i was the weakest link. I hadn't planned to appear on the BBC's most successful quiz show ever. I had always thought quiz shows were for other people. So when a researcher acquaintance called me out of the blue and asked if I was free the following afternoon to play a "new game," I had no idea what I was letting myself in for.
She was desperate. The chances of netting ?10,000, she assured me, were quite high, while the odds of friends catching me on daytime television were extremely low; the show would be on air on weekdays at 5pm. How wrong she was; more people than you think watch daytime television.
Groucho Marx once said, "there is no sweeter sound than the crumbling of your fellow man." If this is true, then the sound of British television these days must be positively treacly. And with her acid retorts, Anne Robinson, the presenter of The Weakest Link, has made herself the queen of this sadistic genre.
But when I had my 15 minutes of fame, the programme had not yet been on air and none of us knew quite what to expect. The other contestants, though, seemed at least familiar with television studios. "The biscuits are nicer at GMTV," complained a customer services manager from Manchester in the green room who was about to make her 17th television appearance. "You look familiar" said the Glaswegian revenue protection officer to the part-time school supervisor from Christchurch. It emerged that they had both appeared on Fifteen-to-One the year before. I listened as they debated the relative merits of Midday Money's phone lines and the after-show service at Wheel of Fortune, and it dawned on me that I was the only first-timer there. The others belonged to that peculiar sub-culture of semi-professional game show contestants.
We had arrived around 3pm, and did not start filming until about 6.30pm. The tedium should have deadened nerves-instead, it prolonged the agony. Eventually, the nice ladies from wardrobe came to choose one of the three outfits we had been instructed to bring. "No red, black, blue, white, patterns or skirts" had been the limiting brief. No wonder they always wear pastels on quiz shows. After nearly four hours of hair, make up, black coffee and squashed-fly biscuits, faux joviality and futile attempts to memorise my 1001 Useful Facts, we were ready.
We filed into the studio, it was time to play... The Weakest Link. There was Robinson on the podium, a vision of lip gloss in a black suit.
My first question, "what nationality is the actor G?rard Depardieu?" calmed me down immediately. The next, "what industry is Vivienne Westwood associated with?" set me thinking about the designer labels I would buy with my prize money. By the time "what do you call the body of water around a castle?" came around, I was well on the way to owning a stately home. What was all the fuss about? I had survived round one. The lights went up, and it was time to have our noses powdered and hair teased back into place. I was beginning to enjoy this.
Cue the urgent music and it was time for the second round. "What is a banyan?" "Who managed the England football team in Euro 2000?" "What is the currency of Zimbabwe?" And then, the killer: "when William Hague reshuffled his shadow cabinet last year, who did he make shadow home secretary?" My mind went blank, my mouth went dry, I felt as weak as the weakest link in a soggy paper chain. I had to say something or my fellow contestants would think I was hesitating and would vote me out. The studio lights were hot and I could feel the stiffness of my hair from the hairspray in which the make-up woman had insisted on dousing me. Suddenly the morning's papers sprang into my mind. Say something, say anything. I knew it was no use, so I shook my head helplessly and answered "Gordon Brown," whose wedding photos had appeared that day on the front of every paper. It felt awful, but I had to say something. Needless to say Ann Widdecombe's name sprang to my lips as soon as my turn had passed.
"SHADOW Home Secretary?" spat Anne Robinson incredulously at the end of that round. "Well, I think he's a rather shadowy character," I said. I was that round's weakest link, because I "looked nervous" and had "got a question wrong" according to the others. I was devastated. To be voted out by seven people you have only just met, watched by millions you will never meet, is up there with being jilted at the altar. But at least I had managed to bring on the thin shadow of a smile across Anne Robinson's lips.
"Of the nine contestants here before you, eight of them will leave with nothing," she says menacingly in the opening gambit. I may not have left with my dignity intact, nor a cheque from Ian the accountant who waits in the wings. But at least I have learnt something important-never, ever, volunteer for public humiliation in a television studio again.
