The Chase UK star Darragh "The Menace" Ennis has suggested being “an expert in almost nothing” is the key behind his quiz success.
In an interview with The Irish News, Ennis said he instead scans “the barest information”, which enables him to “know a little about a lot”.
“I know a paragraph about every king and queen of England. I know a line about every country.”
He said the odds of anything else coming up in a pub quiz or The Chase were very small.
“There isn’t enough time to ask really in-depth, complicated questions, so it’s just better to know a little about a lot.”
Ennis, a former scientist at the University of Oxford, became a chaser in 2020 after he was part of a winning team on the popular quiz show in 2017.
Despite his success as a contestant, Dublin-born Ennis said it took him “nearly two years” before he was ready to officially become a chaser.
“I’d go into the studio every couple of months and run through questions from previous shows to see how I did, and the producers would give me pointers on how to spot clues in certain questions and how to get into the right frame-of-mind to assess what’s actually being asked and things like that.
“And I had to go away and revise topics I wasn’t as confident with, like my UK-based knowledge, so it took a long time to get there but I’m incredibly privileged to get to call this my job.”
Initially, producers for The Chase suggested Ennis’ nickname should be The Professor, which he dismissed due to his work at Oxford.
“That would have been really cheeky, going to work and calling yourself the professor when you’re not one.”
Host Bradley Walsh then began calling him The Menace during his first show as a chaser – a name which he suggested he struggled to live up to.
“I abandoned the persona after that first show.
“My main notes from the production team afterwards were ‘stop looking like you’re enjoying yourself so much, you’re meant to be a menace’ but I was having too much fun and smiling like an idiot – it was just and still is such a gift of a show to be on.”
Watch The Chase UK daily at 5pm on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+
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