Here’s a question you won’t hear on ITV’s The Chase: who is the hardest working man on TV: a) Bradley Walsh b) Bradley Walsh’s agent or c) Bradley Walsh’s accountant? I kid. Brad is one of our biggest stars, and rightly so, and I’ve been addicted to ITV’s teatime quiz for years. Partly for the dumb answers – where else can you find contestants claiming King George III opened a bank account at the Co-op, or that penny farthing bikes had twelve wheels?
The London Mayor who became rich through rat-catching was… Boris Johnson. The Manchester Ship Canal connects Manchester with…Belfast. Host Bradley has the same every-man charm as Norman Wisdom, his giggling fits are a joy.
The Chase: Bradley tells player 'you're not going to win now'
Yet much as I love The Chase, some elements grate. Like nitwits who buzz and guess in the final chase without waiting to see if anyone knows the answer. Buffoons who describe barmy wrong answers as “educated guesses” – who educated them? Joey Essex? And players who say “I don’t know what form the Chaser’s in today”. Irrelevant! If you answer correctly they can’t catch you.
Am I alone in suspecting the producers over-meddle? I get the feeling they ask the chasers to occasionally fluff answers to spice up the final chase. And it’s hard to miss how the questions become University-Challenge-obscure when they want to eliminate someone smart, or shorter and quicker when the chaser needs to catch up and win.
Walsh sparkles in many formats – quiz host, entertainer, straight actor (Corrie, Law & Order UK, maybe not Dr Who – it’d take an alchemist to make those shoddy scripts shine.) I wrote about his all-rounder strengths in the 90s. Why did it take TV execs so long to catch up? Largely because Lord Hall and co abandoned their natural audiences in the doomed pursuit of ‘yoof’ and had no interest in acts from the variety circuit. Yet Brad, Joe Pasquale, Brian Conley and Shane Richie (all holiday camp trained) recently toured as the Prat Pack and sold out every venue in hours.
Why not let them entertain us properly, together on TV?