‘I do hammer people if they make silly mistakes’
The Weakest Link is the first quiz show Romesh Ranganathan has presented. Georgia Humphreys finds out what fans can expect. When Romesh Ranganathan told his wife that he’d been asked to host the reboot of The Weakest Link, he realised just how big a deal it was.
Leesa, who he married in 2009, was very excited by the prospect of him taking on a format we all know so well. And while it never occurred to him that he’d host a quiz show, the Crawley-born comedian, 43, decided to give the BBC hit – so famously hosted by Anne Robinson – a go.
To figure out how he’d read the quick-fire questions in the heat of the show, he practiced on his family at home.
“It turned out my kids have got no interest in anything like that,” recalls the father-ofthree.
“I said, ‘Can you help me with these questions?’, and I started them and they walked away. It was quite a sad attempt by me to get some family time sorted out.”
The Weakest Link – which will air on BBC One – started in 2000 and was last on our screens in 2011.
In case you’ve forgotten, it’s a fast-paced general knowledge quiz, which involves contestants (in the new episodes it’s various celebrities) teaming up to answer as many questions as possible, banking money as they go.
But the twist is, at the end of each round, they have to each vote to decide who “the runt of the litter has been and get rid of them, and that person is then The Weakest Link”, as Ranganathan puts it.
In the final round, the two remaining players go head-tohead and battle it out for the prize money, which will go to their chosen charity.
Ranganathan confides he felt giddy the first time he was at the
podium on set, with the tense, atmospheric music and lights, and got to say, “Let’s play The Weakest Link”.
And you can’t blame him; it’s a quiz show with some of the most iconic phrases in TV history.
“I know I shouldn’t say this, because you’re supposed to say you inhabit the role and ‘I’ve made it my own’, and I do feel like I have done those things, but regardless of that, when you say, ‘You are the weakest link, goodbye’, you do feel like you’re pretending. It’s a thing that’s so ingrained into our memories.”
When he landed the job, he assumed there would be a “little bit of kick back because it’s a new thing – people don’t like change”.
“The first thing I was taken aback by was how much of it there was,” he says of the reaction. “I knew The Weakest Link was big, but when it got announced, it was massive news.
“But on social media in general people have been really nice. I was steeling myself for an ‘Oh my god, this guy?!’”
The star tried not to think about the past iteration, and people’s expectations, too much while filming.
“If you try and emulate something else, or behave like something else, it’s not real and people see through it. So, what our attitude was is ‘I’m going to do it in my own way and people will either like it, or they won’t’.”
Before it was announced The Weakest Link would be returning, Robinson – when chatting about her new role on Countdown – said she would suggest “somebody completely different, with a different approach” as the host.
The 77-year-old was known for hurling biting insults at contestants, and while the series
was a huge success, some of her comments would possibly be considered controversial now.
Did Ranganathan have this in his head, and want to be a bit more ‘woke’?
“I just thought, ‘I’m going to do it like Romesh Ranganathan doing it in 2021’. People know what my style of humour is; people know the kind of things that I make jokes about. I just did the jokes that I would always do.”
He continues: “Time has moved on. That takes care of itself. It’s not something we had to be conscious of.
“It’s similar to what I do in a show called The Ranganation on BBC Two, I do ridicule people, and I do hammer people if they make silly mistakes on The Weakest Link, but it’s affectionate. I’m not really digging them out. It’s just like, ‘Come on mate, you need to do better than that’.
“People can make their minds up when they watch it, but I wasn’t going into records being conscious of, ‘It has to be a certain way’.”
You can expect to see some exciting stars taking part in the series.
The first episode is a Strictly Come Dancing special, featuring former contestants like Clara Amfo, Dr Ranj, Ore Oduba, and professional dancers Anton Du Beke and Janette Manara.
In later episodes, Ranganathan gets to quiz fellow comedians like Ed Gamble, while there’s a special Christmas episode starring famous faces such as Gemma Collins and Christopher Biggins.
But Ranganathan isn’t sure about getting Rob Beckett – one of his “best mates”, who he makes Sky One comedy, Rob & Romesh Vs, with – onboard.
“He just won’t accept me having a go. He’d just get really angry. It would be the end of the relationship if he came on The Weakest Link.
“But, for that reason, I’d probably love to have him on. I think he’d be great.”
Ranganathan has a jampacked few months coming up; he’s been filming a new series of Rob and Romesh Vs, there’s more of The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan (his BBC Two travel show) coming, and there’s a couple of scripted comedies he’s finishing off that “hopefully will come out next year”.
“Fortunately, I operate at quite a low ebb all the time, so I don’t really get knackered. I’m never really high energy about anything.”
The Weakest Link airs on BBC Two on Saturday, December 18.
‘It’s a thing that’s so ingrained
into our memories’