{"id":316535,"date":"2023-09-03T22:45:56","date_gmt":"2023-09-03T22:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/popularindinews.com\/?p=316535"},"modified":"2023-09-03T22:45:56","modified_gmt":"2023-09-03T22:45:56","slug":"behind-the-scenes-of-chris-tarrants-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/popularindinews.com\/celebrity\/behind-the-scenes-of-chris-tarrants-career\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the scenes of Chris Tarrant’s career"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The morning after the first episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? transmitted on 4th September 1998, a lorry-driver spotted Chris Tarrant walking through Wembley and cheerfully hollered, \u201cOi, Chris, phone a friend?\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years later \u2013 and ten years after he stopped hosting the all-conquering ITV quiz \u2013 Tarrant still gets it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven yesterday,\u201d he laughs. \u201cIt\u2019s never a problem, it\u2019s just people\u2019s way of saying they like the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes they get the catchphrases wrong and say \u2018Hello Chris, are you going to phone the audience?\u2019 Eh? How would that work?\u201d<\/p>\n

Once, after he ordered a pint in a London pub, the landlord pulled it and poured it straight into the slop bucket saying, \u201cBut we don\u2019t want to give you that\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Being heckled in the streets by smiling strangers was nothing new. \u201cPeople had been shouting things at me since Tiswas, usually about custard or Sally James,\u201d says Chris, 76, recalling his gloriously anarchic Saturday morning show.<\/p>\n

Ostensibly for kids, but loved by adults too, Tiswas with its caged spectators, pie-slinging Phantom Flan Flinger, and hit single (The Bucket Of Water Song) made stars of Tarrant, James and Lenny Henry.<\/p>\n

It was an unusual career change for the teacher-turned-TV-newsman.<\/p>\n

English graduate Tarrant started teaching at Samuel Pepys County Secondary School in New Cross, southeast London, in 1971. \u201cIt was bloody tough,\u201d he tells me. \u201cI taught the Easter leavers \u2013 all boys; they\u2019d had enough at 14. Some of them were bigger than me. There were 42 in the class but half of them wouldn\u2019t turn up, they\u2019d be off working with their dads.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: <\/strong> Chris Tarrant jokes he’ll challenge Tyson Fury as row claim rumbles on<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOne got arrested for driving a stolen car when he should have been in maths.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris, busy promoting the paperback edition of his laughter-packed memoir, It’s Not A Proper Job, escaped by writing \u201ca dreadful brash letter\u201d to every ITV company, including \u201cthe awful phrase, \u2018I am the face of the 70s, this is your last chance to snap me up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Incredibly three replied, and in 1972 he started work on the Midlands-based news programme ATV Today. Tarrant did serious news initially but inevitably graduated to lighter items \u2013 \u201clightbulb eaters, hedgehog jugglers, men who ate live frogs\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n

His father, Basil \u2013 an infantry major veteran of Dunkirk and D-Day \u2013 and mother Joan lived near Chris’s home-town of Reading and couldn\u2019t see the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo unknown to me, they booked into a hotel in Oxford to watch their son do fearless hard news reporting, only to see me covering a bloke on a charity walk with four ferrets down his trousers\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Perfect training for Tiswas.<\/p>\n

When ATV wanted someone slightly potty to host the hare-brained new show, his news producer instantly suggested Tarrant. It ran for eight laughter-packed years; guests included Paul McCartney, Queen and Annie Lennox \u2013 all fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrank Carson was on it relentlessly, whether we booked him for it or not. He\u2019d turn up and say, \u2018The show was dying, I thought I\u2019d save it.\u2019<\/p>\n

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\u201cOne day he brought a funny little bloke with him who turned out to be Bob Carolgees with Spit The Dog.\u201d<\/p>\n

They covered caged adults in gunge years before Noel Edmonds. \u201cPeople queued up for it,\u201d chuckles Chris. \u201cOne woman spent the morning in The Cage but when she watched the video she couldn\u2019t even recognise herself, she was just smothered\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

When The Bucket Of Water Song was a hit, the cast became targets. \u201cPeople came up to us in pubs and poured beer over our heads, and we always took it, but once in a restaurant in Brighton a terribly posh lady poured the ice bucket over Sally\u2019s head, which was too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tarrant is still as hearty, congenial and unaffected by fame as he was when I first interviewed him on the set of Tiswas\u2019s doomed 1982 adult spin-off O.T.T.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had huge ratings at midnight and Lenny Henry was brilliant on it, he just grew and grew. But it was very experimental and some of it was crap; maybe I didn\u2019t have enough control over it as a producer, we were just trying out ideas live.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOne week we\u2019d have Alexei Sayle, the next Bernard Manning. On a Monday morning the ITV controller used to kick me around the office but we took chances and had great bands on \u2013 Deep Purple, Status Quo, The Human League.\u201d<\/p>\n

Radio gave him more freedom. \u201cI had the best time of my life at Capital Radio. It was an exhausting 17 years, but we beat off all the upstarts, travelled the world and I had a brilliant time, getting paid to play records and talk nonsense.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like being able to think of an idea on the drive to work and just do it. Nowadays everyone has a webcam. The first thing I did at Capital was lob a coat over the camera. I\u2019m only doing radio! Watching people on radio is hugely boring.\u201d<\/p>\n

The germ of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? came from his Capital quiz, Double Or Quits. Tarrant’s producer asked him to front the pilot. By the time they filmed the second, with added dimmed lights and dramatic music, everyone was hooked. ITV boss David Liddiment decided it should go out live every night for ten days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was so much pressure the first night, we had a therapist on stand-by. Someone won \u00a364,000 \u2013 nobody had won that kind of money before.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its second year, Millionaire filled 19 places in the TV Top 20 \u2013 \u201cwe smashed the BBC to pieces\u201d \u2013 and in 2000 Judith Keppel made world news by becoming the first-ever quizzer to win \u00a31million.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI thought we might get four years out of the show, I did thirty series! By the end of my time, I\u2019d had enough. ITV wanted more and more celebrity editions and there are only so many famous people. We had Paul McCartney, George Michael, Frederick Forsyth\u2026people who never go on game shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew sooner or later they\u2019d use reality TV people. I didn\u2019t want to go down that route.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why was it so successful?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a simple format, it grabbed people, the answer was right in front of you so it had shout-ability. Judy Finnigan said she heard Richard Madeley use language shouting at Millionaire that she\u2019d never heard in all their years of marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s only scandal was James Imgram \u2013 aka the Coughing Major \u2013 who was found guilty of cheating his way to the \u00a31million prize.<\/p>\n

The saga was re-told as drama on ITV\u2019s Quiz. \u201cMichael Sheen did me, he\u2019s an actor not an impressionist, but some of his mannerisms as me were wonderful. Mike Osman mimics me best, he\u2019s so close, and his Trump is brilliant too. Rory Bremner is going around the country being me. I\u2019ve never gone \u2018tee-hee\u2019 in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t seen Jeremy Clarkson\u2019s version. \u201cI get on with him socially, I just don\u2019t watch game shows. I watch Netflix, the news, Sky Sport and Sky Arts.\u201d<\/p>\n

‘It’s Not A Proper Job’ by Chris Tarrant [Great Northern Books Ltd.]<\/span><\/p>\n

Father-of-four Chris lives happily with his third wife Jane in an idyllic Cambridge Village. They\u2019ve been together seventeen years. \u201cShe\u2019s my mate,\u201d Tarrant beams.<\/p>\n

He had a serious stroke in 2014 flying home from filming Extreme Railway Journeys in Bangkok but says, \u201cI\u2019m all good now. I used to work like a dog but I take it easier. I did a nice thing with John Cleese for his chat show the other day because I\u2019d never met him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m supposed to be doing a film about bears and trying to do TV with my son, he talks more than I do.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t drink whisky every day but I still like a beer. I travel a lot. I took my eldest grandchildren on safari in South Africa, their eyes were out on stalks. It was beautiful to watch their reactions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to get to the Caribbean to see some cricket.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been to too many friends\u2019 funerals. I don\u2019t know how long I\u2019ve got but I know I\u2019m going to enjoy every minute.\u201d<\/p>\n