Back in 2009, Bradley Walsh was working on the first series of Law & Order: UK – a British remake of the long-running American crime drama – when he found himself calling Alison Sharman, ITV’s then-Director of Daytime, from outside the broadcaster’s London headquarters. At the age of 48, the multi-hyphenate had successfully carved out a career in what many would consider dream jobs, from professional football and TV presenting to stand-up comedy and acting – and yet, a gameshow gig is what he was craving the most.
“After a little while of acting, I felt I wanted to get back into light entertainment because I enjoy it,” he says. “I enjoy being on the floor, doing some schtick.” Sharman invited him into the Gray’s Inn Road office for a cup of tea and after discussing the idea of Walsh hosting a daytime quiz show, he was given an A4 piece of paper with a list of rules on for The Chase.
Thirteen years on and The Chase now reigns as ITV’s most popular daytime gameshow, with five awards, 15 seasons and several spin-offs under its belt – including Beat the Chasers, which is just about to enter its fifth season. Airing across the week in a primetime slot, Beat the Chasers sees contestants take on not just one but up to six of the show’s quiz whizzes for the chance to win big money.
It’s mid-morning on a Thursday when I’m chatting to Walsh on the phone. He’s into week two of filming The Larkins‘ second season (which has recently recast the role of Mariette Larkin, with Joelle Rae taking over from Sabrina Bartlett) and while he’s enjoying it so far, he can’t say much more than that. “I can’t give anything away,” he says to my disappointment, before we swiftly move onto Beat the Chasers.
Being the first season back with a live studio audience, it comes as no surprise that Walsh found filming more enjoyable than the previous two in lockdown.
“While those shows were good, you missed the whole arena experience of the audience in the round. It lifts the game and I think the audience are as big a part of the shows as we are because when the offers come in, whoever’s playing can gauge their reaction.
“It’s tough – how many Chasers you want to take on, how much money, how much of a time advantage you get. There’s no great science to it, but if you’re going to take on five Chasers, you’ve only got an eight-second time advantage. If they get all their questions right, you can only afford to get two questions wrong under pressure and that is really tricky.
“A lot of people come to the show not armed with that information, they don’t really work that out.”
Having hosted the show for over a decade, Walsh is armed with that information, from what the Chasers’ strongest subjects are, to what they’re weakest at and which teams you want to avoid depending on the gaps in your knowledge. Wouldn’t that make him the perfect contestant? He doesn’t think so.
“Let me tell you something about me. The chinks in the Chasers’ armour I will know, there’s no question about that. What I don’t know is a lot of general knowledge so I would be hopeless.
“If you’ve gone against the Chasers and you know about modern culture, then you’ve got a serious chance of winning because they don’t. If a young player comes on – and I love the young players coming on, I think it’s fantastic that they do. I think armed with the knowledge that they’ve got about, I don’t know, maybe the Kardashians or whatever it is, then they’ve got a serious chance of winning.”
While he knows an awful lot about the likes of Mark ‘The Beast’ Labbett, Shaun ‘The Dark Destroyer’ Wallace and the other longtime Chasers, he’s less familiar with Issa Schultz – the star of The Chase Australia who was flown in last minute to replace a COVID-positive Anne Hegerty on the Beat the Chasers panel.
“Issa was brilliant and fitted in fantastically well, considering he only landed in the UK literally the day before filming started, which is pretty extraordinary,” Walsh says. “Suffering from jet lag and all the rest of it that goes along with travel, it’s amazing what he did.”
As for whether the quizzer from Down Under should become a permanent cast member, Walsh is fully onboard with the idea. “More to the point, we have six brilliant Chasers already so wouldn’t it be lovely to invite Issa over and have seven? Now a Super Offer [where contestants can take on all six Chasers] goes into the sort of £200,000-£250,000 mark. Imagine what a Super Duper Offer could be to take on all seven Chasers? Half a million up to a million – who knows!”
However, the TV host insists that casting the Chasers “really isn’t” his department. “We have the most marvellous network out there looking for Chasers of top, top quality but it’s not necessarily that they need to be solely knowledgeable. They have to have a personality that will work for us.
“It’s a bit like a panto. You’ve got the baddies and the goodies. I’m always on the side of the contestants so I want them to win desperately and let me tell you, I don’t know how much time you spent in the company of the Chasers but when they lose, they really don’t like it.”
When I asked which of the shows Walsh prefers, he delivers a very diplomatic answer. “Beat the Chasers is high octane, it’s crash-bang-wallop. It gallops from start to finish and I thoroughly enjoy that.
“The daytime Chase is a different animal. I can have more of a laugh, there’s more room, I can take the mickey out of the Chasers and be part of the contestants’ team. I can’t fool around in the Beat the Chasers format.
“I can’t choose between the two. My baby is the daytime show because we’ve been running that now for 13 years but Beat the Chasers has really caught the imagination of the nation.”
When ITV was developing The Chase, the daytime quiz show world was dominated by the BBC, with the likes of The Weakest Link and Eggheads keeping viewers busy on weekday afternoons. Meanwhile, Walsh’s slot-machine gameshow Spin Star had been cancelled after just one season.
“I’d had a phone call telling me a little while prior that Spin Star was being taken off air which is fine. Sometimes they can come to the end of their shelf life and that’s it.”
After reading the rules of The Chase at the ITV offices, Walsh offered to host a mock run-through of the show. “I came up with some of the language that you would use on The Chase. It was literally, ‘For £5,000, The Chase is on.’ That came from the office run-through, I’d written that down.
“There are certain buzzwords, having worked on so many game shows before, I sort of knew the way around what I needed to say and how that works.”
He adds that he came up with the now-famous nicknames of The Beast and the Dark Destroyer for Mark Labbett and Shaun Wallace respectively in that run-through. “I had a laugh with them, which was different, because everyone else would be shackled by the rules and just present it straight. Whereas I’m not really that sort of guy.
“I messed around and had a laugh. After the run-through, Ali Sharman said to me, ‘I really liked the way you did that – we’re going to make a pilot series,’ and I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ The rest is history.”
Walsh only realised how popular The Chase was becoming when he was walking around Kent’s Bluewater Shopping Centre with his wife. “The amount of people that came up and said, ‘Hey Brad, we’ve seen your new show, it’s great,’ and I said, ‘Oh, wow. Thank you very much indeed,’ and they said, ‘No, no, no – it’s the best thing we’ve seen for a long time. So much better than The Weakest Link,’ which we were up against at the time.”
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He adds: “That was a pretty funny comment because The Weakest Link was a good show but the problem with it was it was constantly putting people down and not being very pleasant. Our show is not like that. It’s always a very uplifting show and you know we have a lot of fun. After that, it got good reviews and away we went. We were making 40 shows per year and now we make 210.”
As for Walsh’s future on the show, the presenter says he can “absolutely” see himself hosting The Chase and its various spin-offs for the foreseeable future.
“I’ll tell you for why. Every single person who has worked on the show apart from the youngsters have been there pretty much since day dot. We are one big family and everyone knows everyone – it’s like working in a corner shop or your local bakers. It comes right from the top, [producers] Michael Kelpie Martin Scott, Helen Tumbridge, to the directors, the runners, the casting people and the question setters. Without them, it really, really wouldn’t work.”
He adds: “I love meeting the contestants because in my days in stand-up, I used to travel all over the country and stay overnight in some places, so I know pretty much everywhere. There’s always a common ground to talk about, a job or something, and I love it. Consequently the show becomes a friend of the nation and a window into their world.”
Beat the Chasers begins on ITV and ITV Hub on Monday 16th May at 9pm. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
