Beat Shazam

Season 1 Vuzu (*116) 20:00 & 21:00 Reality

Jamie Foxx is a triple-threat entertainer – he’s a comedian, an actor and a reality show host thanks to Beat Shazam (2017-current). Three teams of two race to identify songs played by DJ October – the fastest to hit their buzzer wins cash and the winners in round 5 face off with the song-identifying cellphone app Shazam. Not that Jamie has problems with music…

He has been playing piano and 1

singing since he was five – and it gave him an education. Jamie earned a scholarship for his music talents and studied classical music and composition at the US National University.

The 50-year-old barely knew his 2

birth parents and was adopted as a four-year-old by his mom’s adoptive parents, domestic worker Esther Marie and yard labourer Mark Talley.

Jamie Foxx isn’t actually his name; 3

it’s his stage name. He was born Eric Marlon Bishop and chose “Jamie” because it is gender neutral and made it easier to get comedy gigs, while “Foxx” is a tribute to late African-American comedy icon Redd Foxx.

Knowing his way around a piano 4

made it easy to play music legend Ray Charles in 2004 biopic Ray. In fact, Jamie says the hardest thing about playing the blind musician was losing 20kg. “I trained and trained and lost nothing. Losing weight is tough!” he says.

He has two daughters – Corinne 5

(23) and Annalise (13) – but never married the girls’ mothers. He’s dating Katie Holmes (Joey in Dawson’s Creek, 1998-2003) but had to keep their relationship under wraps until September 2017 due to Katie’s divorce deal with her ex Tom Cruise.