LIFE & TIMES: Bradley Walsh

Host of award-winning quiz The Chase (5pm, ITV), and a team captain on Play To The Whistle (9pm, ITV), actor and presenter Bradley Walsh, 56, is one of TV’s most popular faces…

Watford-born Bradley grew up in a council house, the son of a single mother. At the age of 14, he started doing odd jobs:

‘I was a baker’s boy, getting up at 4.30am, before going to school. I’ve inherited my mother’s attitude, that hard work will pay off.’

As a child, Bradley showed a flair for performing, and his mum once took him to the London Palladium to see Tommy Steele in Hans Christian Andersen:

‘I said, “If I don’t play football for a living, that is what I want to do.”’

After leaving school, Bradley was spotted by Brentford FC and, at 18, started playing professionally, until injury forced him to stop:

‘It was the only life I wanted at the time.’

Bradley has worked as a sheet metal worker, a metal engineer, a Pontins bluecoat and a comedian:

‘You can achieve anything you want if you put your mind to it. There is only one thing around the corner, and that’s more corners.’

He got his big break aged 33, on the bill at the 1993 Royal Variety Performance:

‘As I’d done my apprenticeship in the clubs for years, being booed off stage at Blackpool, it was very welcome, and opened doors for me.’

He earned a gold disc for his album Chasing Dreams, the bestselling debut release of 2016:

‘I just laughed when I found out, I thought it was hysterical. I’m probably the oldest new artist Sony has ever signed.’