Quiz star chases perfection
The Chase’s Paul Sinha says his hit TV game show can’t last forever. Ahead of his New Zealand tour, he tells Chris Schulz he has a fallback option.
It’s 9.30am when Paul Sinha answers the phone. He’s in Manchester, on tour, in his hotel room. Is he recovering from a night of debauchery? Are there room service plates piling up on his duvet? Did we wake him up?
Nope, nope and nope. Sinha, a comedian, TV game show veteran and one of Britain’s top quizzers, has been awake for several hours already. He’s busy studying. ‘‘I learnt the list of all the UK entries in Eurovision between 1957 to 1980,’’ he says.
Why would anyone do that? ‘‘That’s how I spent the previous hour, before you rang, for no other reason than it might come up once [in a quiz],’’ he replies, sheepishly.
Welcome to the weird world of quizzing, where everything you learn could earn you a point in a general knowledge test. The more you know, the better you are. Sinha’s very good at it: he has a top 10 ranking in the UK to prove it and competes regularly to maintain his skills. It’s also turned him into a famous TV star.
How did this happen? Twenty years ago, Sinha was a doctor, chasing his parents’ dreams. Then he had a self-described early mid-life crisis, chucked in his medical career, and went after his other love, comedy. Turns out he’s good at it. Next month, he tours New Zealand with a stand-up show, his first
visit since 2001. ‘‘I’m a storytelling comedian who drops facts and social political context into what I do,’’ he says. He’s toured the world, and won awards.
Comedy’s his career, but quizzing is his obsession. The 48-year-old found something that combined his two talents when he joined the cast of game show The Chase in 2011. The show, a huge hit, features everyday Brits attempting to outwit a panel of expert quizzers – the ‘‘Chasers’’ – over a series of general knowledge questions.
It’s not the best TV game show ever made, neither is it the cleverest. The prize money isn’t the biggest, and it certainly isn’t the funniest.
But it has become a ratings juggernaut, one that will film its 13th UK season this year, and has been adapted for audiences in 11 countries. In Britain, it’s become one of ITV’s biggest shows.
The same thing has happened in New Zealand, where it screens six nights a week at 4.55pm and each episode is seen by more than 600,000 viewers. TVNZ director of content Cate Slater calls The Chase a ‘‘ratings winner, week in and week out’’.
Sinha’s one of those Chasers. His nickname is The Sinnerman and he’s known for his stern looks and dry quips when dashing a contestant’s dreams. It’s made him a big deal. Sinha describes himself as a ‘‘minor-level celebrity’’. He says he can avoid detection at home in London, because no-one’s finished work in time to see the show. Not so in smaller cities.
‘‘I get recognised in areas where people are at home at 5pm,’’ he says. ‘‘Complete strangers feel it’s OK to walk up to me and engage with me.’’
His castmates have warned him about how popular the show is in New Zealand. ‘‘The Chasers get recognised everywhere there,’’ he says.
Sinha calls himself ‘‘a small-town hero’’ but he’s more than that. The show’s cast have become household names, and tabloid newspaper targets. Their personal lives are celebrity gossip fodder. Sinha complains mostly about The Daily Express.
‘‘It’s pretty clear that people get paid to exaggerate small moments between members of The Chase for a news story. They try so hard to get it out first, they don’t mention who won the episode or what happened, they just mention one small bit of conversation.’’
He tries to keep his private life exactly that, but jokes about it during his show, describing himself as, ‘‘the only openly gay British-Asian qualified doctor and television quizzer on the UK comedy circuit’’.
Anyway, quizzing commands much of Sinha’s time. ‘‘I can’t sit around not learning anything because that would be disrespectful to the job,’’ he says. He’s serious about it, competing in the Quiz League of London every Tuesday night and taking part in monthly national championships, where he sits in exam-like conditions to answer a series of 240 questions.
‘‘They’re very dull,’’ he says. ‘‘They wouldn’t make great TV.’’
He’s ranked fourth in the UK, but believes he might move even higher on the list once the latest results are compiled. ‘‘I came third in a competition two days ago,’’ he declares, proudly. ‘‘Ask me on Monday.’’
It’s been hard earned. As his early morning Eurovision study session shows, Sinha spends so much time swotting that other things, like his comedy career, take a back seat.
‘‘I’ve been known to turn down well-paid gigs because there’s an important quiz on that day that I can’t miss,’’ he says. ‘‘I turn down comedy work for quizzes. It costs me money.’’
Why would anyone want to quiz?
‘‘That’s a very good question,’’ replies Sinha. He’s put some thought into it. ‘‘A lot of quizzers are people who like to be competitive but were never any good at sport. So quizzing is a way of competing for people with no great physical prowess.’’
Sinha says there are plenty of similarities between his two worlds. ‘‘In many ways you can describe comedy and quizzing as showing off how clever you are. There’s an element of attention seeking about both.’’
Quizzing, though, has been very good to Sinha.