Weakest Link Anne: I’m worth ( at least!) £50 MILLION
I’veI been lucky … I have enough money to have whatever I want
AS HOST of the hit quiz show The Weakest Link, her pitiless put-downs of contestants earned her the title Queen of Mean.
But Anne Robinson has revealed that her TV reign – not to mention some canny property deals – has also helped her net a vast £50million fortune.
And in an exclusive interview for The Mail on Sunday’s Event magazine today, Robinson insists that far from being mean, she loves spending her riches – particularly on herself.
Asked how many millions she is worth, Robinson, 70, declares in typically no-nonsense style: ‘I would like to think it is more than 50… enough to have whatever I want. I am very comfortable, I have been lucky.’
Always stylishly dressed, Robinson estimates her spending on clothes adds up to ‘50, 60 grand a year’.
Her favoured labels include Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Marni.
‘A lot of them are very expensive but I use them and I get enormous pleasure out of them,’ she says.
However, some of her other money matters have been less straightforward. She reportedly put millions into two taxavoidance schemes – both of which have attracted the attentions of the taxman.
Robinson was at the helm of The Weakest Link for 12 years, becoming famous for her parting shot, ‘You are the weakest link, goodbye!’, aimed at contestants who were voted off. She also hosted the American version of the show for three years.
But she attributes her wealth more to her success with property investments, which she got into in the 1980s.
Her empire includes a London house worth an estimated £5million, a £4million Gloucestershire estate, an apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan valued at £5million, and a share in a holiday home in the elite American East Coast resort of the Hamptons, worth £8million.
Robinson is back on television this week in a new two-part series called Britain’s Spending Secrets, which sees her on a mission to uncover what we do with our money.
She says: ‘This country suffers from being bogus: priggish about spending money at the same time as being incredibly nosey about it. Money is something we are all fascinated and governed by, and yet it is very British not to actually talk about it.’
She meets some of the wealthiest people in the country for the programme, including the billionaire mobile-phone tycoon John Caudwell.
Viewers will also see Robinson joining a group of squatters rummaging through skips behind a supermarket searching for discarded food.
Explaining her continued success as a presenter at the age of 70, the former Watchdog host shows she can still fire a well-aimed barb: ‘For a woman to have longevity on television, you have got to be clever, versatile, funny – and thin.’
Britain’s Spending Secrets is on BBC1 on Wednesday at 9pm.