ & Duncan AKA (as they were then known) in 1994 and had sold a respectable 130,000 copies up until its big comeback. Within a couple of days of the last “PSYCHE” being spluttered, Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble had sold another 35,000 copies. 

The soaring sales continued throughout the week, and by the final whistle on 31 March, 19 years after its original release, Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble at last took the Number 1 spot on the Official Singles Chart, the first chart-topper for Ant & Dec or PJ & Duncan, selling over 83,000 copies.

So if an Ant & Dec song can get a second wind after 19 years out in the cold, which other golden oldies and cult classics have a chance of a new lease of life in 2014? Chart-lovers, it's over to you…

See how Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble was originally performed waaaay ‘back in the day’:

One more time: PSYCHE!