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Jul 21 | 2 min readWho are the five men and women who stand between Bradley Walsh's team and a cash jackpot on ITV's teatime quiz show The Chase? We found out a few facts about The Beast and his fellow brainboxes.
Mark Labbett
Labbett is one of the original Chasers and is nicknamed The Beast, due to his size and his surname (‘la bete’ is French for ‘the beast’). He has lived up to his name as well, storming off the set twice when the contestants have got the better of him.
He stands tall at 6ft 7in and just over 27 stone and has featured on The Chase since the show began in 2009. Labbett has also enjoyed spells on the US version of the show – on which he is the sole Chaser – and on the Australian version.
A former Maths teacher, Labbett was born in Devon but represented Wales at the European quiz championships. He appeared on Who Wants to be a Millionaire twice, winning a total of £48,000 and has to wear false teeth due to an unhealthy love of sugar.
Anne Hegerty
Dubbed ‘Frosty Knickers’ by host Bradley Walsh, Hegerty’s somewhat kinder moniker on The Chase is The Governess.
She was originally going to be nicknamed ‘The Headmistress’ but said she preferred ‘The Governess’ as it was “more kinky”.
Hegerty joined the ITV show in 2010 and has also appeared on the Australian version on Channel 7 since 2015. She has previously worked as an academic proofreader and journalist and has also starred in pantomime.
More recently, Hegerty was the fifth personality to be voted out of the jungle in the 2018 series of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, in which she shared the camp with Emily Atack, John Barrowman and eventual winner Harry Redknapp.
The Governess also flexes her grey matter as the host of fellow ITV quiz show, Britain’s Brightest Family.
Jenny Ryan
'Vixen' Jenny Ryan is the newest and youngest addition to The Chase line-up, having joined the cast of Chasers in 2015.
Ryan wrote the questions for the show’s pilot episode and has plenty of quiz experience having appeared on a winning team on BBC Two’s Only Connect. In an interview with BT TV shortly after her arrival on the show, Ryan said she prepared for her debut by watching old episodes on YouTube.
Away from television, she plays the ukulele in her band, Nanukes of the North. And according to The Sun, Vixen will be using her musical skills and taking part in the revamped celebrity version of The X Factor.
Paul Sinha
‘Sinnerman’ Paul Sinha joined The Chase in 2011.
A stand-up comedian, world-class quizzer Sinha has appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on several occasions. He is also a qualified GP and trained at St George’s Hospital Medical School in London.
Arguably his most notable moment on the show came in 2016 when he went through an entire show answering every question correctly.
In the summer of 2019, The Sinnerman took to his blog and Twitter to announce his Parkinson’s diagnosis, stressing that he would ‘keep Chasing’.
Shaun Wallace
Deadpan Wallace has several nicknames on The Chase, including Dark Destroyer, The Barrister and Grumpy Jaws.
His quiz show prowess came to the fore in 2004 when he won Mastermind, where his specialist subject in the final was FA Cup finals. One of the original Chasers alongside Labbett, Wallace has been on the show since 2009.
A qualified barrister, Wallace has a wide range of experience in serious criminal cases including those linked to Operation Trident, the Metropolitan Police unit that was set up to tackle gun crime in black communities.
