A new series of special episodes of Beat The Chasers means it’s time for a fresh collection of brave – or possibly foolhardy – celebrities to test their general knowledge and go head-to-head against the infamous Chasers.
Among the celebrities hoping to win big money for charity are restaurant critic Grace Dent, BBC Breakfast ’s Charlie Stayt, ex-footballer David James, presenter and designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and former Coronation Street star Shobna Gulati.
They each have to face all the Chasers – Mark Labbett, Jenny Ryan, Anne Hegerty, Paul Sinha, Shaun Wallace and Darragh Ennis. And as usual, it’s host Bradley Walsh who will be overseeing the quiz and watching how the stars fare when pitted against some of the sharpest minds on TV.
“These celebs are not down the pub doing a quiz over a pint and a packet of crisps! This is the toughest thing on telly bar none. A lot of them panic and they go blank. They look down or they make a mistake of looking at the clock,” says Bradley.
It all sounds incredibly tense, so to lighten the mood Bradley teases the Chasers on screen whenever he gets the chance.
“I love winding them all up,” he says. “The one I have most fun with is Shaun, the Dark Destroyer. It’s because we both love our football. We’re exactly the same age – well, he’s two days older than me.I just adore him.”
Of course, the Chasers are just as good at banter as Bradley, and he admits that their replies to his comments are one of his favourite aspects of the show. “They sort of have pops at me, but a bit of self-deprecating humour never hurt anybody,” he says.
“We’ve got a writer called Adam Bostock Smith. He writes their gags to have a go at me. Some of them are really funny, it actually makes me laugh.
“We know it’s just banter – there’s no point in getting yourself wound up like some presenters I know who are just so precious, it’s frightening!”
While Bradley has kept which TV presenters he thinks are precious a secret, he does reveal the stars he would like to appear on the next celebrity edition of the quiz show.
“I was working on the Royal Variety and it was like a recruitment drive for the show,” he says. “I want Rick Astley to come on the show, Hannah Waddingham, Danny Jones – I was recruiting them all. It was the weirdest Chase recruitment drive ever! But you know what happens? As soon as you mention the Chasers, they freeze! They panic, they want to be able to get it right. I’ve had a lot of clever celebrities come on who have failed at the first hurdle. That happened this series too, out on the first question – gutting. And it’s gutting for the Chasers too, because they want to play them.”
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