Ant and Dec have revealed in their new autobiography Once Upon A Tyne how they secretly tried to quit Britain’s Got Talent.

The Geordie duo have explained how they locked horns with ITV bosses because they weren’t happy with how their work was edited.

Lifting the lid on their showbiz careers, Ant, 44, writes: “It was on a trip to America, in 2012, where we had to have a serious conversation with Simon.

“The previous series of BGT had been especially tricky for us two.

“The audition days had been very long, which in itself we don’t mind, but after filming interviews and interacting with every single act, as well as making jokes, giving reactions and everything else we always do, we found that when the show went out on TV, we hardly seemed to feature in it at all.

“We began to feel that we were wasting our time doing the auditions because all the footage of the work we were doing was ending up on the cutting-room floor.

“And, what’s more, with Saturday Night Takeaway about to come back into our schedule, we could have been…