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12th Mar 2018

Ant and Dec have sparked controversy for this comment on Northern Ireland

This was never going to go down well.

Michael Lanigan

Even Ant and Dec are getting caught up in the cross-fire.

We would have had them as the most inoffensive pair of TV personalities in the business, but it seems Ant and Dec have provoked a bit of backlash recently.

While hosting their variety show, Saturday Night Takeaway, the pair introduced their Sofa Watch: Battle of Britain segment. However, when Dec explained the rules, he noted that “Northern Ireland is not actually part of Great Britain, but we still want it to be part of Sofa Watch.”

So far, so factual.

The compromise on Ant’s part was to call it ‘Sofa Watch: Battle of Britain and Northern Ireland’, and really the whole thing should have ended there, but it didn’t, because Twitter responded as only Twitter knows how.

https://twitter.com/1888JT/status/972552830220492800

Yes, Twitter responded in droves, but just as a quick reminder, it is good to remember that this all started because of something called ‘Sofa Watch’.

https://twitter.com/jasonashford89/status/973140577414938624

Somehow, even George Galloway ended up weighing in.

At least we can finally say that ‘Ant and Dec sort out the Northern Ireland Situation’ is now kind of actually a thing (but not really).

It genuinely sounds like the title of an It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia episode in case that makes you feel better.