Finance Business Partner Nick Boldock recently appeared on the ITV quiz show The Chase. But did he make it to the Chaser round? Who did he face? Here, Nick tells us about his experience on the show.
I auditioned for The Chase back in 2019 – I knew it could be a while before I got a call to appear on the televised show, but then of course Covid hit, lockdown happened, and I more or less forgot about it.
Then in August 2021 I got a phone call out of the blue asking if I was free to travel down to Elstree Studios in London in a couple of weeks’ time to film the show.
It was a long day – I travelled down the night before and was collected from the hotel along with the other contestants at 6.50am the following morning. From there it was straight into the studios to be briefed on the day ahead and then to film the show itself.
I had one goal, which was to make it to the final round – anything after that would be a bonus. (Spoiler alert…)
It’s a lot harder in real life than it is from the sofa but nevertheless I managed to get five questions right in the opening round to put £5k into the team prize pot, my teammate Jude having already notched up the same amount.
Then it was on to the Chaser round, where I would have to avoid being caught by the Chaser of the day – we had Ann Hegarty, a.k.a. The Governess, who knows a lot more things than I do… but I managed to hold her at bay despite some tricky questions and I was through to the final round. I had a huge mental waver part way through when I got a question wrong and Ann moved one step closer – for some reason my brain decided to say to me, “if you get two more wrong, she’s caught you”… that wasn’t particularly helpful and my nerves were jangling somewhat, but after a long delay for the final answer to be revealed (if you’ve seen the show, it was the rude question about breakfast products, and the laughter went on a lot longer in reality than it did in the final edit… all the while I didn’t yet know if I had answered correctly or not, and it seemed to take ages for them to confirm). I was through with a massive sigh of relief.
The next two contestants both crashed out, leaving just me and my teammate Jude (a jovial Irishman and seemingly a nifty quizzer as well) to battle it out with Ann in the Final Chase.
Between us we scored 17 points, meaning Ann needed to score 18 to win. Luckily for us she was having an iffy day and gave us several opportunities to “push back” by answering questions she had got wrong. Somehow we managed to pull that off more than once, the last time being a tennis question which yours truly managed to dredge from the memory bank just as Bradley Walsh demanded an answer… we were a fraction of a second away from running out of time. I owe Serena Williams a drink.
That kept Ann JUST far enough away from our total, and she made it to 16 before the clock stopped, just one short of our target… we had won £5,000 each, although annoyingly I didn’t receive it for nearly three months (it seems even in TV land, the accounts department don’t like paying out in a hurry).
Prize money aside – and it was genuinely just a bonus, albeit a nice one – it was a fantastic day, we were made to feel really special, and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was a long drive home, mind you…
Then we just had to wait until April 2022 for it to be shown on the telly! It was almost as nerve-wracking watching it as playing it… almost.
The episode is currently still available to view on the ITV Hub website.