50 Fun Facts About The Chase

On The Chase, what does a contestant gain by accepting the Chaser's lower offer?

A bigger lead on the board, one extra step, comes at a price: the lower offer can be zero or even negative, and a contestant who banks a minus offer shrinks the team's pot.

What does a wrong answer cost in The Chase's Cash Builder?

Nothing: a miss or a pass carries no penalty, so speed is everything. On the American version, James Holzhauer once got 12 of 13 right in his minute.

Which revived BBC One show has Bradley Walsh presented with his son Barney since 2024?

Gladiators is a family affair: Walsh's wife Donna was head choreographer for the cheerleaders on the original series, and Bradley himself competed in a 1997 celebrity special.

On The Chase, what happens to a Head-to-Head player too slow to lock in an answer?

Frozen out for that turn, they stay where they are: once one side locks in, the other has five seconds. The rule cuts both ways, so a fast contestant can freeze out the Chaser.

What decides the contestants' head start in The Chase's Final Chase?

Team size: each player left is worth one step, because teams lose time buzzing in. Bradley Walsh reckons a three-player team's start is worth about twelve seconds.

Mark Labbett's Chaser nickname, The Beast, plays on how his surname sounds in which language?

French: Labbett sounds like la bête, 'the beast'. He was one of only two Chasers when the show began in 2009, alongside Shaun Wallace.

What is Shaun Wallace's Chaser nickname?

The Dark Destroyer lost a word in Australia, where the local version bills him as plain 'The Destroyer'. Asked whether the original nickname offended him, Wallace replied: 'Absolutely NOT.'

What is Anne Hegerty's nickname on The Chase?

The Governess once helped a contestant win instead: as a phone-a-friend on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, she came up with the right name.

Which Chaser is "The Sinnerman"?

Paul Sinha, the Sinnerman, owes an early diagnosis to television: his Parkinson's was caught in 2019 after a consultant spotted the first symptoms while watching him on Taskmaster.

What is Jenny Ryan's nickname on The Chase?

The Vixen was picked for her long red hair, worn in a ponytail like the animal's bushy tail; she says the name also lets her be 'a bit predatory'.

Which Chaser is known as "The Menace"?

Darragh Ennis, the first contestant to come back as a Chaser, says he only learned his nickname when he walked out on set: Bradley Walsh had picked it.

What does Chaser Darragh Ennis study as a university researcher?

Insect brains are his day job, and quiz fans once tried to top up his pay: after teammates' low offers shrank his 2017 winnings as a contestant, viewers started a GoFundMe for him.

Besides quizzing, what is Shaun Wallace's profession?

Barrister, against the odds: he failed his O-level English four times before going on to argue cases at the Old Bailey.

What specialist subject won Shaun Wallace the Mastermind title in 2004?

FA Cup Finals made him Mastermind's first black champion, and he did not stop there: a year later he stood for Parliament as an independent in Brent South.

Chaser Paul Sinha qualified and worked in which profession before comedy and quizzing took over?

Doctor: he qualified as a GP and began performing stand-up while still working as a junior doctor in hospitals, before swapping medicine for comedy.

Which reality show did Chaser Anne Hegerty compete on in 2018?

I'm a Celebrity showed viewers another side of her: she was praised for talking openly in camp about her Asperger's, which was not diagnosed until she was in her forties.

Which Chaser recommended Jenny Ryan to producers after playing in the quiz league team Ryan captained?

Anne Hegerty heard that producers wanted another woman Chaser and said she would like it to be someone she knew, so she put forward the captain of her own quiz league team.

Jenny Ryan reached the final of which 2019 singing contest, finishing third?

The X Factor: Celebrity nearly lost her early: she was cut before the live shows to viewers' outrage, then reinstated when mentor Nicole Scherzinger changed her mind.

What did Chaser Mark Labbett once choose as his specialist subject on Mastermind?

The Simpsons and the Olympic Games were his two Mastermind subjects. His quiz habit began at Butlins, where as a student worker he topped up his wages on the quiz machines in the bar.

The Chaser nicknamed the Beast earned his mathematics degree at which university?

Oxford, where he read maths at Exeter College. Cleverness did not always pay: as runner-up on The People's Quiz, he noted, the winner got £200,000 and he got 'a hearty handshake'.

Bradley Walsh was a professional footballer at which club before turning to showbusiness?

Brentford kept him on the books for about two years, though he never played a first-team game; the club remembers him taking the mic at end-of-season dinners to entertain team-mates and fans.

Bradley Walsh played Danny Baldwin in which soap opera?

Coronation Street had planned to call him Vic Baldwin; Walsh asked for Danny instead, because that was his late father's name.

Which sci-fi series cast Bradley Walsh as Graham O'Brien from 2018 to 2022?

Doctor Who once terrified him: when he was cast, Walsh recalled watching William Hartnell's original episodes as a boy 'from behind the sofa through my fingers' before becoming a fan.

Bradley Walsh's Chasing Dreams was 2016's best-selling British debut album, outselling which former One Direction star?

Zayn Malik was among the pop names it outsold, even though the quiz host's album of standards reached the shops only in late November.

Fanny Chmelar, whose name sent Bradley Walsh into a viral laughing fit on The Chase, competed in which sport?

Alpine skiing: the German slalom racer was the subject of a 2011 question. Walsh said he wanted to apologise, and in 2024 he did, when she surprised him on Michael McIntyre's Big Show.

On The Chase, what happens when all four contestants are caught?

One nominee plays on alone in the Final Chase for a small fixed prize, and if that player beats the Chaser, all four share the money, including the three who were caught.

On Beat the Chasers, what stops a contestant's clock and starts the Chasers' clock running?

A correct answer stops the clock and hands play over. In a reversal of the parent show, it is the Chasers who must buzz in, and they are not allowed to confer.

In The Chasers' Road Trip, which country did three Chasers cross to test themselves against robots?

Japan was the final leg: after child geniuses and great apes, three of the Chasers came face to face with a self-solving puzzle cube, facial recognition and working robots.

Which quiz, launched two months after The Chase, became its long-running teatime ratings rival?

Pointless began on BBC Two and only met The Chase head-on after moving to BBC One in 2011; on one day in September 2012 the two drew 2.27 and 2.44 million viewers.

Which UK channel has broadcast The Chase since its first series in 2009?

ITV first ran it as a ten-episode, two-week trial for the 5pm slot in summer 2009. A longer run was ordered the next year, and it became a fixture of teatime.

The Chase won its first BAFTA in 2022 in which category, introduced only a year earlier?

Daytime: BAFTA created the award in 2021, when The Chase was nominated but lost to The Great House Giveaway, and the quiz won it at the second attempt.

Four Chasers won Let's Sing and Dance for Comic Relief in 2017 with a medley from which film?

The Wizard of Oz medley beat the casts of Holby City and Casualty; asked how victory felt, one Chaser was mostly worried that her shoelace had come undone before the encore.

Chaser Darragh Ennis's debut in November 2020 set which record for The Chase?

Biggest audience: 4.9 million watched, more than a third of everyone viewing television at that hour, beating a record the show had set only the day before.

Which Chaser stormed off and punched a wall after a Final Chase loss aired in January 2022?

Mark Labbett told the winners 'Well played guys, you deserve it – I'm off' and hit the wall on his way out. Bradley Walsh apologised 'to all the kids watching', and Labbett later said sorry too.

Which Australian broadcaster airs The Chase Australia?

Seven Network was already showing the British original in the afternoons; in 2015 it ordered a local version for 5pm, hoping a stronger lead-in would lift its evening news.

Who replaced Andrew O'Keefe as host of The Chase Australia in 2021?

Larry Emdur calls himself 'a high-school drop-out who failed everything': he left school at 15 to be a newspaper copy boy, long before he was asking the questions on a quiz.

Which US network ordered a pilot of The Chase in 2012, hosted by Bradley Walsh, then passed?

Fox flew American contestants to the show's British studios for a pilot with Walsh asking the questions, then turned it down; the format reached US screens a year later with a different host.

Which Australian Chaser is nicknamed "The Supernerd"?

Issa Schultz, British-born and a dual citizen, had long dreamed of appearing on the UK version; he got his wish in 2022, standing in on a spin-off for a Chaser who had caught Covid.

Which American cable channel first aired a US version of The Chase in August 2013?

GSN, the Game Show Network, was so sure of the format that it ordered a second season a month before the first episode had aired.

Which former Baywatch actress hosted the GSN version of The Chase?

She earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for the job in 2016, losing to Craig Ferguson.

What did America's version of The Chase drop from the British format?

A team member: American teams are three strong, not four, so prizes split three ways, as when one 2014 team won $175,000 and each player took home $58,333.

Who hosted the 2021 ABC revival of The Chase?

Sara Haines, a co-host of The View, also turned up in the Marvel universe that year, interviewing the new Captain America as herself in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Which Jeopardy! legend was nicknamed "The Professor" as an ABC Chaser?

Ken Jennings stepped down as a Chaser after two seasons, by which time he had a bigger job: hosting Jeopardy!, the show where his record 74-game streak began.

What was James Holzhauer's Chaser nickname on ABC?

The High Roller is a professional sports gambler, yet as a contestant on an earlier American version in 2014 he played it safe: offered a far bigger prize by the Beast, he ran the numbers and declined.

As of 2025, which ABC Chaser, 'The Buzzsaw', was the highest earner in Jeopardy! history?

Brad Rutter has won about $5 million on Jeopardy!, roughly half a million more than anyone else, though a Jeopardy! rival has out-earned him once every game show is counted.

Which ABC Chaser, nicknamed 'The Queen', ended David Madden's 19-game Jeopardy! streak in 2005?

Victoria Groce won only that one game in 2005, then came back almost twenty years later to win the first Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament.

The first episode of ABC's The Chase in 2021 opened with a tribute to which late game show host?

Alex Trebek had died two months earlier, and all three of the revival's Chasers had been his Jeopardy! champions. The host signed off the tribute in his style: 'What is The Chase?'

Which comedian was unmasked as mystery Chaser 'Maverick' in a 2025 Beat the Chasers finale?

Joe Pasquale kept the secret even from his close friend Bradley Walsh; unmasked at the end, he said he had been 'like artificial intelligence, minus the intelligence'.

Which YouTube group filmed a 2024 edition of The Chase on its real set, with Vikkstar123 as the Chaser?

Sidemen members played in teams of two for the 75-minute special; fellow YouTuber Stephen Tries took the host's chair, though Bradley Walsh still made a surprise appearance.

Paul Farrer, composer of The Chase's theme music, also wrote the theme for which older quiz?

The Weakest Link theme is his too, and with that format sold around the world he once boasted that its music was being broadcast somewhere on the planet every second of every day.