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CHRIS TARRANT ON THE GREAT PRETENDER
Thanks to the worldwide success of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Chris Tarrant gets offered a quiz show a week by TV companies eager to sign him up and share his Midas touch.
But the former Capital Radio DJ and presenter chucks most of them in the bin. His new TV project The Great Pretender is a show with a difference. Six contestants have their general knowledge put to the test but don’t find out if their answers are right or wrong. And when one is finally told they are the winner, he or she can only hold onto the cash prize if they can hide their success from their competitors by lying through their teeth and becoming The Great Pretender.
"Most of the shows I’m offered are big money shows but not as clever as Millionaire," admits Chris. "Millionaire has this fantastically simple format. I probably get sent a format a week but most of them are crap.
"What marked out The Great Pretender is that it’s very different and can’t be labelled as a rip off of anything.
"You watch the contestants and think, come on you must know the answer, then you realise that they might deliberately not be answering it correctly to call the other’s bluff.
"People are distraught when they realise they’ve been had. That’s why I liked it. In 70% of the shows we’ve recorded, the pretenders get away with it, which shows what great liars we are.
"One woman contestant was a school governess and when she won, she tried to convince everyone by saying, I’m a school governor, my word is my bond, and everyone depends on me. All I could think was ‘you lying so and so!’"
The prize money is a few thousand pounds, significantly lower than shows like Millionaire, but Chris reckons the money isn’t as important to the contestants as winning.
"It’s only a couple of grand, which is not going to change anyone’s life. If they were going to play for big money it would have to be for a million which would give it a serious dynamic and take away from the whole thing.
"Most shows are for small money and the money is actually incidental. People just want to be the Pretender and win, and then con everyone else that they are not. I think it will be successful because it’s so quirky.
"Some of the contestants are on their best behaviour with me, then they go into the room with the other contestants and they really go for each other. Often it is the seemingly timid women who go for it. Certainly, I've found it’s the female contestants that make the best liars!"
The Great Pretender airs weekdays between 5pm and 6pm on ITV1.
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