A quiz show fanatic has revealed how he was axed from The Chase after show bosses realised he had already appeared on a rival show.
Surrey-based James Belshaw, 46, has been applying for TV quizzes since 2010, and has appeared on over a dozen of the UK’s favourite gameshows, including Pointless, Weakest Link, Tipping Point and Lingo.
But his journey with game shows did not always run smoothly, and James recalled how he was taken off The Chase despite having been cast because of a conflict with a rival show.
‘I was cast on The Chase,’ said James, speaking on behalf of Spin Genie. ‘I had a filming day but they phoned me up and said, “James, were you on Pointless?” And I hadn’t put it on my form.
‘I said, “Is that the one where the really tall man sits down?” I don’t know what’s the big rivalry, but I was gone because of that. They binned me off, they must have got a reserve contestant.’
However, in a stroke of quiz show luck, that same week James and his wife filmed a show called Letterbox, which was cancelled after a couple of seasons.
Surrey-based James Belshaw, 46, has lifted the lid on how he was axed from The Chase after show bosses realised he had already appeared on a rival show
James (pictured on Lingo) recalled how he was taken off The Chase despite having been cast because of a conflict with a rival show
‘There’s no way I would have got away with it anyway,’ James laughed of his attempt to dupe the Chase bosses.
‘Because it’s the same make-up people and that sort of thing. I would’ve been panicking that I’d be rumbled!’
And James rumbled game show producers yet again when he cheated his way onto Countdown – although his plan backfired disastrously when he arrived on set.
The bus driver applied for Countdown which, over ten years ago, included an over-the-phone audition, where applicants were asked to ‘play honestly’.
‘I’m not bad at Countdown but I thought I was better than I was,’ said James. ‘I had my keyboard, anagram solver and numbers solver on my computer.’
He confessed: ‘I’m going to say it, I did cheat. I wasn’t given like nines, or having to solve all the numbers.’
His performance earned James a spot on the coveted show, but when he got to the hotel in Manchester, where the episode was filmed, he switched on the TV and studied the format.
‘Countdown was on,’ he said. ‘I watched the whole episode and I just thought, “Oh my God, I’m no good at Countdown, what am I doing here?”
‘I phoned my wife and I said, “I’m going to bail, I’m rubbish. I’m going to get destroyed”.’
James (R) has been applying for TV quizzes since 2010, and has appeared on over a dozen of the UK’s favourite gameshows, including Pointless, Weakest Link, Tipping Point and Lingo
But James’ wife encouraged him to go through with it, warning him that being seen as a ‘flake’ could jeopardise his opportunities on other TV shows.
‘A lot of these people [working on TV] are freelance,’ he said. ‘I’ve met people on these shows who I don’t remember but they remember me from other stuff, so it does make you mindful.’
Emboldened by his wife, James braved the Countdown clock – but his plan backfired when he ended up being the lowest-scoring male in the programme’s history.
A couple of years earlier, James kicked off his game show stint with Coach Trip, saying: ‘I never thought I would go on TV before that. My wife and I used to watch it quite a lot.’
The first series aired in 2005, before the show was cancelled and then revived in 2010.
James continued: ‘We applied and we jumped through all the hoops and then we got on it and after that I thought, “this is brilliant”. Then I just got into a zone of applying for things.’
As a seasoned applicant over the years, James says the move from in-person to online auditioning has taken something special from the application process.
‘Back then, it was paper auditions, sending a form – it was old school. Obviously now it’s all online forms and Zoom.
The bus driver appeared on Countdown after cheating in the audition, but became the show’s lowest-scoring male contestant ever
‘It was so much better going into a room of all different people and watching how they behaved, because it does something to people. It’s like they’re selling themselves, so they’ve all got different tactics.
‘Some people are on it the whole time, whereas you really need to just turn it on when they get you to do a little piece to the camera – you just play a game based around the show.’
James credits his success with getting onto TV to applying for new shows that had not yet been aired, saying: ‘They tend to cast people who’ve done [TV] a bit. There’s quite a few of us actually.
‘They can see how we behave on TV and they know you’re not gonna be like a Bullseye contestant from the 1980s where they’re all like, “I work in the mines.” That in itself is brilliant, I love Bullseye, I love watching all those old school style contestants.’
In a piece of advice for would-be applicants, James recommended having an interesting anecdote or story.
‘Me and my wife, we held the Guinness World Record for the longest kiss,’ he said. ‘That was quite a popular story, but now that we’ve used it quite a few times, it’s probably less interesting.
‘I think you can make an interesting story out of something quite mundane. If you think about what you like doing, there’s always some sort of quirk to it, you can’t just say you like fishing and golf.’
