Declan Donnelly left in a ‘bad way’ after breaking pledge never to present on TV without Ant

DEVASTATED Declan Donnelly was said to be in a “bad way” when he decided to break a pledge never to present without best pal Ant McPartlin.

The Sun can reveal ITV bosses left the decision 100 per cent down to Dec, who eventually opted to host the last two episodes of Saturday Night Takeaway on his own.

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He said he was doing it out of loyalty to viewers, some of whom won a prize to go to Florida for the last show in the series.

Dec — who has only ever worked with Ant since they shot to fame in 1990 — will later decide whether to go solo on Britain’s Got Talent and I’m A Celebrity.

A source close to him said last night: “Dec is in a terrible state of mind. He’s totally devastated by what has happened and has had to make difficult decisions in a quick space of time.

“Ant is now officially off work for the year at least, and it’s impossible to say exactly how long that will be for.

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“So Dec is facing the prospect of having to work on his own - something he simply hasn’t done because they’ve always been a duo. The decision to go ahead with Takeaway was totally Dec’s, and ITV made it clear they’d respect it.

“He feels strongly that a lot was riding on it for a lot of people, but it is incredibly tough for him right now.”

Ant has limited his social contact to just his mum Christine Woodhall and Dec over the past 24 hours.

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Dec wrote on Twitter yesterday: “Whilst 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.

“Everyone at ITV and the Takeaway team feels we owe it to the audience to complete the series.”

The duo previously vowed they would never go solo.

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They wrote in joint autobiography Ooh! What A Lovely Pair: “We made an agreement - ­whatever happened, we’d be mates forever, and neither one of us would ever be on our own out there.”

Earlier today ITV announced Dec will present Takeaway alone on March 31 — as well as the series finale in Orlando on April 7.

But as we reported earlier co-stars Stephen Mulhern and Scarlett Moffatt will also appear as usual as part of a “group effort”.