The Chase star Anne Hegerty has recalled how a studio invasion led to recording of the hit ITV show beign delayed for days.
Anne has been on the iconic gameshow since 2010 and opened up previously about how it's made her a fortune. But the day-to-day job doesn't always go to plan.
She explained that a bird had somehow managed to get into the studio, and disrupt recording for days. She explained: “There was an occasion a few months ago, when a pigeon got into the studio. It had probably had been there for about three days and we had terrible difficulty figuring out where it was.
Appearing on the Tell Us About Yourself podcast, she told host Christian Carrion: “Every now and then it suddenly start cooing, and it would be on the soundtrack."
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Anne said the pigeon became a running – or flying – joke. She continued: "People were racing around trying to get rid of it. Do you remember the theme tune from Stop the Pigeon? Or Catch the Pigeon whatever it was? We were all listening to it.”
She went on to explain the fact that Chasers get to sit down helps establish a sort of dominance over contestants. “We make the contestants stand up, and I can sometimes see their legs shaking," Anne said.
And she admitted contestants' nerves can often get the better of them. The quizmaster continued: "We call it the ‘Past Spiral.’ Get a question wrong in the cash builder and it bothers you and you're still thinking about it…so you don't quite listen to the next question and you miss that one and you do the same thing.
“And then you just go missing all the questions, doing the same thing in the final chase.”
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Her experience of regular appearances on the show gives her a huge advantage, with Anne adding: “One reason we win so many final chases is that we've got a lot of experience of maintaining focus.
"You don't you don't see how many times a final chase may actually be stopped in the middle because [Bradley Walsh] misread something or because he failed to accept an answer that he should have accepted.”
During all these interruptions, Anne calmly retains her focus – resulting in the unruffled onscreen manner that makes her such a dangerous opponent.
