Interview with Chris Tarrant

The TV veteran tells Broadcast how former employer Capital lost its way and why British TV is the best in the world.

With a production company, a new ITV show and a return to radio on the cards, Chris Tarrant's life is anything but quiet.

It's been two years since Channel 4 and Noel Edmonds lit the touch-paper that led to an explosion in the afternoon schedules and a resurgence of interest in the gameshow format.

Admittedly, the shake-up that caused pundits to dub daytime "the new primetime" may have started with the success of BBC2's Weakest Link and the move of Richard and Judy to a teatime slot on C4, but it was the arrival and popularity of Deal or No Deal that made everyone sit up.

The famous face/gameshow combo has proved irresistible for broadcasters and even a cursory glance through the listings throws up Donny Osmond fronting Identity on BBC2 and Jasper Carrott presenting Golden Balls on ITV1.

This month, Chris Tarrant, 61, is making his daytime debut with RDF Television series The Great Pretender. In this ITV1 show - which kicked off on 5 November and has so far averaged a solid 1.3 million/9.2% share - contestants not only have to answer general knowledge questions correctly in order to rack up the prize money, they also have to con their fellow players that they are not the winner in order to keep the cash. If they can't then the money is split between the losers and to add to the suspense every two rounds contestants get to vote off the person they think is winning.

"Look - I do the ultimate money show with Millionaire," muses Tarrant. "The Great Pretender is not about money - we are talking a prize of three, four or perhaps five grand. This is about people who want to beat the system so badly they will lie and cheat and sell their own granny down the river."

He says that part of this show's appeal is that it is more than just a quiz, it is a study in social interaction, and an insight into how people behave when normal rules are somewhat suspended. "There is a bit we call The Waiting Room where the contestants go and ask each other questions in a bid to find out who is lying. You see these quite civilised people go in there and shout and argue," he laughs. "Then in another round I ask each of them to tell me they are not the Great Pretender. It's quite remarkable how badly people behave, they bring up their children, their responsibilities - dear old ladies, school governors, grandmothers all turn out to be brilliant liars."

On owning an indie
Tarrant is on jovial form for the interview. This may be because he is about to jet off for a holiday in South Africa but he does seem genuinely excited by his new show, although he fully admits that it took some time for him to be totally happy with the format. He brought his own production company, Chris Tarrant Television, in on the show in order to ensure that he had some control.

He explains: "RDF said: 'Come and watch an office run-through,' and I wasn't sure. I thought they had the germ of an idea but it was nowhere near finished."

Although he has not decided to have an executive producer credit, he is clear on his position following the recent furore over "vanity" executive producer credits, in which Ant and Dec admitted that despite having the title on shows such as Saturday Night Takeaway and Gameshow Marathon, they had no idea of the irregularities that had taken place on their shows.

Tarrant says: "If I had the title I would want to be heavily involved. I executive produced Tiswas Reunited and you ask anybody involved what a pain in the arse I was. I chased everybody. I wanted it to be perfect. I was tough with people. I wanted people to watch it and think: wasn't Tiswas great."

Who Wants to be a Millionaire? fans needn't be worried by his new gigs. Tarrant is still enamoured with the show and seems in no hurry to step out of the hot seat. Indeed, he seems unable to talk about it without using superlatives, but this is perhaps forgivable given how much his style of hosting has shaped a show that has morphed into a multimillion pound global business in itself.

"Millionaire is an extraordinary [format]," he exclaims in a way that almost sounds as though he is describing his own child. "It is still head and shoulders above everything else. I'm not at all fed up with it. I still sit there and go: 'I can't believe how brave, stupid, or cavalier you [the contestants] are.'"

Why the UK loves quizzes
Like cookery and property programming, gameshows are a genre that perform strongly in the UK even when it seems the market is saturated. Tarrant says: "In this country, everybody is a bloody expert. We all shout out the answers. As a nation we love it - it is a feelgood thing and a smugness thing. A basic fact is that people like to answer questions and show off and say: 'I know this.' It is then down to format."

Tarrant started his TV career as a reporter for Birmingham-based ATV. The regional broadcaster then made him host of the new Saturday morning show Tiswas, which propelled him and Lenny Henry to stardom in the 1970s. These days he is an industry veteran. He says one of his favourite shows has been Tarrant on TV, insisting there is more to it than laughing at different countries. This eye on international offerings leaves him rather well placed to evaluate UK broadcasting's place in the world market.

"I think UK production values are head and shoulders above the rest," he posits with unexpected seriousness. "If you watch an awful lot of international telly, as I do, you do think, God, look how badly that was shot. We make shows that look better than almost anyone else in the world. But some of our content is absolutely dire. UK television is going through a thin old timeÉ the same formats have been around for a while. And frequently I find that unless I know the host, I don't know which channel I am watching.

"It used to be that this [one thing] was very clearly the BBC and [the other] was ITV and it just isn't like that any more. Does the BBC need to compete like this? It should just go back to what it was great at - really well-written stuff - instead of just fodder."

Tarrant is equally scathing about BBC Worldwide's first US commission, Nerve Centre for American cable channel Game Show Network. The show was inspired by The Bong Game which he ran on Capital FM in the 1980s and 1990s. A recorded voice read out increasing sums of money and listeners had to shout "stop" before the bong sounded in order to win the last prize announced. Tarrant says: "It sounds hugely dull to me. It was a very good radio idea but if you can milk it out for half an hour of US TV then good luck to you."

Tarrant struggles a bit when we come to discuss Capital Radio, which he joined in 1984 on the lunchtime show, before taking on the breakfast programme. He has kind words for Johnny Vaughan who took over from him three years ago and who, according to last month's Rajar audience figures, lost out to Magic's Neil Fox as number one commercial breakfast show in London.

He explains in such a tone that it's difficult to gauge whether he is angry or sad: "Johnny has done quite well. You have to remember we are talking about a few thousand people - it was very close. He has had a tough old ride but Capital has done extraordinarily badly.

"It has got lost in a world of market research. Capital as a radio station has lost the plot among a million changes of execs and decision-makers. They have missed the point of Capital - missed the point that it was the soul of London. I just think, how can they have slumped this far? It is hopeless. They are all over the place. Who are they aimed at? Who is their audience?"

When he left the station Tarrant said he was so sick of music he rarely played anything. He presented one-off shows on Radio 2 around Christmas 2005 and 2006 but says it's only recently he has felt he might fancy a full comeback. "When I realised I missed music, I became Mr iPod and now I am talking in some detail about doing a new radio show next year."

Danger of focus groups
The star is critical of the commercial radio and TV industry being too led by market research and focus groups and has said that under the deal he is thrashing out with commercial radio he will present his own weekly, nationally syndicated show, on which he will pick out the play-list. Tarrant says there is room for a single show that spans everything from Amy Winehouse to Pink Floyd.

He fumes: "The whole focus group thing drives me insane. It squeezes the creativity out of it. Steve Wright and Terry Wogan are the last of a dying group where they have some freedom in what they play."

Now Tarrant says he is trying to make sure he is not too busy. He started his production company because he increasingly felt he wanted more ownership and control over what he was doing. He says that while he is not contracted to ITV, he will always go to it first with ideas, explaining simply that the broadcaster "has been very good to him".

He says: "I started Chris Tarrant TV quite quietly. It's very important now to own rights because you can do so well in the international market. I am very interested in the worldwide market, so everything I do now includes a percentage of international rights and sales.

"I also want to control how things look. It's not that I am a control freak but you just need to be on top of it more and more now. I've been lucky and broadly done good shows but you have to make sure you don't end up with a real turkey."
The Great Pretender airs weekdays on ITV1 at 5pm

Tarrant on...

THE GREAT PRETENDER
"What's weird is that I assumed I was a worldly wise guy before I did this show. It just lays bare some of the darkest sides of human nature. You just watch people and think, you are lying, you are lying to the depths of your soul."

PHONE-IN SCANDALS
"What has happened is that the phone lines bringing in income for some people suddenly became a whole new world of possible misuse. The situation is reprehensible."

BLUE PETER CAT FURORE
"[You see the presenters] on Blue Peter make an apology on behalf of the BBC and you think, these poor kids, they won't know anything about it. Where is the director general when you need him to make a statement? What is the point of having someone aged about 12, sitting there with a dog on their lap, making an apology on behalf of the BBC?"

HIS MOVE TO DAYTIME
"Is 5pm daytime any more? It is kind of grown-up time - you are talking O'Grady, Noel and Robinson. If it was something for, say, 10 in the morning then no, I wouldn't do it."

KIDS TV
"What is kids telly any more? That kind of anarchic stuff that we did with Tiswas has moved on and Blue Peter looks so staid. What do you get kids to watch? They are watching The Sopranos and with technology now it is difficult to stop them. I honestly don't know where kids TV can aim now to be acceptable but also relevant."

RIVALRY WITH NOEL EDMONDS
"It's up to ITV how it wants to schedule the show. The rivalry is just your typical tabloid nonsense. Noel and I are old friends."