A decade of The Chase
Ten years ago today, there was big news in Australia. And I don’t mean Malcolm Turnbull successfully staging a back-room coup to wrest the prime ministership from Tony Abbott, although that did happen on September 14, 2015 as well. No, the big news I’m talking about was the debut of a brand-new quiz show, The Chase Australia. A decade later, we have well and truly outlasted Malcolm Turnbull.
As one of the four original chasers on the Australian show, I can say with confidence that the job has changed my life. I was 33 years old when The Chase Australia first aired, and I’m about to turn 44. I have been the Shark for virtually a quarter of my life. I have filmed well over 300 episodes of the show, which means I’ve faced something like 1300 contestants over the decade. That’s the population of a small town.
On Friday night, I was at a Sarah Blasko concert in Melbourne with my wife Zoe, and a man came up to me in the foyer and said hello. He said he’d played against me on The Chase several years ago and his team won their episode. Another guy walked past me in Sydney a few weeks ago and said the same thing – he had been in a team that took $96,000 off me. You might think these encounters would annoy me, reminding me of my losses. Quite the opposite. It is fantastic to be reminded that our show has changed not only my life but many other people’s lives as well.
I’m often told how much kids love the show and there’s something incredibly satisfying about being a role model for using your brain, for valuing knowledge. Quizzing is driven by curiosity about the world around us and even the most trivial aspects of trivia still deal in facts. If there’s one thing the past few years have taught us, it’s that facts matter. In a modern world of opinion, hot takes and fake news, quizzing is a little desert island where facts are still respected. Quiz questions have right answers and wrong answers, and no amount of ideology or spin can change that.
But mostly, it’s just a hell of a lot of fun. I get to play games for a living. I’m a very lucky man.
When I started out a decade ago, I studied hard to make sure I was up to the challenge. I still have the old Excel spreadsheets that I put together, trying to get up to speed on subjects in which I knew I wasn’t especially strong. There’s a tab for composers and all their major works. Another one for the periodic table. One for obscure currencies. NRL captains and coaches. These days, I write 125 quiz questions for newspapers each week, which effectively serves as my study. But every now and then, before a batch of filming, I’ll go back and run my eye over notes from years ago, to see how much I still remember.
And yet, we chasers are very much human. We make silly mistakes, the same as anyone. I remember a final chase in which I was asked the colour of the traditional UK phone booths – and I said blue, thinking of the police box as seen in Doctor Who. I’m sure this was meant to be a very easy question. Once, in an early season, I accidentally pressed the wrong button for a multiple-choice question despite knowing the answer 100%; I haven’t made that mistake since. The key is to move on quickly and put it behind me, because dwelling on silly mistakes will only lead to more.
I’m sometimes asked about the most memorable moments on The Chase, and for me it’s hard to go past a young man in the early days of the show who was asked in his cash builder: “The Venus De Milo is famous for missing what body part?” He replied: “Penis”. To be fair, the Venus De Milo does not have a penis. But that’s because she’s a woman. Yes, that moment was a bit of armless fun.
Then there was the woman who, in her chat with Larry, discussed her interest in conspiracy theories and how she believed that the moon landing was a hoax. The first question in her cash builder? “The first person to set foot on the Moon was US astronaut Neil who?” This was a big moment for her. Would she stick to her guns and say nobody? No, she said “Armstrong”. She wanted that $2000.
Life as the Shark has also given me plenty of memorable moments outside the show as well. If you have seen the footage of Matt Parkinson (Goliath), Issa Schultz (the Supernerd) and me lip-syncing “Funkytown” while dressed like we’re in Miami Vice at last year’s Perth Telethon, you’ll know what I mean. And if you haven’t, please do not click this link to see the footage. Sorry, I tried to warn you. But you had to click that link, didn’t you?
Because the nature of the show is that only one chaser films each episode, we don’t see each other all that often. But we are all good friends and help each other out by writing practice questions and commiserating in our group chat when we’ve had a loss. A couple of times we have even been out to pub trivia together, walking in to be greeted by the punters like the horsemen of the trivia apocalypse.
One of these occasions led to the embarrassing moment when I, as a chaser and former cricket journalist, couldn’t remember which state had finished last in the Sheffield Shield the previous season. As I said before, we’re only human. Another time I argued with the host over who was Australia’s fourth-longest serving prime minister (he claimed it was Paul Keating; I told him it was Malcolm Fraser). I like to imagine that he walked off thinking “that was like being flogged with a warm lettuce”, while I thought “Sorry mate, life wasn’t meant to be easy”.
Anyway, tonight I’ll be raising a glass to 10 years of The Chase Australia, and all the crew who work so hard to make the show what it is, as well as the thousands of contestants who have stepped up for the challenge. When we started, I wondered if the show would last a week, a month or a year. Thankfully, it was none of the above.
What are your favourite moments from The Chase Australia? Let me know in the comments below.