His weakestlink is TV quiz shows

However, Anne Robinson failed to put much of a dent in Newbuildings Principal, Chris Scholes, who went armed with his own one-liners to parry off an attack from the flinty quiz mistress, famed the world over for dipping her tongue in vitriol before every show.

People who know him will be able to see how he fared against the impenetrable lady in black next month when the show is aired, all I can tell you is that he wasn’t exactly a screen door on a submarine...

To take part he had to go over to Glasgow a fortnight ago to the BBC studios where they filmed the Weakest Link episode. It was the second time he travelled – the last time, unfortunately, Chris did not manage to get as far as wowing Anne the Invincible with his rapier wit...

“I went over the first time last year, and for the first time ever, Anne Robinson was sick. It was the first show ever that she had not been able to make, so I got a night in Glasgow thanks to the BBC and then I had to take part. I got into the studio and they came up and told us that it looked like Anne Robinson was not going to make it. She was not in good shape. I was supposed to go back in August and they phoned me up in August and said some of the people that had come over for what they ended up calling ‘the sick show’ had kept in touch with each other over that time and that’s not allowed.

“They want you to be strangers in case of any team play and they didn’t want that, so they told me I was cancelled and then they rescheduled me and I went over in December, but this time I did get through and went through hair and make-up...well, make-up anyways,” he says with a chuckle.

Then he lets it drop that he sang to her... but more of that later.

So, armed with four changes of clothes in case he clashed with someone else and to make sure he was ‘HD-friendly’ (no stripes or mad patterns), Chris makes his way over to Glasgow again,

“So you kinda get to meet your fellow contestants and check ‘em out and one other guy had been on The Chase, so I didn’t know whether I was going to tell him that I had been on The Chase, because I could tell he was a player...I’m sitting there thinking ‘Why did they put us together?’ because they are very careful about the mix of people and it was a very eclectic mix of people: There was a guy older than me, there was a young girl, there was the guy who had been on The Chase, there was a Welsh man who ended up singing on the show. At that point you hope that when you get down to the studio that you are not the person that blows it on the first round, and thankfully none of us did. Then you have to vote somebody off, which is a shame because nobody made a mistake,” he said, adding that he was unable to discuss much about the show, and people would have to watch it to see how he did.

With the menace of the bright lights shining down on him and the pressure applied in expert fashion by Ms Robinson, and his competitive spirit on maximum, Chris admitted to having to make educated guesses in respect of a couple of the questions: “Only I know how lucky I was,” he says cryptically.

In addition to his appearance on ‘The Weakest Link’ Chris has also been on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ twice and has also appeared on The Chase... and Chris admitted that he did not enjoy The Weakest Link as much as other shows because, as everyone knows, the contestants stand...and it takes a lot longer to film The Weakest Link than what is shown on TV.