The Governess has opened up about her job.
Anne Hegerty has been a much-loved member of The Chase since it first aired in 2010, quickly becoming one of the UK’s most famous quizzers.
But she's opened up about how different her life could have been if she hadn’t landed a job on the popular ITV quiz show.
Anne appeared on a recent episode of Loose Women, where she spoke about how her life was before she was offered a job as a Chaser.
She revealed, “If I hadn't got the job I would've been muddling along on benefits and trying to get off benefits and actually earn enough as an academic proofreader.”
But she admitted she wasn’t good at “keeping up with the paperwork”, saying that her autism affected her ability to multitask and make sure things like invoices were kept on top of.
She added, “So I could just easily get swamped by it. It’s one of those autistic things, multitasking and keeping everything pulled together.”
Anne was soon offered the job of a lifetime, which she revealed happened “by chance”.
She told the panel, “Just by chance I happened to meet someone who told me there was a high level quizzing circuit and I got on the quizzing circuit, that's how I heard about the existence of The Chase.”
Anne added, “Then the woman who ran the circuit said to me 'what do you think about being a chaser?' And I was like 'yeah'."
During her appearance on Loose Women, Anne also spoke about new spin-off quiz series Beat the Chasers which features all five of the Chasers from the original series.
But the difference here is that Anne Hegerty, Mark Labbett, Jenny Ryan, Paul Sinha and Shaun Wallace will all compete together as a team for the first time ever.
She revealed, “The idea is it’s a spin-off show from The Chase. You have one person down the bottom answering questions to get them up to a maximum of £5,000.
“And then, they can choose to take on, they get one minute, they can choose to take on two, three, four or five chasers on in a given order.”
Anne added, “If they're going to take on two people, we get far less time than they do, but they get less money.”
Beat the Chasers arrives on ITV1 in April.
