I turned down Millionaire as I was too busy... luckily I had a change of heart!
IT MADE him one of the biggest names in television and is the main reason he’s worth an estimated £20million.
Yet Chris Tarrant almost rejected his career jackpot by snubbing the chance to front Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
The broadcasting veteran said from his sprawling £2million mansion in Upper Bucklebury, Berkshire, he initially only agreed to film a pilot of the show as a favour to its creator as he feared he didn’t have time to commit to a full series.
The former Capital Radio DJ, 75, says: “It sounds daft now – but I nearly turned down Millionaire.
“I said, ‘I’m really busy at the moment, but I’ll do a pilot for you so you’ve got something to show the network. But I don’t think I’ve got enough time in real life to do a series’. I was in Capital Radio every day and I was just about to start a brand new series of Tarrant On TV.”
Millionaire was created by Chris’s old pal, ex-capital Radio producer David Briggs. The concept, Chris says, was dreamed up in a pub.
“The show came from conversations in bars! We did a thing, David Briggs and I, on the radio called Double Or Quits, where you started with a pound and you asked a question for a pound, then you got to two pounds, then four pounds and eight pounds – and whatever.
“And we were talking about it once and he said, ‘It would be a great format for a TV show’.
“And I said, ‘Yeah, it might be quite good’.
“I certainly forgot about it for at least another year. Briggsy had been at Capital Radio for years and he produced me for years, and then he sort of went off into the big bad world of TV, and he just rang me out of the blue.
“He said, ‘You know that Double Or Quits thing? I’ve got a format and I’m quite interested in it – would you do me a pilot?’
“I remember saying to him, ‘I’m really busy’.”
Luckily, Chris changed his mind when he perched in his quizmaster’s chair for the first time to film the show’s trial run.
He added: “I did the pilot with him, and I remember sitting there thinking, ‘This is quite good, I quite like this thing – this is actually quite a nice idea’.
“It’s such a simple format, but that thing of having the answers on the screen – it had just never been done before.
“It sounds obvious now, but it was an amazing format at the time. It had never been heard of. So I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it’.”
Chris, however, initially thought the show would last just three years. He said: “It was one of those things like you see, an
interview with the Rolling Stones, where they go, ‘Yeah, we might last two or three years man, maybe four’, and here they are still rocking 50 years later.
“It was a bit like that, because then Millionaire just went through the roof.
“One month, on broadcast TV ratings, Millionaire did 19 of the 20 places.
“I think people kind of forget that because it’s been around a while now – 20 years or so since we started, and it sold to, you know, 120 countries or wherever.
“It sliced through the BBC’S ratings, and actually, in every country it’s gone, it’s gone to number one. Maybe for a week or a month, or in some cases a couple of years – but it always gets to number one.”
From anarchic 1970s children’s TV series Tiswas to fronting Millionaire from 1998 to 2014, Chris has been at the forefront of groundbreaking and ratingsgrabbing shows.
But he believes edgy programming is now swerved by TV bosses who have forgotten the fun-filled party culture of showbusiness and are obsessed with pandering to “wokeism”.
Chris admits he is no longer interested in watching television, aside from streaming services and sports. He said: “I’ve sort of been there, done that, and I’m not interested in most television programmes.
“I tend to listen to speech channels on the radio rather than music channels, because for years, I played music.
“I’m just not up with it anymore, but I’m quite happy like that. I’m not trying to keep up – I’m not really interested. I’m fed up with the whole woke nonsense.”
Chris overhauled his health, cut back on drinking and started eating healthier after suffering a stroke mid-air on a 2014 flight.
The twice-divorced father-of-four also retreated from the spotlight and had been living a quiet life with his partner, legal assistant Jane Bird – until Russian despot Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
So disgusted was he with the tyrant’s assaults that he took in a family of
Ukrainian refugees – a woman, her elderly mother and 10-month-old baby.
Chris admits he now lives in fear Putin may unleash nuclear war.
He said: “We have to pray the war doesn’t get to Europe. We’re living in fear of Putin, who is actually mad enough to start pressing nuclear buttons. It’s a very complicated, difficult situation.”
Despite accusations of younger generations of Britons being “snowflakes”, history fanatic Chris – whose father was a Second World War veteran – reckons they would rise to the challenge if a Third World War erupted.
He said: “I think if it came to it, the British could still do what they did before, because we always have done.
“I don’t think we’re softer. I just think the world is a different place.
“This thing has just shaken us all up.we never expected anything like it.
“We’re looking at pictures and shaking our heads like it’s a horror movie, but it’s actually happening at this moment while you and I are chatting on the phone.”
The star is still keeping busy, and has just released a book filled with TV showbusiness anecdotes called It’s Not A Proper Job. He said despite being semi-retired, it reminded him of scores of other tales from his years in the spotlight he couldn’t squeeze into the memoir – and is now considering writing a second volume.
He was set to film a travel show in China before the lockdowns but now can’t wait to shoot a show on Alaskan polar bears.
The broadcaster said he recently lost friends to cancer and now looks at life as a “lottery”, no matter how healthy he makes his lifestyle. But he insisted he hasn’t written his epitaph yet and refuses to think about his final farewell.
Asked how he’d like to be remembered, Chris said: “Oh, ‘I hope I made you smile’ sort of thing. But no, I’ve never thought about all that.”
IFYOU’RE planning a visit to the garden centre today then don’t forget to stock up on your free condoms along with your (ahem) bedding plants. Relate, the marriage guidance people, want to highlight the soaring numbers of old gippers with STDS.
So they’ve launched the “Hornicultural Society” campaign with a “tongue in cheek” (their words not mine) range of vegetable-themed condoms which, if you’re not paying attention at the checkout till, look remarkably like seed packets for plums, avocado pears, onions, aubergines, courgettes and artichokes. I’d never seen the erotic potential in an illustration of a sliced onion before, but (suffice to say) once seen, never forgotten.
Apparently they’re eco-friendly which means they can be planted in a pot after use. Hmm. Does this mean you can grow your own rubber plantation on the patio? Or have I got that wrong?