His weakestlink is TV quiz shows

However, Anne Robinson failed to put much of a dent in Newbuildings Principal, Chris Scholes, who went armed with his own one-liners to parry off an attack from the flinty quiz mistress, famed the world over for dipping her tongue in vitriol before every show.

People who know him will be able to see how he fared against the impenetrable lady in black next month when the show is aired, all I can tell you is that he wasn’t exactly a screen door on a submarine...

To take part he had to go over to Glasgow a fortnight ago to the BBC studios where they filmed the Weakest Link episode. It was the second time he travelled – the last time, unfortunately, Chris did not manage to get as far as wowing Anne the Invincible with his rapier wit...

“I went over the first time last year, and for the first time ever, Anne Robinson was sick. It was the first show ever that she had not been able to make, so I got a night in Glasgow thanks to the BBC and then I had to take part. I got into the studio and they came up and told us that it looked like Anne Robinson was not going to make it. She was not in good shape. I was supposed to go back in August and they phoned me up in August and said some of the people that had come over for what they ended up calling ‘the sick show’ had kept in touch with each other over that time and that’s not allowed.

“They want you to be strangers in case of any team play and they didn’t want that, so they told me I was cancelled and then they rescheduled me and I went over in December, but this time I did get through and went through hair and make-up...well, make-up anyways,” he says with a chuckle.

Then he lets it drop that he sang to her... but more of that later.

So, armed with four changes of clothes in case he clashed with someone else and to make sure he was ‘HD-friendly’ (no stripes or mad patterns), Chris makes his way over to Glasgow again,

“So you kinda get to meet your fellow contestants and check ‘em out and one other guy had been on The Chase, so I didn’t know whether I was going to tell him that I had been on The Chase, because I could tell he was a player...I’m sitting there thinking ‘Why did they put us together?’ because they are very careful about the mix of people and it was a very eclectic mix of people: There was a guy older than me, there was a young girl, there was the guy who had been on The Chase, there was a Welsh man who ended up singing on the show. At that point you hope that when you get down to the studio that you are not the person that blows it on the first round, and thankfully none of us did. Then you have to vote somebody off, which is a shame because nobody made a mistake,” he said, adding that he was unable to discuss much about the show, and people would have to watch it to see how he did.

With the menace of the bright lights shining down on him and the pressure applied in expert fashion by Ms Robinson, and his competitive spirit on maximum, Chris admitted to having to make educated guesses in respect of a couple of the questions: “Only I know how lucky I was,” he says cryptically.

In addition to his appearance on ‘The Weakest Link’ Chris has also been on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ twice and has also appeared on The Chase... and Chris admitted that he did not enjoy The Weakest Link as much as other shows because, as everyone knows, the contestants stand...and it takes a lot longer to film The Weakest Link than what is shown on TV.

“Once you get down to the studio you stand. Think about it: On Millionaire you are sitting, The Chase you are sitting most of the time, but here you stand the whole time and it takes over two hours to film the that thing. My right leg was numb and when they do give you a break after the third round, the only place you have to sit is on the step of the elevated platform where Anne stands. We were the last show of the day and I think they were tired. Now the people who were looking after us were great, really really nice people, but the floor manager and director were on to you if you did not flip your board quick enough.

“There was one old guy there and when she said ‘It’s time to vote off the weakest link’ and when she said link you are supposed to flip your board, and this poor guy could not get the board up on ‘Link’... It was two and a half hours and it was gruelling...or maybe I’m just getting old,” he said.

Asked what Anne Robinson was like to interact with Chris looked a bit crestfallen: “I couldn’t tell you. You don’t get any contact with her other than that which you see on TV. But, I did get to sing to her and I got to say Newbuildings Primary School”.

So he did not get to kiss her feet?: “No, no, no, no! I as just glad to be asked which school I teach at and I said Newbuildings Primary School, which is half the reason I go on these shows for free publicity for the school, y’know?”

But he did sing to her: “How I got to sing to her... I sang in my audition and that’s what got me on the show, I think. I’m a street pastor on Friday nights and once a month I lead a team out of 10 people and we serve coffee to people for free and stuff, from my church, Cornerstone City Church and she asked me something about that and I ended up singing to her ‘So here’s to you Mrs Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you can know...’ and she said to me ‘That’s enough. How can you know?’ I remember that, and I went ‘Know? Because I know’ and she went ‘Typical American’. I just laughed.”

Compared to others, Mrs Robinson did not seem to give the school principal very much ‘shtick’, but he does remember being asked what kind of school he worked in and he told her he was in ‘a Controlled school’.

“She had two dialogues with me in the whole thing, I think...she went after me twice, but she didn’t go after my bald head, which I had wonderful things to say about, and I was dying for her to say something about my size and I wanted so much to say to her with a straight face ‘Well I do have a disease...it’s furniture disease, my chest has dropped into my drawers. I was dying to say it to her, but she never mentioned it.”

That was the only contact Chris had with her, there was no after show camaraderie`, not even a trademark Robinson wink.

“Anne just walks out in between shots and walks back in at the beginning of the new rounds. I don’t think she is as bad as she is portrayed. I think it is an act,” he said.

At this point Chris begins to chart, in chronological order, the other shows he has appeared on, and, anyone who knows him, gets sidetracked long before he hits mid-flow...

“The first one I ever did was Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I saw it online one time and I gave a 200-word essay of why you would make a good contestant and that got me an interview in Belfast. I went away thinking I think I did good and three days later they phoned and said ‘We want you on the show’. The show is almost the opposite of Weakest Link, Anne Robinson does not reveal any of her own self and what you see of Chris Tarrant, and I’ve seen him twice now, Chris Tarrant came up in the commercial break while I was in the chair and gave me a shoulder rub and said ‘Relax there big guy’, y’know? I ran into him in the hall way before the show and he said ‘I know everything about you, and I said ‘I bet you did not know we were twins separated at birth’. So, I didn’t get into the chair the first time, which was disappointing, but I did not know they would put me up in a hotel, so they paid for me fro Bready all the way to Belfast International and back, and they pay for all your food at the airport, you get get your own little dressing room and shower and everything, it’s cool. But I did not get on but they have a pub afterwards that Chris comes into, and he serves you a drink if you want it. We flew back the same night, but the second time they emailed me and said the auditions were open again and why don’t I reapply. I thought that was kinda cool and I’d do that, and this time it was during the ‘big freeze’, not the last ‘big freeze’ but the time before that, and I had to pay for my own flight to Manchester. So I flew over, stayed in a B&B and then I did not hear anything until three weeks after and they phoned,” he says, finally pausing for a breath.

This time he decided he was going to do everything possible to ensure he was the fastest finger first, so the former woodwork teacher made a wooden panel with buttons to practice in conjunction with a power , but when he got the length of taking part, discovered his practice had been in vain – the format had changed and there was no fastest finger round any more and everyone called to the show got to sit in the chair and go for the million.

“I got weak at the knees. For months I was thinking will I get in the chair, won’t I, will I get a chance, so, I remember going up to the room and saying to my wife ‘Julie, I’m going in the chair!’ and texting pretty much everyone I knew to say ‘I’m going in the chair tomorrow’.

“The thing is, I am not a quizzer. I don’t quiz at all. I watch these shows and I’ll be 60 this year and have a fair amount of general knowledge, but I am always surprised by what I do know and what I don’t know. I thought if I got a good round of questions I would do OK,” he said, whipping out his mobile phone and playing a short video in which you can hear Tarrant saying ‘It’s the right answer, you’ve got £10,000’.

He won the money on a 50/50.

Although Chris has been on a variety of shows, one he is still aiming to be on is Eggheads, and he is thinking about doing it with other people he met on Millionaire, with whom he has maintained contact.

“We all became quite good friends. Because you are not competing with each other to get a shot at the chair we were all in the green room shouting at the TV and the girls said later on that we much more of a group than the others who took part and I am friends with those people and we stay in touch through Facebook, I have the form in my briefcase for Eggheads. It is not because we think we are smart, it’s just that I do these shows because I can. Being an odd American in Ireland gives me an edge. It’s true!” he says.

Chris makes no secret of the fact that he is the only American principal of a school that he knows of in Ireland, and admits he makes a big deal of it: “It makes me a bit unique and it gets me onto these shows. I am extroverted, so that helps too.”

Finally he admits that “every woman in the world would die over the question he had to use a phone a friend on”. He was asked ‘Christian Louboutin is a fashion designer for...’ Every woman reading this knows the answer, chances are a high percentage of men looked the answer up on Google or asked their partner...

“You can imagine why I didn’t know the answer to that one. Come on! I got other questions right. I got to that, and the first time I was on they let you have five Phone A Friends, but the second time they only let you have three, and they put the pictures of your phone a friends on screen so you can see them. So I chose the wrong Phone A Friend. The other two knew that answer I found out later.”

Still, every time he sits at this dining table or watches his TV he has Who Wants To Be A Millionaire to thank.