Featured Image Credit: ITV YouTube/The Chase
Topics: The Chase, ITV, TV and Film, Money
Jess Battison
Everyone has their favourite quiz show on TV, and it can turn into a pretty heated debate.
Getting home from school and thinking you can give up your GCSEs because you got an answer right, or spending the weeknight trying not spill your cuppa as you yell every long river name you can think of at the telly - it's total British culture.
Maybe you spend Christmas Day watching specials of Pointless or a Saturday afternoon with your nan catching up on QI. Either way, the UK TV isn't short of quiz shows to watch.
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But The Chase is easily one of the best – I don’t think there’s any point in debating that.
It’s literally that popular it even has its own spin-off show, Beat the Chasers, and Mark Labbett has been a regular on the ITV show since it began in 2009.
One of the Chasers is Mark Labbett, who's more commonly (and pretty lovingly) known as ‘The Beast’ on the programme hosted by Bradley Walsh.
On the regular episodes of The Chase, contestants take on just one chaser to win the money they rack up by answering general quiz questions.
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But on Beat the Chasers, contestants compete in the general knowledge challenges against all of the Chasers – a scary six of them.
And Labbett says they wouldn’t miss out on filming it because they earn quite a hefty amount.
The Beast and his five co-stars, Anne Hegarty, Darragh Ennis, Shaun Wallace, Paul Sinha and Jenny Ryan, get a flat sum per episode they film.
And then, when a week-long Beat the Chasers series airs on ITV, the TV quizzers receive extra money.
Labbett told the Daily Star: “That's the week we earn like Premier League footballs, so of course I'll do it.
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“If I could get away with it I'd purge half of them because the fewer Chasers there are, the more money I get.”
Not only is he a star on The Chase here, but the 57-year-old also appears on The Chase Australia.
And he explained this balance of number of Chasers to the amount of cash he gets: “We say that is because we've seen it in Australia.
"They've moved up to eight chasers and the problem is they are now in a horrible trap that they can't make a full-time living off it.
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“They are spreading it so thin some of the Chasers are starting to think 'I can't do this unless you give me a certain number of shows a year'.”
Labbett added: “We're lucky we've got extracurricular gigs in England but in Australia they've got next to nothing so I'm glad I don't have to rely on the Australian money.”
The veteran Chaser also revealed that fans of The Chase are going to have to begin expecting fewer newly filmed episodes of the quiz show.
While they typically film three shows a day, four days a week, the amount has dropped.
“We do 200 and odd shows a year but it's dropped to 160 next year. We filmed so much during the latter part of lockdown they've got loads so we're getting to the point there's too many,” Labbett said as filming sets to slow down.