“I would love Brad’s job but I’d be terrible at it.”
As The Chase is set to return to our screens for a brand new season, a familiar face is also returning – Ireland’s very own chaser Darragh Ennis.
Ahead of the new series coming back to Virgin Media, Darragh sat down with Her.ie to discuss all about the show, and even more so, how he went from being a contestant to the top of the leader boards – as well as being a clear Bradley Walsh superfan.
“Watching the show is great, it’s fun, it’s interesting and it’s a laugh. Brad is great, let’s be honest, the man is hilarious. And he’s like that in real life, he’s one of the few people who you meet in TV who doesn’t change at all. He’s a giant child, it’s great,” Darragh revealed.
“It’s a great, entertaining show and it’s all very smooth. Anybody who has done TV knows that everything takes longer when you’re recording it so there’s stops, the independent adjudicator steps in if there are any doubts and that slows things down, so it takes a lot longer to record, so that was the big shock that I got.
“And then being on the show as a professional is way easier than being a contestant. It’s so much easier because I work at it, it’s literally my job and I get paid whether I win or lose so. I would love Brad’s job but I’d be terrible at it, that man is unbelievably good at that job. He barely ever misreads a question and under pressure, at the speed he has to read them, he almost never gets one wrong and it really helps the teams. In a million years, I would be the worst at Brad’s job.”
As Darragh began his career on The Chase as a contestant himself and had what producers were looking for when it came to who could be a chaser, Darragh said he is yet to come across a contestant that he can see following in his footsteps.
“I’ve seen a few with others but not with me, I’ve had a couple of really, really good people but there’s a certain breadth of knowledge allied to a certain presence on camera that you need and I’ve never seen someone who has had both. I had one contestant who did extremely well but was very nervous and they’d have to get over that in order to do it,” he said.
“One of the main reasons I got this gig was because I’m not nervous, there are plenty of people who are better quizzers than me but they get very nervous on TV. Part of it is entertainment, there are always lots of people who have the quizzing knowledge but having both of them, that’s actually quite rare.”
As much as we all adore the show, The Chase gets some slack when the Chasers win, taking the hard-earned money from the contestants and crushing their dreams – especially the celebrity version. Aware of this, Darragh explained it from his side.
“The money isn’t real until you win, it’s fictional, Monopoly money and until you win, it doesn’t matter, it’s a made-up number,” The Dublin Dynamo said.
