the Life and times
The 10 biographies you need to read.
Chasing The Dream Shaun Wallace, Cranthorpe Millner, £15.99
HE’s best known as the “Dark Destroyer” from the ITV quiz show The Chase. But despite growing up a working-class Londoner, the world-travelled barrister reckons his heart is in Scotland.
“With a name like Wallace I am an honorary Scot,” he grins. “I’m in Scotland all the time. I love the Scots. They are some of the loveliest, warmest, wittiest people. They have always made me feel welcome.”
Every year he heads north to host quiz events at holiday resorts and universities, most recently Strathclyde Students Union in Glasgow and Stirling University for Freshers’ Week.
And the man who is proud of being Britain’s first black Mastermind champion has an admission: “I donated a trophy to Stirling. The people who engraved it got the spelling wrong, which is really embarrassing. They spelt Stirling with an ‘e’. Can you believe it?”
The 58-year-old is planning to travel north again following the launch at the end of this month of his autobiography Chasing the Dream.
“People see me on TV but they don’t know the long slog I’ve had.
“I want them to realise I’ve had setbacks like anyone else and from adversity you can come out triumphant.”
The son of a Heinz food processor and a hospital nurse, Shaun grew up in Wembley. “I went to Copland Secondary School and they basically said I was going to end up in prison,” he reveals.
“They didn’t have high expectations for black students back in the 70s.
“When I left that school in 1977 I said I would never go back unless they invited me. Lo and behold in 1993 I was featured in a Guardian article as a lawyer. My old teachers saw that and nearly choked on their cornflakes. So they asked me back.”
Bachelor Shaun, who admits to having girlfriends but stays tight-lipped over his love life, accepted the invitation with no hard feelings. He explains: “It was their 50th anniversary and they had their celebration at the House of Lords. Out of the 50 years of students I was the only who was invited.
“I sat there eating a meal and I said ‘You know, it just goes to show if you allow people to dictate and tell you you’ll become a failure you will become a failure.’ People have to take control of their own destiny and that is exactly what I did.
“I wanted to be a barrister since I was 11 because I used to watch programmes like Petrocelli on TV. I wrote to the Bar Council when I was 12. You have to believe and you have got to have people believe in you.”
The wind beneath his own particular wings were his separated parents Millicent, 87, and late dad Linford, as well as his four siblings.
He reckons he also owes his success to his sixth form teachers at Aylestone Community School and the inspiration he drew from his boyhood heroes: boxing giant Muhammad Ali, cricketer Sir Garry Sobers, soccer ace Pele, and South African President Nelson Mandela.
“Everybody in life has heroes to look up to and I’m no different,” he says. “I looked to them for inspiration because they had the same colour skin as me.”
Quizzing came early too. “As a little kid I loved quiz shows, they were the passion of my life. In 1999 I decided to actually do quiz shows and I ended up winning quite a few. The ultimate one was Mastermind.
“They had to re-film the ending because I just sat there with tears in my eyes. I didn’t tell a soul I’d won. None of my family knew until they saw it six months later on TV.
“The first time my mum knew I was in a different country – Jamaica – on my own. Just as I was flying out I rang her and said: ‘Mum I need to get out of the country’. She said ‘What’s wrong Shaun?’ and I just hung up. She was the first person I presented the trophy to. She was so proud but she gave me an ear bashing for making her worried.
“My dad was always there for me and it was a proud moment when he saw that his oldest born son won Mastermind. He was at a working man’s club when they showed it. He got a standing ovation. It would have been nice to be a fly on the wall and to see that.
“After winning Mastermind I retired from quizzing – I had won the best quiz show in the world.”
He was lured back by ITV’s The Chase in 2009, but despite his success he is adamant he hasn’t “made it”. “The reason I have called the book Chasing the Dream is because I don’t want people to think that once you have achieved an ambition you can rest on your laurels,” he reveals.
“Once you do that that’s you on your way down. You should always chase goals, set new goals for yourself and evolve as an individual no matter how old you are.”